extreme sports!

The weather has set in at Queenstown. Spring has sprung, which means cold, wet and cloudy with the occasional earth tremor (a new one for us!) 3 last night and 1 this morning!

We've just got back from Lake Wanaka (pronounced Wanaka), about 100km from Queenstown over the Crown range. Emma and I spent a couple of nights in a spa hotel, we hired some bikes and took on some of NZ's best downhill mountain bike trails at 'the plantation'. We ironed out the creases afterwards at the hotel with a spa and some excellent food and wine!!
(Nick)

The day we got back from Wanaka I was finally convinced to go white-water rafting by Nick and Dean (Manda's ex-boyfriend and raft-guide). To say that I was 'apprehensive' would be the understatement of the year! So Manda drove us to the raft site where we met Dean. We then went through a really thorough safety talk and got into a wetsuit, over jacket, life jacket and helmet (a fashionable combination)

The drive up Skippers Canyon in the mini bus (towing a trailer full of rafts) was heart-stopping. It is the only public highway in NZ that rental companies will not allow you to take their cars. The sheer drop off the road averaged about 100 meters. The 'road' was built over 100 years ago by the gold miners, and has been reconstructed from cow poo and river stones (great!!) and it was narrow, very narrow.

So, on the terrifying journey up we were reminded by the guides that the company take no responsibility for our safety, and that the Shot-over Canyon is the 2nd fastest river in NZ, and finally that rafting is considered a dangerous activity and there have been fatalities on the Shot-over in the past. Great.

As my only 2 options at this point were a) get in the raft or b) face the journey back in the mini-bus....... I thought I'd go for broke!

After more safety talks from Dean, we finally got in the water.

It was EXTREMELY cold.

The first small rapids were fine, we were taught some commands, such as:

'hold on' (which was not as easy as it sounds when you're wearing 18 layers and holding a huge paddle with freezing hands! )

and my favorite... 'jump in' which involved sliding off the side of the raft (where I had been balanced) into the middle and wedging myself in between the other rafters!! NOT jumping into the freezing, roaring white-water!

Things got a bit tricky when we reached the grade 4 rapid known as 'Mother'. (Rapids are graded 1-6, and if you are alive at the end, it was maximum 5)

We headed for a steep drop, which had at the bottom a wall off water. As the front of the raft ploughed into the rapids the water was waist deep and I couldn't see my feet. I could hear Dean, at the back, shouting 'paddle forwards if you can'.

I think my heart stopped when the water hit my face.

Luckily, 'Mother' was followed by 3 other similar rapids all within 2 minutes. After the initial shock of the freezing water and sheer terror of being fired at the canyon walls in a small rubber boat by very fast water.... it all went well.

I did really enjoy some parts of it, but I don't really enjoy being so scared that I thoguht I was going to pass out... so I'd recommend it, but I wouldn't do it again!!!

Rafting the Shotover River 15th Oct and Wanaka 13 to 15 Oct

arriving in New Zealand 8th Oct 2007

well...we managed to survive the intense heat of Bangkok...and now we're in the snow capped mountains of southern New Zealand!! Bangkok was amazing... Vicki and Mitch were the BEST hosts!! they looked after us so well and showed us some of the best things Bangkok has to offer... we managed to pack quite a lot into the 5 days that we were there.... river rides, tuc-tuc's , thai kick-boxing, massage and LOTS of excellent food!!!

we've put a couple of photo's on the blog but it took us over 2 hours to work out how to do it, so in a couple of months we'll have the hang of it, and we might actually get the right words next to the right pictures!!!

So...NZ...well....it's HUGE....Queenstown is surrounded by the Remarkable mountains and they really are...we were lucky enough to have them dusted with fresh snow the day before we arrived!! so they look absolutely beautiful.... we've done some walking and at the moment we're at a lovely spa hotel in Wanaka, just over the mountains..and we're planning on hiring mountain bikes later to explore !! we've also been up the mountains in a cable car and experienced the 'luge'..which is like a go-cart down a seriously steep drop!!!

we're also booked up for some white water rafting on monday!!! i've already whimped out once...so i think we'll have to do it this time!! i'm looking forward to seeing the canyon... but i'm still really scared!! we're off out and about with Manda next week, as she's got a couple of weeks off work. We're going to walk on the Fox glacier and go down to the beaches on the west coast...

We've got lots planned, and thats before we pick up the camper in Christchurch and get really off the beaten track to see the top of the South island, then the ferry over to the North island and we want to go the full length, from Wellington to the Bay of Islands at the most northerly point...(??? strange hemesphere thing) ....

Bangkok! 28 Sept to 5 Oct 2007

Our hosts for the week, Vicki and Mitch showed us around and we sampled lots of local delights... the floating market, tuc-tucs and some traditional Thai kick-boxing.








We wasted no time (as we didn't have a lot of it in Thailand) and took a tuc tuc to see the sights.