River Valley, river rafting

Having survived the crazy boring Black Water Rafting, I thought it was about time to get on the water and get wet. On the North Island there was a place with a grade 5 river rafting, that is supposedly pretty good entertainment level.
On the way I picked up a hitchhiker, a young guy with a backpack, gotta help a brother in need, right? He was going South, nowhere special, I could take him and drop him off in a bigger city, easier to find a place to sleep, eat and maybe the next ride.
He had been in NZ for around one week, spent it with other Frenchies so had not been speaking that much English. It was quite difficult to have a conversation with him as he didn't understand English very much. Good thing I had French many years ago and could just speak to him in French then... Nah, that didn't work either, haha. With a dictionary he brought we were able to get through a few sentences while driving, quite funny.
After dropping him off, I turned off the bigger roads and heading for River Valley, a company offering the Grade 5 river rafting on the river Rangitikei. The location was kind of remote, and judging from the toilets, this was definitely in the country side, haha
They had some accommodations available also which I had already booked online. We were maybe 5 people who were not from the Kiwi Experience bus tour, loud and kind of obnoxious people having fun. Anyway, had to get to know a few of them as my life could depend on them at some point.
A lot of the people already knew each other, so they wanted to be in the boat with their friends, understandable. I however didn't have any preferences except I wanted to have a funny guide, and I think I chose the right one. His name was Derek from Canada and had been making jokes from the very early morning about everything and he was the one that OK'ed that I could bring my GoPro camera on the trip. Another guy who had a fancy diving camera was asked to leave it behind as it may just have been flying around, and I can see why they said what they did.
We jumped in the boat and started paddling down the river, guided with a firm voice from Derek. He was very strict and wanted everyone to give 100% and be good enough to get around in this boat without having him aboard. How difficult could it be, looked at the river, like sitting in a bathtop, so slow... At least for a few moments.
We practiced how to center the weight of the boat in case we were going down some good drops, how to shift weight from one side to the other and how to paddle, yes, some girls didn't really get it, even after repeated instructions. We also had to get wet to train how to bring someone back in the boat if there was a man overboard situation.
After a while it seemed like we had everything under control, the team worked pretty good when commanded to do things, I think we must have been some of his better passengers. We went through a few drops and got nice and wet, it was quite fun though.
There was long stretches of real sightseeing where we got to see undisturbed New Zealand. The entire river and river beds belonged to a Maori trust which had been owning this for hundreds of years, no farming, no changes to the river except what nature itself would do
One of the river guides was ahead of us all the time, sitting on rocks here and there taking pictures, but also scouting if there was something new in the water, like fallen trees or rock slides. Just a few days before, a huge tree from very high up had come crashing down just a few meters in front of a boat.
A few pictures we were really posing while going down the river while making some funny faces, but then it got a little exciting as well on some of the drops, as if Derek didn't know that at all, haha
I tried the river rafting in Bali for the first time and was not too impressed. I have to say that this was a whole other class. From far away the rapids didn't look like much, but then suddenly when the boat dropped 1-2 meters in the water, the story was a little different.
There were a couple of situations where some of the other boats needed help and Derek used his boat as the rescue boat, like when one of the other boats flipped over and there were 6 people floating around in the water. Or when one of the other boats were on its way down a wrong rapid with dangerous rocks below, we had to pull the other boat back on course.
At one of the steepest places I wanted to test how good the team effort in the boat was and accidentally fell out of the boat as it came flying over a edge and into the water a few meters further down the river. Well, actually it wasn't really on purpose, just didn't get weight enough all the way down in the center of the boat - result was a couple of Danish feet in the air and then in the water. The time on the pictures showed that within 11 seconds I was back in the boat, great team work.
It was a good ending to the trip, at least I got something for the money. The river rafting was $175, the Kiwi Experience people only paid $145 or so, but still the experience was 100 times better than the black water rafting clocking in at $210. It was really fun and a lot more challenging than I expected, but still I was hoping it would be more dramatic. Maybe with a group of guys on a little bit more rough river, it would be even more fun