Raetihi Holiday Park & Cabins — Hotel in North Island

This review is to give people a better understanding of what to expect of the canoe river tour and the Raetihi Holliday Park Campsite.

How many days? I definitely recommend doing the 4 day instead of the 3 day tour. It's the same distance and route it's even the same price but it's way more relaxed! Paddling 4h a day instead of 7 made a big difference for us. And people we met said they wished they had done it in 4 days.

The company:

The organization could have been better. Each canoe group (the people who are with you on the day they drop you at the river) got an emergency tracker. So one boat was chosen at random to be the people with the tracker which was the only device to send an emergency signal or call for help if your canoe got stuck. (There is no phone reception during the entire journey!) The problem is that these people don't stay together. If the people with the tracker start taking off they are far ahead on the river and we saw our tracker boat never again after the first day. Only at the campsite in the evening. We were the last boat and if we had gotten stuck or worse in an accident nobody would have known since nobody was behind us.

We were told there is rain water at every campsite. (Even the introduction video they show you clearly states rain water at every campsite. But nobody said it wasn't drinking water. When we arrived we were shocked that they said we can't drink it. Me coming from a household where we only ever use rainwater from our rainwater tanks and drink it assumed rainwater is drinking water but now. That left us 4 days without any water! We had to use it anyways but had to boil it with our camping cooker. Which worked but was a lot of work with a tiny cooker boiling water for 2 people for 4 days...

Conclusion: The experience was nice but exhausting. When we did it the water level was very low so I recommend doing it with a higher water level. It was really hard to paddle in such low tide. I would do it again but my friend wouldn't. He found it too boring and exhausting.

The campground: The campground in Raetihi is really really nice. Opportunitys for the children to play. And the showers are warm and spaceaus. There is even a kitchen you can use and a tv...

Affordable price, especially staying in the cabins for a night before heading off on a canoe trip. The kitchen is a good size and bathroom/shower block was clean and warm. We had 4 people booked in a cabin and it had 2 bunk beds (w/ comfortable mattresses) but also a double bed in the middle of the room, leaving nearly no space for moving around or packing our barrels for the trip. Unfortunately our canoe trip was cancelled in the morning, due to rain and the river level rising, which was no fault of the company. What we would have expected though, was better communication from the staff. We were up very early packing all 8 of our barrels for the 3-day canoe trip and weren't told of the cancellation until 7am when we arrived at the desk for river transport. They had our contact numbers, but also could have come around to the cabins before all of their customers packed their barrels and brought them up front, through the rain, just to have to return to the rooms and unpack. They refunded us quickly though, which was...

Recommendation 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 We (girlfriend and me) stayed there in December 2019 after we finished the Tongariro Crossing - we went there with our camper van. All people were very polite and friendly, so we felt absolutely comfortable there. The washing facilities seemed to be renewed recently, so everything was clean and modern, also the kitchen was tidy and clean 👌🏼

When I asked the grandma (unfortunately forgot her name), whether I could copy photos from the SD card of my camera to my smartphone with their PC, she didn't hesitate and I could sit at her desk and copy the files (I guess roughly 30minutes). That is definitely not usual and I was sooo happy to be allowed to do this. The whole staff was very friendly, so we can recommend that park without any doubt 💪🏼🤗 I am sorry for posting this so late, but I had forgotten it several times -...