About | Poripori Swimming Hole
The Poripori Swimming Hole is the place to be on a nice, hot summer’s day. With swimming spots that will suit everyone, it’s great for the whole family. Toddlers can splash around in the shallow swimming holes or confident swimmers can head further down to the biggest swimming hole and jump in from one of the rocks surrounding it.
Some get a little confused as to where it exactly is, because it’s not exactly signposted which kind of makes it feel like you’re going to a secret spot that only the locals know about. But here it is: walk down to the river from the carpark and cross it. Head on up and over the rocks and follow them until you reach a narrow path (go left). You’ll find a waterfall and some shallow swimming holes, continue on a little longer along the river to find the biggest one. Most likely though, you’ll find other people heading out there as well which will make it easier to find.
Bring some snacks to refuel your adventures, once you’re in, it’ll be hard to leave.
Note: there are no toilets here.
IMPORTANT: READ BEFORE YOU GO. The Poripori Swimming Hole can get dangerous! Further upstream, Trustpower releases water from the McLaren Falls Dam to provide white water for kayakers and rafters, with water levels quickly rising, making it quite unsafe to swim and dangerous to cross back to the other side of the river. Check when they will be releasing water before you go, they provide all of the dates on their website. A siren also goes off before water is released but it sometimes can be hard to hear. Water levels go back to normal after a few hours.
Nearby
Location
You’ll find a gravel patch to park the car along Poripori Road, cross the river, walk along the rocks and through the bush to reach the Poripori Swimming Hole.
Photos
Fun found – just beside the car park
Even if you don’t travel all the way in, you can find a good time just beside the car park. Walk down to the Wairoa River and you’ll find a good place to jump in for the older ones, a rope swing and some shallow parts for the little ones.
Ashton totally loved the rope swing and had a couple of go’s.
WARNING: don’t get caught out like we did.
Though this spot is nice and shallow and easily crossed, we once came here just before Trustpower released water from the dam, but we didn’t know anything about it beforehand. As we were making our way across, one by one, we realised that the water was somehow, very quickly, getting deeper.
I was in the middle of crossing and realised something wasn’t right. I looked at the water mark on the rocks and could see it getting higher and higher. We had to quickly turn back. I was standing on a rock and when I turned back and stepped down from the rock, realised it was much deeper than before and the current was much stronger.
It was quite a scary experience, especially when you have children there with you. We got our clothes and stuff wet and managed to get over safely before it got even deeper, but it was scary to think that if we had arrived a few minutes earlier we could have been in an entirely different situation.
Ash even jumped off here!
Finding the track to the Poripori Swimming Hole
To get to the Poripori Swimming Hole, you’ll need to cross the Wairoa River and walk along the rocks. Head further in (go left) and the rocks make a path that leads to the swimming holes.
First swimming holes + waterfall
You’ll end up at some small swimming holes surrounded by big boulders, rocks and native bush. There’s a cute waterfall, too!
Be careful, the current can push you down. Ash is pretty confident in the water, knew about the current (and had fun swimming against it) and I watched him carefully the whole time. He thought it was loads of fun and enjoyed getting us wet!
Big Poripori Swimming Hole
We thought that was fun but heading more on down, you’ll come across an even bigger swimming hole and lots of places around it to jump off. There were a few people there when we went and all of them were jumping off in different places.
Note that when you walk down to this swimming hole, if the kids are walking on the left side of the water then they can’t really pass back over to the other side when you get down there (especially for those that aren’t swimming and don’t want to get wet). Learnt the hard way!
A pretty sweet spot to cool down on a summers day.
