Queenstown

I had a leisurely start to the day, getting up in time for the free breakfast (toast, jam and cereal) and then did a spot of washing. That done Heather at the hostel booked me a place on the Shotover Jet for later in the day. I walked down through the town centre and into the Botanical Gardens which are well kept and have a Frisbee Golf course in them (Note to Middlewood; easy one for us to do!) You play 'golf' around a course, but using Frisbees instead of clubs and balls. The 'holes' are metal posts with baskets on them. As you had to go all the way back into town to buy/rent a Frisbee and get someone to play with you, I decided to see if there were any Geocaches in the area (You use a GPS to find a hidden 'treasure') and there was one listed on the website called Frisbee Golf, I loaded the coordinates into my PDA and searched out the hidden box which was located ... now that would be telling ... have a look at the link to see where it is. I did find it, and recorded my details in the log book and re-hid the cache but there were loads of non-Geocacher's (or Muggles as they're known) about and I had to be discrete without looking too suspious. Heather had booked me onto the 3pm Shotover Jet boat but I still had to pay the balance at the office in the town so I walked down there and 'checked-in', as they had a trip leaving in 5 minutes with space the lady on the counter moved me forward to this run. The Company has a mini-coach which shuttles people back and forth to the river site so I and 10 other jumped on and the driver put on a DVD of what to expect and do whilst we drove the 10 minutes out of town to the site. The Jetboat is different to the normal propeller driven boat in that it sucks water in through a port on the bottom of the boat the forces it out through a small jet at the back; this means that it can be used in as little as 10inches of water (25cm for you modern people). Also as the jet can be pointed in any direction the boat can be made to go from 50mph to a dead stop or a 360 deg. spin almost on a button. First we were kitted out with buoyancy aids and then the driver/pilot/captain? gave us a safety brief; sit down, keep hold of the bar, have fun! Then he set off up the river. The section of river they work in is a combination of wide sweeping open sections with barely 10in. of water flowing to tight narrow gorges with deep fast flowing water and very steep hard rock walls! We went up river to the first bend and he signaled a 360 spin and we all hung on, he flipped the boat left then right the left and right around, the back lifting up out of the water and spray covering us all, fantastic! Back down the river we did a 'hand-brake turn' at the landing stage for the 'official photo' an then we entered the gorge, the driver set off at speed and flew into the gorge with barely 6in between the sides of the boat and the sheer overhanging walls then sliding across the river to dive around huge boulders in the middle. I'm not sure how fast we were actually going but the fact that it was so narrow certainly made sure you held on. Out of the gorge part the river again became wide and shallow separating into lots of seemingly impassable riverlets over pebbles. The boat was thrown around from stream to stream and every so often a 360 thrown in whenever the water level was deep enough. after about 10minutes we came to a stop and everyone got their breath back, the driver answered a couple of questions and then we set of back up the river using different streams and cutting it very fine against some washed up trees (that's why you keep you hands inside the boat!) We went through past the Jetty at speed and then stopped around the next corner to wait for the othe boat which had been following us to catch up before returning to the jetty. The ride lasted for about 25 minutes and was excellent, although I didn't buy the 'Momento Photo and DVD pack' as it was nearly half the cost of the ride again. The driver of the boat had told us that this was once a gold mining area and although commercial mining was banned a number of years back private panning was still allowed without a licence, a guy last year had found a nugget the size of a fist soI had a quick dig about in the pebble and sand spit next to the jetty (just like every one else) but alas no gold for me so it looks like I'm still coming home in May!