Karamatura Stream Bash

I've officially fallen behind on this. Who would've thought. Anyway, this will hopefully be a short one--I need to be up at 5am. It's mid-semester break and there are more trails to be tramped!

A few weekends ago I went on a streambash. Kiwis apparently think it's totally cool and acceptable to go off trail and hike up river beds and clamber and climp up waterfalls and grade 5 rock faces. Completely safe and sane, right? Right.


Trail head. Whoever can guess what animal that is gets a cookie! Just kidding. I don't even know what it is. And the cookies are all mine!








Yep. Climb up it.


Ahhh. Waterfalls.


Yum.



It's not wet and slippery at all. You'll be fine.



And now we jump IN!!



Bath time was never this fun when I was little.



I'm queen of the waterfall!



And of course, there're cliffs.



More crazy hiking. First you must swim across this..





then scramble up this.




But then there's another waterfall! This has been dubbed "shampoo ad quality waterfall number one." Because the previous ones weren't?



Again, not slippery at all. And when you fall it's fuzzy and soft, too.




This is what I call a waterslide!!!




This hole was over 6 ft deep, and like 2 feet wide. How cool?




If you look closely you can see that this is a human step ladder. You call this a hike??




After the stream we did a little bush wacking(the call it bush bashing) up a tributary and valley onto a ridge to hike out on the actual trail. While we were in this part of the hike all I wanted to say was "back in 'nam..." but I thought the Kiwis would probably think I was crazy and have no idea what I was talking about.
So all in all, this was the most insane, most gorgeous and most wet and fun day hike ever. Ballbuster ain't got nothin' on streambashing. But you don't get away with this much fun clean: the next morning I woke up with cuts all over my body, feeling like I had gotten beaten the night before. All worth it, right?