River Valley

After our slightly rainy time at Taupo, we were excited to be moving onto our penultimate stop in the North Island, River Valley. Arius our driver explained that River Valley was a tranquil slice of rural countryside that we would have all to ourselves! The whole place was a large barn on the river side, and it was incredibly cosy and a Christmas retreat dream. Although we would have the whole lodge to ourself, the privacy aspect could not be said for our rooms! River Valley was famous on the Kiwi experience for being the location with the largest dorm holding about 30 people! Very cosy!

Although we were happy to have made friends on the bus, a 30 bed dorm just screamed 'no sleeping here' so when they said there wasn't room for everyone, ourselves and Mark jumped at the opportunity to have our own private 4 bed lodge just near the river!

River valley really was beautiful, and we spent the afternoon looking over the clear waters and autumnal trees. We quickly spotted a little pully system over the river, so we all took it turns to hoist each other over to the other side.

 Once we were all over, we went on a very steep walk up the bank, and over a small waterfall to find a beautiful birds eye view of the place at the end.

It was really cold now, being the New Zealand winter, so lots of people opted to spend a little extra money and have the tasty roast dinner that was on offer at the lodge. As we were still strapped for cash and had the ingredients for a curry, some of us warmed ourselves us with a Tandoori treat.

After we ate, we nestled around the large wood burner in the middle of the barn, and played a few rounds of cards against humanity with our driver Arius and a few other people. It was Natalie's birthday who we had done the Waitomo caves with, so a few people were getting boozy at the bar just at the corner of the barn. 

Whilst all this was going on, Steph was nowhere to be seen, and was later to be found crouching outside in the fire wood cabin as she had found 3 tiny wild kitten, and she was in a desperate attempt to tame them and stow them away in her bag.



Whilst out there, one of the guys at the lodge explained that they often kill kittens as cats catch the rare native birds so are seen as pests. This made Steph want to catch them more! However she made the man swear that he wouldn't kill them, and tried to undo her work of taming them and shoo them away to safety.

The next morning, we heard all the horror stories of the 30 share dorm, whilst we smuggly sat there feeling very well rested. Some of the optional activities at the River Valley lodge are horse riding (which Steph was certainly not going to attempt again after the Pantanal incident) and white water rafting.

Unfortunately due to a heavy down pour the night before, the white water rafting wasn't possible and we were quickly feeling like the weather had something against us! We took one last walk down to the crystal blue waters, that after the storm had risen dramatically and turned a horrible mud colour.

 Before we left Steph had an emotional wave come over her, and felt very sad that she hadn't been able to cuddle a little kitten, however little did she know that down the line her dream would become a reality...

We waited for the horse riders to come back before we left country life and headed towards the large city of Wellington.