Today – 19.5km from Mangawaiti to Ramanui

Today was about chilling and snacking.

We had a lazy paddle down to Mangapurua landing, and the site of the Bridge to Nowhere.

This was a walk that we spent a couple of hours enjoying the change of scenery on a beautiful pathway into the middle of the forest.

The bridge to nowhere is a historical site, where originally there had been small settlements in the area post world war one, and they had built a bridge over a gorge to gain access to the river.

Quite litrally a bridge to nowhere as the settlements were sadly abandoned due to the harshness and remoteness of the area.

When we arrived at this landing, due to it being a pretty steep place, we had to do some manouvering , but were lucky that not many people were on the bridge. However, hoards of people from canoes and jet boats came towards us as we were heading out, and so we wondered how many canoes we were going to have to clamber over to get to ours. And when we arrived there was about 25 all tied up!

We spent the next couple of hours cruising down to camp, and arrived nice and early to enjoy an afternoon in the sun , to dry all our stuff out, and eat alllll the food.

Tonight’s campsite is a beautiful spot perched above the river.

It’s been cool getting to know Katie and Carson who live up in Canada, as we have lots in common and they have done heaps of cool adventuring all over BC and Alberta.

Tommorrow we hit a couple of class 2 Rapids eeeeek so we will be prepared to go swimming.

We are looking at maybe doing a fairly big day to head to a place called the flying fox for new years eve.