Today is August 16th and Joan and I are eight days away from returning to Scottsdale after an amazing vacation here in Wanaka with Dan, Annie, Phoebe, Malcie and Iris. Our very gracious hosts have made the entire stay so enjoyable but somehow saved two adventures to the end.
On Saturday we all went down to Queenstown to pick up our friend Lori Baylor who is visiting for a week. Lori works with Dan and Joan and I have known her for many years so its been fun for all of us to see her here in New Zealand. Annie picked her up at the airport, did a little shopping and then met up with the rest of us to take the Shotover River Jet Boat adventure ride! The Shotover River is a somewhat shallow narrow river draining the high snow area near Queenstown. The river has very fast moving water but thankfully not huge rapids, but rapids that certainly do get your attention. The boats used for this ride are very high horsepower very flat bottom crafts, designed for this river. You can go top speed in water only a foot deep. We were all bundled up for the cold plus lifejackets. All got in and were told to hold on tight! Of course there are no seatbelts for safety reasons. Once we got going we couldn’t believe the speed as we passed by outcrops of rocks a foot or two from our heads. A bit scary so you just trust that the driver knows what he is doing. Then for extra excitement he would signal that he is going to do a 360 degree turn at full speed! Not the most comfortable experience but quite thrilling as it rearranged our spines each time he did it! The ride was about 25 minutes long and ended where we began. The kids really enjoyed it and wanted to go again immediately. Once was enough for me. See photos below.
The second big adventure took place yesterday. Dan treated Joan, Lori and me to a one hour helicopter ride here in the Wanaka area. This was to be our first helicopter ride ever. I quickly wondered if this was something I wanted to do but Joan suggested that I would be a wimp if I didn’t go so off we went and I'm glad I did go. Wanaka has a local airport housing the helicopter tourist industry so we left from there. The copter held six including the pilot so it was very comfortable with five. After a very gentle take off it proceeded to be a ride as comfortable as sitting in your living room. No crazy tilts, no jerkiness or sudden drops.The beauty of the mountains is really indescribable .We were quickly a few thousand feet above Wanaka looking down on now familiar areas snapping lots of pictures, including Dan’s house and the neighborhood. We headed over Lake Wanaka with both Dan and our pilot, Pete, giving a running commentary of what we were seeing. We were all wearing ear phones that made hearing easy except for Pete’s NZ accent which was a little difficult. After crossing over the lake we gained altitude to see the spectacular Mount Aspiring National Park, a massive land area creating the range of mountains that rises up on the west side of the South Island and eventually drops right into the Tazman Sea without any roads or beach areas. Extremely rugged, covered by winter snows and gorgeous in every direction. As we got higher the pilot landed for about 10 minutes which allowed us to get off and tramp around in the snow and take more pictures. He landed one more time and we repeated our picture taking. Very, very cold at above 8000 feet but quite worth a little pain. We continued on seeing the various mountains and very deep valleys from different angles giving us such beautiful scenery. Dan took his GO-PRO camera so we look forward to seeing his footage. Dan asked the pilot to make a few loops around Mt. Aspiring itself as he is involved in mapping projects and indicated it would be very helpful in his work. We were all happy for this extra look at a mountain top that looks remarkably like the Matterhorn in Switzerland. The return trip was fun as we gently lost altitude towards Wanaka and I finally stopped holding my breath as we set back down at the airport. I urge all of you to Google this area to enjoy some really topnotch photos. Hopefully you enjoy the photos posted below.
