Saturday 5 February 2022

Take me to the river



Turere Lodge, Orongorongo Valley
28-29 January 2022
Party: Mark, Mr8, Me, other assorted WTMC Families Group people

Turere Lodge is so popular, that booking it for a weekend night is basically impossible. We did the next best thing and booked the entire lodge out for a Friday night - giving us capacity to take up to 28 people in for the night.

We wound up with about 20 people, half kids, a good balance between filling the space and allowing for a small amount of quiet.

The walk in was mostly wonderful, although we had had to leave without a couple of groups because they were running so late, and at least one of them was a bit grumpy when they eventually caught us. Whoops. 

The big kids raced on ahead, the little kids took their time, and all of a sudden we were at the banana bridge. The toilet at the bridge was clean and pleasant, which was nice. The river was full of algae and running at an extraordinarily low flow rate, which was not so nice.

After a short second afternoon tea break here, we continued on to the hut, arriving around 4pm. Bunkrooms were sorted, the baby was fed, and the kids were taken down the rope trail to the river while dinner was prepared. We had nachos from our freezer - nice and simple to reheat, made even easier by the provision of all cooking supplies at the hut.

Bedtime was a surprisingly smooth process, given the number of kids and their excitement levels, and the adults followed hard on the heels of the kids.

In the morning, we were all up and about at a reasonable time. Trying to get a group photo on the deckw was hard because the sun was shining straight in everyones faces. The weather was still amazing, the track was dry and quick, Jacobs Ladder UP was announced as more interesting than it had been DOWN the day before, Macs Hut was explored (it has a new lock on the door since the last time I was there), and we saw a lot more people walking in to the valley than we had seen the day before.

We were back in the carpark before lunch, ready to head home. Last time we did this trip, Mr8 was only Mr3.5, and he was asleep in the back of the car almost before we left the carpark. This time he was bouncy and enthusiastic and amped about his awesome tramp.