We paddled to Haruru Falls, near the end of the river and jumped out at a campsite for tea and cookies. Here I met a beautiful Alsatian dog who saved a boy’s life, a lovely little story I captured on video.
After the break we were back in the water (this time I swapped into a single) and we went and paddled under the waterfall – right along the rocks so as to get dumped on by the water, a pretty neat little trick.
Back downstream was hard going because of the incoming tide and offshore breezes, but Loz and I still managed a good deal of stuffing around as well. Kylie our guide was also really cool, giving us regular good ribbings and helping Loz and I plan our dunking attack on Steve and Jamie. Unfortunately that didn’t eventuate cos we were too busy playing around ourselves and got quite behind the rest of the group. All in all the kayaking was great fun, and something I wouldn’t mind getting to later on if the opportunity arises.

After a few of us help up the coach while we dried off and changed clothes, we were on our way to Auckland again. Just a little before we left I remembered I’d left my brand new watch on the big yellow bus from the previous day’s tour (I’d taken it off to go sand-duning), so Jo our tour host (not Scott the tour leader) called Awesome Adventures to give them the details of where to look for it. And so the awesome adventure of returning Tim’s watch began.