Whanganui River Canoe Journey
with Blazing Paddles Canoe Adventures.

The Ebrey Family - your hosts...

Big changes for the new season
We've been busy over the winter making some major changes, but it's not only us. DOC has decided to put the Whanganui Journey onto its Great Walks booking system and this means you have a choice of booking your own DOC huts and campsites for multi-day trips. It is now online in September. This has spurred us into getting our own online booking system up and running and we intend to have it fully operational by the start of the new season. And we've decided to get a guiding concession from DOC, which means we have had to have a formal safety audit by Outdoormark - the new regulatory body overseeing outdoor adventure activities in New Zealand. (We are waiting for new draft guidelines for the Whanganui River being developed by Maritime New Zealand before completing the safety audit, so it will now be later in the season before we apply for our concession).

New DOC prices:
Rather than the all inclusive $10 overnight and $45 3-5 day FUP pricing of the past, DOC will now be charging per night but the good news is that you can get a guaranteed hut bed at John Coull Hut and Tieke Marae. The bad news? Hut beds are $31 per adult - free for people under 18, but they still have to be booked. The good news: Campsites are $15 per adult for all but Ohinepane and Whakahoro, which will be $10 each, so those camping on the three day trip will pay only $30, not $45. Three nights camping (four days) will pay $45 and four nights camping (five day trip) will pay $60 per person. Overnight trips will cost $10 per adult at Ohinepane or $15 per adult at Poukaria. We will be encouraging clients to make their own online bookings with DOC as this will save them time and money. The only time we may not be able to guarantee we can provide the canoes will be at peak times like the Christmas-New Year period and at Easter. For those periods we strongly recommend you sort out your DOC arrangements first before making your bookings with us. But don't worry if it all looks too hard - you can let us sort out your DOC requirements as well, but there will be a small booking fee to do so. (If river conditions are likely to be marginal, you will be better off letting us doing it for you as we guarantee to refund both deposit and DOC charges immediately when the river is off limits on safety grounds - it may take you a week or more to get your money back from DOC). Special note: Any forward DOC bookings made on your behalf that are not in the current month have to be paid in full at the time of booking, When we send your your DOC confirmation, we will provide internet banking details for you to make the payment to.

We've had to put our prices up too
The DOC charges are on top of our new base canoe trip prices of $185 for three or four day trips ($175 for youths) or $210 ($200 for youths) for five days. One day prices are staying at $80 adult and $70 youth, but two day prices are now $160 adult or $150 youth plus the new DOC fees. Our prices are going up to cover all of the extra equipment we now have to provide to meet the new Maritime New Zealand guidelines for Whanganui River operators and also the costs of the new safety audits that we must now comply with. And, on top of that are the ever increasing diesel prices which make up a large part of our day to day operational costs. See our new prices here.

Online booking system live ... at long last.

It's been a real mission, but our online booking system is now live. You can make your DOC bookings through the same booking engine. Just click on Bookings on the navigation bar above.

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