Today’s adventure was a canyoning trip. This was one of the major high­lights for Christine, who has been wanting to do this ever since she missed an oppor­tunity to try in when she was in Switzerland years ago.

The general idea is to climb, jump, swim, dive, fall, and zipline your way up, down and through a canyon. Lots of effort is required, but loads of fun…jumping 30 feet into a pool of water 10 feet across is quite a rush! Yet another one of the adventure things that would be impos­sible in Canada, thanks to our legal system. But I digress. I think the hardest thing was the initial soaking of the wetsuit…the water was 8 degrees!

Notice the fogged glasses All of these photos are thanks to the G9 and it’s water­proof case…I am becoming very impressed with this little guy. We finished at about 3pm or so, and then it was off towards fjordland for our cruises

…Mike

Today we spent zooming up a river, and cruising down it again

It was an early start, and thank­fully we were able to stop to see the view up Lake Wakatipu to see, in the guide’s words, “the scene that New Zealand uses to entice tourists to visit.” Hard to argue with him

Once we got to the staging area and pulled on the wetsuits, we were off for part one of the day’s adven­tures: jetboating. This is a jet boat:

The one above is smaller than the one we rode…ours had two huge inboard engines that shoot out water at an ungodly rate. They are capable of speeding up a river only 4″ deep, and they go quite fast We rode one of these babies up the Dart River for about an hour or so. Tight turns, thrills but no spills

This was followed by the second part of the rip: a more relaxed “funyak” (inflatable kayak) down the river again. Much easier on the bum.

We stopped for lunch and went into a spot called The Chasm for a peek…it caught me totally by surprise, photo­graph­i­cally. Up until then, my Big Black Cameras were all safe in a water bag, and we were using the G9 in the water­proof housing for our photos…but the beauty of the Chasm made me try to take some more controlled photos, even though I knew it was pointless…there was just too great of a difference in light between the sky and the canyon walls. In any case, here is a glipse:

We even­tually floated our way to the end of the trip, and on the way back saw the set for the “Wolverine” movie through the window of the bus. This area is used for many movie sets, not the least of which was Lord of the Rings…the places that we spent the day mucking about in were used all over those movies. You can’t escape the LoTR shooting loca­tions if you do any kind of adventure tourism here

…Mike

We spent the first part of the day making our plans for the next week, and then hit our first adren­aline rush: the Shotover Canyon swing. After a 30 minute ride up a scary dirt road, we ended up standing on a platform, looking down into a canyon.

Christine went first, upside down:

I went next, and I’m not ashamed to say that is scared the hell out of me!

It was a major rush! We should have jumped again while we were there, but we were both buzzin so much we couldn’t think clearly. Highly recom­mended

…Mike

Today we made a beeline for Queenstown. It poured for most of the trip, and cleared up as we got closer. Some random scenics from the drive:

We found a neat spot along the way called the Clay Cliffs. It reminded me of Bryce Canyon, except wetter.

This is about the time I glanced at the fuel gauge and discovered that we were almost out of gas. 15 careful, tense minutes of driving later we turned a corner and found a gas station, not a moment too soon:

…Mike

Today we next headed to Hanmer Springs, a town built around thermal springs. Some random scenics taken along the way:

It was too hot during the day to sit in the 42? water of the hot spring, so we went for a hike first. The air was heavy with the sweet smells of the trees. And as a bonus, there was a little waterfall at the end of the hike:

Then it was off to the springs. We tried each of the 7 or 8 pools, all at different temper­a­tures, but we liked the hottest one the best. It had very high sulfur content though, which turned my silver rings black

We spent 2 hours there, until they kicked us out. We’ll have to find another one of these places

…Mike