The rain had stopped at some point during the night, all though it was still pretty cold when we woke up and everything was obviously still wet. This does however matter less when you’re getting in a river anyway. It was pretty crowded in the hut for breakfast since everyone was moving around and trying to get going but once we packed up our barrels and got on the river things spread out quickly. We had a few quick showers in the morning so Heather kept her rain jacket on whereas I just opted to go without a shirt and paddle faster if I got cold. It was a pretty good mix of both throughout the day but we certainly got a good amount of sun. I managed to take a few more pictures today and the river was just as stunning as yesterday. We reached the Mangapura Landing around noon after three hours of easy paddling (with the river levels up it was moving much faster and there wasn’t much need to paddle hard). The landing was the start of the walkway to the Bridge to Nowhere, a bridge that was built a long time ago by a town that has now been abandoned. Given it was supposed to be a 40 minute hike each way Heather and I opted to sit on the sunny rocks and have lunch instead. Our reluctance to unnecessarily hike paid off as the heaviest rainstorm of the day passed over not to long after we’d finished lunch and got back to paddling. We only had another two hours of paddling after lunch and when we arrived at the campsite the guy commented that we were way earlier than usual. The campsite is a jumble of huts and tent spots with various kitchen, toilet, shower, etc. structures in between. It’s a nice spot with good views of the river and was a good place to hang out for the afternoon. It even had a throne overlooking the river to watch the other later canoers struggling along. We hung out here for awhile and wandered up to the lodge. There were no guests staying here so they allowed us to enjoy the deck and have a drink. We saw a goat that seemed very intent on eating every bush it could find and not caring about anything it couldn’t eat. When we left we saw it wandering up onto the deck.

We’ve reorganized our food a bit in the dry weather and eaten a lot of snacks. We’re realizing we’ll be pretty full by the end of the trip if we manage to get through close to all of our food. We’ll need to start doubling up on lunches and dinners. None of this is a bad thing since we’re not carrying any of it and are motivated to finish it so we don’t have to carry any of it ever.