Day 69 - Wednesday 13th March 2024

Awake early this morning with a frisson of excitement about what I knew today had in store for me. If this knowledge wasn't enough, I also had the opportunity to make a couple of video calls to wish my nephews Benjamin and Sebastian a happy seventeenth birthday; it may have been tomorrow here, but it was still yesterday there!

This morning I had the Shotover Jet trip booked; a jetboat trip up and down a river, through canyons and probably getting wet. Away from the hotel at 08:30, and I arrived at the river spot on 09:00 for my check in. Down to the river and a red hut, I was issued with a lifejacket and had some photos taken before boarding the boat. Prepare for the very unusual event of me appearing in a photo .... 

Onto the boat, we had a briefing and then set off. First up the stream a bit; then back past the jetty for more photos before heading off downriver, dodging the canyon walls, traversing rapids and doing 360 degree spins all at speed. We travelled about 6km down the river before returning back upstream. At one stage there was a gentleman walking loads of dogs, and the dogs clearly are used to walking there with the boats zooming past as they raced us along the bankside. Back past the jetty again, and we headed upstream for as far as we could get, before a last jaunt down the canyon and a return to the jetty with a spinny thing to end.

My attempts at describing this just don't do it justice ... but then I did have my Gopro mounted on my head and recording the whole trip, so I've released the whole thing on the 'Bryan's Briefs' channel here .... I know it isn't brief, but it's the best way to show what it was like. 

After disembarking I bought the video and photo package (very unusual for me!), and then took some videos and photos of the boats zooming up and down the river before returning to the hotel. Looking at the footage later, what I've captured on my Gopro is better than their video quality, but I didn't know that then.

A coffee and cake from the cafe in the hotel foyer before asking at reception about busses into the town as I didn't fancy the idea of trying to find a parking space today. There is a bus that leaves from next to the hotel; they tried to give me a Bee card for the bus that I could load with enough cash, but I have one of those already from Tauranga so it's probably worth seeing if that works here.

Onto the 12:05 bus, and the card did work; I still had $10 on the card, so the bus travel today was effectively free. Into town, and the walk up the hill to the base station for the Skyline gondola. Up to the top station, and a walk around lots of works that are happening here to get to the luge where, similar to Rotorua, I have 5 runs booked.

This time I had the correct attachment for the Gopro to be fitted to the helmet, but I was struggling to find one with the Gopro fitting .... until a gentleman returned one of my size with the attachment to save me looking further. The Gopro mounted up and my bag into a locker, I went up on the chair life to the top station of the luge.

Just from the chairlift, I could tell that the runs here were not going to be as long as Rotorua (only 1.6km here), and when I reached the top I discovered that only one of the two tracks was open. Everyone was therefore going to be using the same track. A quick check from the staff that I could control the thing, then I was set loose onto the track.

My luck held once again; the five runs seemed to go very quickly, and I managed to avoid the congestion on track. The only time I was in a lot of traffic was at the bottom where we had to queue once to get off the luge. It all seemed to be over very quickly, but I have ended up with five full runs of video footage to show what it's like.

I had been told by a work colleague that Rotorua was the better luge, and he wasn't wrong .... but Queenstown is still worth doing and still one hell of a lot of fun.

After my final run I disposed of the helmet after reclaiming my equipment, and took the chair lift up once more to walk down to the top of the gondola. Some time on the viewing gallery and the awesome view before taking the gondola down back to Queenstown. 

I had a wander into town centre, and dropped into the same place I had lunch yesterday. I ordered the same, and rather than rushing like yesterday as we were on a schedule, I took my time and enjoyed the Hawaiian Chicken bagel ...... and it was so good!

Then back to the hotel on the bus, and a chance to see what footage I have today. I must say that I'm impressed with what the Gopro has captured, although it did confuse me for a bit. Rather than capturing the jetboat as one file, it's split it into three pieces that I've had to splice back together .... not a tough job, but I did think that the Gopro had switched off after 10 minutes until I found the rest of it. 

In other news, I put my name down for a trip in Australia to the Bungle Bungles back in November, but they hadn't met their minimum numbers. I received a mail saying that they now have enough to run the trip, so I've confirmed that I'll be going with them. It's the single most expensive thing I'm doing all trip as it involves a flight, but I'm so chuffed as it's somewhere I really wanted to visit ...... but that's not until May so plenty to do before then. 

It has been an absolutely awesome day; I'm just a little concerned that I may need to find myself a doctor to surgically remove the smile from my face!