KEY POINTS:
The shiner stayed for days. Never quite in the same place, never quite the same colour, moving from the side of my left eye to below and passing - like an apple ripening in reverse - from a full angry burgundy to an ugly, light yellow-green.
I didn't feel it happen and I don't remember how I got it. But I remember where, exactly where. "Back paddle team, back paddle," shouted our rafting guide and master and commander, KC, over the roar of a length of rapids know as "The Squeeze".
The "team" - seven of us, plus KC steering at the back - poured it in with our wooden paddles, pushing them into the water then forward. In, then forward. Slowly, slowly our black and blue - how appropriate that seems now - raft moved deliberately back into a deceptively quiet area of the rapid's seething cauldron.
We'd done this once already when KC had spied this spot, just below a large, partially submerged rock. He reckoned it was a perfect place to "surf"; a place where the tricky flow of the river would capture the raft and we'd sit there nice as you please, surfing as the rapids sluiced past.
In we'd gone, surfed, and out we'd gone. This, clearly, wasn't KC's plan. On the second attempt he - and we - got it just right. Back paddle, back paddle. The raft moved into the surfing sweet spot, the rapids roared and suddenly ... every ... thing ... was ... in ... slow ... motion.
As the raft tipped over me several things happened. I don't remember any of them. The most important fact was this: I was under water in a fast, high-running river. I popped to the surface like a cork thanks to my lifejacket, spat water and looked around. I didn't panic. The raft was just in front of me but just out of reach. I grabbed the collar of someone else's lifejacket - someone already holding on to the raft - and pulled myself in and grabbed the rope running around our upturned transport.
KC climbed up and onto the raft, then flipped it right-side up. Under water again - cough, cough - I clutched the side once more, grabbed two paddles and waited to be hauled aboard. "Pull them in, pull them in," KC yelled urgently, after he'd yanked the first of us out of the torrent. Having got us into the water - deliberately - he wanted us out, and quick. Within a minute we were all back in the black and blue. "Everybody all right?" KC bellowed over the fizz of The Squeeze. You bet.
The lump beside my eye made its presence known a couple of hours later. Was it a sandfly bite? No, it was too big even for those bumble bee-sized terrors. Was it a bruise? Actually, it was a bloody bruise. Did that cheeky bugger KC - he reckons this stands for "Kind Chap" - flick me one as we tipped over? I never knew what hit me. I guess I never will.
In all probability it was a flying oar (KC's theory) as our raft tipped and everything that wasn't tied down - us and the oars - went into the drink. If there's one thing I learned on the West Coast's Landsborough River, which flows into the Haast and eventually into the Tasman, it is that when rafting white water, you don't know what's happening until, oh, about a mile down river. I hit upon that early, and that taking a few bruises is a small price to pay for what must be among this country's best three-day wilderness experiences.
Staying two nights in riverside camps some 14km apart, the trip allows time for walks, fishing, delicious lunches and just drinking in the serene, pristine landscape (knowing full well you might be the only people for miles), as well as the rafting.
Queenstown's Rafting's minibus picked me up from my Queenstown hotel just after 8am on a Friday in late November, where the bright southern sun had the waters of Lake Wakatipu and the broad sky competing for the best shade of blue. It was a long run in - indeed it takes about half the first day - from Queenstown to the Clarke Bluff on the banks of the Haast where our party and gear would be choppered into the Landsborough Valley to our first night's camp. After picking up each of this trip's guests - me, a lovely middle-aged couple, Richard and Joy, who grow apples near Motuaka; an adventurous, 30ish couple, Baz and Emma (he Dutch, she French) lately of Brisbane; and a couple of late-20s Sydney wideboys, Dapper Dave and Gorgeous George - our first stop was Cavell's Rafting Lodge, near the Shotover River. Here we were sized for our survival gear and picked up our rafts and supplies. The three hour-plus trek to the bluff via lakes Wanaka and Hawea, lunch and the Haast Pass, had us waiting for the tiny Hughes 500E helicopter to fly us in by early afternoon. The 10-minute chopper flight gave us a cinemascope preview of what was about to be ours: some 28km of classic braided South Island river bordered by 3000m snow-tipped monster mountains, dense beech forest and wide, sub-alpine grasslands. As the chopper swept us into Camp One, the road home - the river - seemed to be running awfully high; something like 30cm of rain had fallen in just hours over the previous weekend, changing the very course of the river and turning its waters - due to the enormous amount of silt - into an icy, aqua wash. If Camp One is camping, roughing it in the bush has changed a bit since I was a Scout. This encampment - as with Camp Two at Harper's Bluff - came with tents for each couple (and one for me) and a large awning under which our whopping breakfasts and dinners were cooked on gas and eaten at camp tables. The awning had its own electric lighting provided by a small solar panel, which also provided power to pump fresh water up from the river. Camp Two had a hot, powerful shower too - and the beer and good local wine flowed just as freely at both bivvies. Only the dunnies, longdrops under a black polythene teepee at both camps, looked like they weren't from this century. Both camps provided a simple but comfy luxury. But if how we passed the next two days on land was sedate, well-fed and relaxing - I enjoyed an easy three-hour return walk up the Landsborough valley - beyond the river's edge was a wildly different experience. White water is dangerous. This, I'm sure, comes as no surprise. So having been issued a helmet, a wetsuit, a bright red smock and a lifejacket - but, oddly, no superhuman powers of survival - it was up to KC, along with our two other guides Gabby (KC's wife) and Roger, to prepare us for what was ahead and explain what to do if things went wrong - including having me lie down and, er, cuddle Gabby's small kayak to simulate catching a ride with her. As a brave fellow cursed with cowardice, the 20-minute safety briefing from KC had me bricking it before we pushed the raft into the swift, possibly deadly, waters - but something else soon became obvious: rafting is a romp. Seated at the back of the raft with KC - apparently the safest place to sit for Mr Brave - our first day began easily enough with a few short bursts through white water (though I managed, in our very first rapids, to bang my face on Joy's helmet) before the biggest challenge of the trip, The Squeeze, a grade four rapid. Parking our rafts (one for us, one for Roger and our gear) and kayak, at the top of The Squeeze we walked across rocks and sand to see the lie of the river; oh good, it was running high and fast. Gulp. Piling back into our transport we engaged in a frenzy of forward paddling, back paddling, resting paddles, holding on, hunkering down but staying afloat. The sensation is a sensation. A combination of riding a bucking bronco while on a rollercoaster while being in washing machine at full agitate. It is unique: scary, exciting, wet, scary, mad ... On the Sunday afternoon, as we travelled back to Queenstown in more glorious sunshine, I kept touching the lump by my eye but my thoughts were elsewhere. Yes, the shiner stayed for days. But those three glorious days out on the Landsborough will stay lodged in the memory for a long time to come.
Diary
Raft the Landsborough for $1495 per person for three days/two nights, summer only.
Queenstown Rafting provides a dry bag, wetsuit, helmet, etc. See www.rafting.co.nz.
Air New Zealand has services to Queenstown. www.airnewzealand.co.nz
* Greg Dixon flew to Queenstown courtesy of Air New Zealand, stayed at the Novotel Lakeside and was hosted by Queenstown Rafting and Destination Queenstown.
