Day 2 - Rakaia Gorge
After a good night's sleep we had a leisurely start to the day. There was some light rain overnight but by 9am the sky started to clear again so we decided our plans to go for a walk were on track.
We started with the short walk up our side of the river to a nearby lookout. Got some great views down to the two bridges over the river below the gorge.
Having had cereal for breakfast, we decided some French Toast to use up the last of the Sour Dough bread from the weekend Bridge Tournament would fortify us for the afternoon exertions.
We headed off at 1:30 to do the Rakaia Gorge walk (or as much as Miriam could cope with). The walk is supposed to be 4 hours so we knew this was a bit ambitious but the DOC guide indicated it was a fairly easy track. This turned out to be not quite be the case. The route was along the edge of the gorge proper and consisted of many up and down segments with lots of roots and slippery rocks to step over with the occasional view down the river. Slipping off the track would have been a major disaster so Miriam was taking it very cautiously with her new hip. After about 1.5 km along we decided to return as the track was not getting easier and we were making slow progress. The Bell Birds and Fantails were entertaining us and it was a very pleasant walk.
We turned back and took a few more photos of the two bridges. Amazingly, the main bridge was built in 1882 and can handle today's huge trucks with just a little bit of rocking and rolling as shown in the following video!
The second concrete bridge replaced an earlier wooden one in 1945. Here is a photo of the abutments for the original bridge but only after I looked at the photo when when we got back did I realise that the shadow of the new bridge is clearly visible.
