What a Day! We both would rate this as one of the top days thus far, just hard to top snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, but close.
It started early with Laundry (didn’t say everything was exciting), then picked up at hotel by a Range Rover to take us on a 4 hour tour. The tour Middle Earth comes from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, by JRR Tolkien, and they took us to see several places where the film was shot. All of you know how much Mary enjoys these type of fantasy type things, so she was excited.
They took us to the top of one of the lower mountain ranges where we could look down over Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu, what a view! Then one of the guides (we had 4 range rovers in our group), had a book and showed us a scene from the movie and where it was shot. We made several similar stops climbing mountains, forging rivers, and panning for gold. As happens on most of the tours in both Australia and New Zealand, you always stop for morning or afternoon tea. All in all it was a great time climbing the mountains on narrow dirt roads 1000 feet in the air!
One of the stops high above one of the rivers, we watched some people bungee jump from a specially made bridge and platform high above the river. Then it was back to the hotel for a short stop, grab a quick lunch, then get ready for part two.
The next excursion was a jet boat on the Shotover River. We donned rain ponchos and a life vest, had a brief safety briefing then boarded a specially designed jet boat, which is nothing more then an oversized jet ski designed for 14 people. We started by traveling up river for a brief warmup and a “Kodak Moment” where photographers were strategically placed to get that perfect action shot.
Now that pictures were taken we pointed the boat downstream and took off like a rocket. Traveling at speeds up to 45 miles and hour through the river canyon that in spots was no more then 20 yards wide. I ended up in the front seat on the edge, so could see just how close we came. Traveling at high speeds we traveled about 5 miles downriver doing a couple of 360’s along the way! In some parts of the river the water was only about 1 1/2 feet deep. We could not take pictures as you can imagine but they do have a website which I will add later in the blog so you can hopefully take a look. Then it was back to the hotel for an hour or so to rest up and get ready for our dinner cruise.
The final event for the day was a bit more relaxing. We boarded a 100 year old steam ship that took us across Lake Wakatipu, where we were having dinner. The trip was about one hour and took us to the far side of the lake, where we got off the boat at The Walter Peak High Country Farms. We had another good meal and then were given a short tour of the farm, actually a ranch with Sheep and some Angus Cattle. We were also given our second sheep shearing demonstration. Then it was back on the boat for the hour trip back to the Queenstown Marina.
Tomorrow is another early day, with luggage outside our door at 7:00 AM and on the bus at 8, for. The drive from Queenstown to the Franz Josef Glacier on the Western side of the South Island of NZ.
The website for the Jet Boats is http://www.shotoverjet.com if you go to this site you will be able to click on the short video and see an advertisement clip that is exactly what we experienced.
And thanks to everyone for all the Birthday wishes, can’t think of a more special and memorable place to spend a birthday!
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