Well we are here, our Christmas destination. We have decided to have an hotel stay for Christmas and it turns out its a lovely hotel and we got an upgrade on our room. We have a fantastic lake/mountain view - even lying in the bath has a view through the glass wall!!!
In the action capital of NZ you can do so many adrenalin fueled things it’s hard to know where to start....so we have a walk along the lake front....only kidding...we go white water rafting.
It is a grade 4 river (grade 5 being the highest grade you can have for commercial rafting) so I try not to think about that as we get our gear on wet suits, splash jacket, life vest, rubber shoes and a crash helmet and at this point I am in danger of overheating!! After all the rain we have had it is actually the first day for 3 days that they have managed to get out on the river as it has been too high. We start with our journey out to the gorge which in itself is a bit hair raising, thin, windy roads with sheer drops, bit nail biting especially when we encounter a van, 4 motorbikes, 6 mountain bikes coming along in the other direction on probably one of the remotest roads in the world!
After the drive there the thought of rafting doesn’t seem so bad. Off we go with our guide, Heath, and take in the scenery around us. We then start to approach the grade 4 rapids which are named in order, miners, squeeze, anvil, toilet, oh shit!, pinball - you can imagine therefore what they are like! But we managed to all stay in the raft and make it through despite our raft ending up under the front of another raft on top of my head! We then go through the tunnel before emerging and going down the final rapid called the cascade, this time we all stay in except one! What a great experience that was!! Now I don’t have any pictures of this (obviously) so have put Queenstown Rafting’s promo so you can see what it was like!
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