You could tell that the guides really were into this sort of thing. The personalities reminded me most of the super dedicated snowboarders (the kind who essentially live on the mountain in hopes of landing a sponsorship deal with some gear manufacturer). The guy who was demonstrating how to put on the wetsuit was pretty funny and definitely made the process more enjoyable.
So, once I had my wetsuit on, I made my way to another van to make the trip up to the drop-in point. I think that van ride may have been (probably without a doubt) the scariest vehicle ride I have ever been on. First, the guides started by going over more safety instructions including telling us that people do dislocate shoulders, break fingers, or (in rare cases) die doing this. After that uplifting message, the guides tried to lighten things up a bit by asking where we were from. I was the only American in the group of probably 50 or so. Most were either European or Australian. In any case, the guides did a good job of making fun of everyone’s country for some stereotypical reason. In my case, I was told that I would feel right at home with the liability waiver sheet – haha.
As the safety discussion continued, we got to the really scary part. In order to get to the drop-in point, the van had to navigate a dirt road that literally wound its way along the side of a mountain. In many places there was barely enough room for one vehicle. I was, perhaps unfortunately, seated on the cliff side of the van and could see very clearly just how close we were to going over the edge (of course, there was absolutely no guard-rail to speak of… We were several hundred meters above the bottom of the valley. Though I have no problem riding in small airplanes, I am really pretty scared of heights when it comes to things like this (cliffs, railings over atriums, even the arch in St. Louis was difficult for me). At one point, I noticed just how hard I was gripping the seat back in front of me… The views were absolutely spectacular (this truly was the middle of nowhere). I would have loved to walk this road (probably hugging the side of the mountain) but being in the van with the driver who was talking the whole time was not the most comforting experience I’ve ever had.
When we finally arrived at the drop-in point, they told us that we could go back and get a refund if we were having second thoughts about going rafting (after the safety talk). However, going back would mean another trip on the narrow windy less than a foot away from certain death road! I wasn’t having second thoughts about rafting, but I chuckled to myself thinking that there was no way in hell I was going back on that road… At least with the rapids (and associated rocks, currents, etc.), I would feel like I would have a better than average shot at saving myself without injury. That road up in the mountains didn’t afford even close to the same level of confidence.
So, we were paired off into our 7 person teams (6 rafters with a guide). Ryan, our guide, was a pretty cool dude from Canada. He told us where to sit in the raft and then we went out to practice for a while before heading off down the river. The whole thing was pretty straightforward. All that we had to do was to listen to Ryan and follow his commands (he took care of steering the raft). It was like a kind of more serious game of ‘Simon Says’. Aside from the usual commands of forward and backward – corresponding to paddling – we also had commands for shifting our weight in the boat, and taking cover (i.e. holding on). We were probably helped quite a bit by the fact that all 7 of us were native English speakers (Ryan was from Canada, 4 were from Australia, 1 was from the UK, and me). Ryan was telling us that he has had a lot of trouble in the past with folks who have trouble with the English commands.
We did well navigating the Shotover River (which gets to Class 5 at some points). It was an awesome experience! Getting splashed and thrown about was great and the challenge of working our way through the rapids was a lot of fun! I almost fell out of the raft once, but was able to pull myself back in before I fell out. I really enjoyed the sense of teamwork that came about. There were 2 couples on our raft, but other than that, none of us knew each other beforehand. However, there was definitely a sense of ‘we’re all in this together’ out on the river. At one point, my partner (sitting next to me) Jenny started to fall out of the boat as we were shifting weight to her side. I was able to grab her lifejacket and pull her back into the raft before she completely fell out. A similar incident happened in Jason and Jennifer’s row.
We made it the whole way down the river without having anyone fall out of our raft (and we didn’t capsize our raft either). At some of the calm points on the river, we were allowed to get out of the raft and swim around a bit. The scenery was great and it was a lot of fun to get in the water and just float down the river with the raft. The water was absolutely freezing, but with the wet suit, this only affected your hands and head (thus why I didn’t put my head under water). The water itself comes straight from a glacier, so it is freezing cold year round.
The whole river is in essentially a canyon and the scenery was great for the whole trip. Along the way we saw several wild goats and a few sheep. I learned that sheep outnumber people in New Zealand by slightly more than 10 to 1. Also, the wild goats are seen as a major pain and so hunting is allowed (and perhaps even encouraged) year round. All of this stems from the fact that the only native New Zealand species are fish and birds. So, all of these other animals have been introduced over the years and they exist without natural predators. While this is great for the sheep industry, it means that the goat and possum populations can get out of control. Apparently, there was a move to kill off all of the goats several years ago, but they didn’t get all of them and the goat population is back in full force now.
So, even with Class 5 rapids, my first whitewater rafting experience was a huge success and so much fun!! I would definitely do that again and encourage people to do it as well. As long as you go somewhere that has good guides, the chance of injury should be pretty low even on very intense rapids. It is interesting to note (along these lines) that the U.S. apparently lags behind the rest of the world in whitewater rafting safety. Ryan’s take on this is that there are almost no American guides who work in other parts of the world and, likewise, foreign guides don’t get hired in America because it is so hard to get a visa to work in the U.S. As a result, there is a lot of cross-talk between countries that offer whitewater rafting (most of these guides work in New Zealand and Australia in the southern hemisphere summer and then go up to Canada or Europe to work during the northern hemisphere summer). Apparently, there are still places in the U.S. that don’t provide helmets to riders and, at least in Ryan’s opinion, the guides aren’t as well versed because they haven’t worked in other parts of the world the way that guides in other countries do. It was an interesting perspective and I can see why it would probably be true. Nonetheless, I had a great experience (even with the crazy road trip to get there)!
After the rafting trip, I came back to Queenstown to watch the first half of the Super Bowl while eating lunch at a pub. It was certainly different to be watching the Super Bowl over lunch. There were only 3 people at the bar watching the game (me and another couple). It was interesting to see the game from another country. The commentary was definitely different. The international broadcast (I believe sponsored by the NFL Network) had commentary that focused far more on explaining the game to people who probably aren’t so familiar with American football. In this way, I really missed seeing the game back home. This was the first thing I have watched on TV since I left the U.S. I actually enjoyed seeing the commercials (they weren’t the good U.S. Super Bowl commercials). Rather, they were New Zealand commercials and it was interesting to see what was on. There were a lot of public service announcements and several commercials promoting the Olympics and the New Zealand Olympic team. That definitely struck me as being something different about New Zealand. Support for the Olympics and advertising were very prevalent. I have not seen the same in Melbourne and I would imagine that nothing has really changed in the U.S. It seemed like the Kiwi’s (folks from New Zealand) are very proud of their Olympic team. They had a special ‘long commercial’ where they may have gone through the names and faces of everyone who will be competing for New Zealand (certainly this would never be possible in the U.S. – nor would most Americans really care). I thought it was really cool to see the level of support there and I wish that the U.S. would show more support for non-major sports…
I left the pub at halftime and returned to my room to watch the second half. I was completely exhausted at this point. The past few days have just been jam packed with exciting things (and waking up early). I ended up falling asleep somewhere during the third quarter and woke up with about a minute to go in the game!
After the game, I took a trip up the Skyline Gondola to an overlook area. Here, you could get really great views of the town and surrounding area. They also have a restaurant and gift shop as well as some other fun things like street luge courses. It was nice to get some good photos and the view was great. You could also watch people bungy jumping and that was a lot of fun too (the watching part was okay, but listening to people screaming was pretty funny).
After returning to the town, I started scouting for a place to grab dinner. 
For whatever reason, I really felt like having pizza. I came across Winnie’s Pizza and decided to give it a try. The restaurant and bar were upstairs and they had a deck that looked out over the Queenstown Mall (essentially a pedestrian street lined with shops and restaurants). I had their Moroccan Lamb Pizza and I think it may very well have been the best pizza I’ve ever had. The crust was basically perfect and the combination of toppings was just excellent. The lamb pieces were seasoned with some (presumably) Moroccan spices and the pizza also had tomato, cucumber, onion, cheese, and mint yogurt on it. The flavor combination worked perfectly and I was a bit sad that I hadn’t ordered a medium pizza.
After dinner, I went for a walk along the lakefront. After leaving the downtown area, the lakefront became even more peaceful and scenic. Because the lake is so big, and the whole area tends to be a bit windy, the lake develops small waves. It was really nice to have the sound of waves crashing in the backdrop of another amazing New Zealand sunset. I spent a fair amount of time wandering along the edge of the lake – trying to enjoy as much of the sunset as I possibly could. There were a few other people out, but it was a very peaceful environment and people stayed relatively far apart from each other which made the experience more personal. 
A few people had their dogs with them and that made me think about how animals perceive nature. I really wonder if animals have a sense of the majestic beauty that a place like Queenstown offers. I like to think that somehow they do know, but I think it is interesting to think about how a dog (or other animal) might look at a stunning sunset or a majestic mountain range. When I was out on the horses yesterday, you could feel that the horse I was riding (in the morning) just wanted to take off and go. It makes me wonder whether the horse could see the spectacular valley and want to just run free (in the same way that I wanted to just take off on that horse and keep going). Or whether the horse just knows that they get to run out here and the place is familiar, so the horse just wanted to go because it was expected from previous experience. It made me think of the times when we would take Maggie out to the barn where Michelle used to work. Out there she could run through all the fields and be free to roam. It always seemed like she knew that there was something special about being there. But I still find myself wondering (and I can’t think there is a concrete answer) about it…
My thoughts drifted to many things while watching the sunset from along the lake. I could think of several songs to set to be the soundtrack for that moment and that experience, but the song ‘Run Free’ by Hans Zimmer from the ‘Spirit’ soundtrack came to mind right away (particularly about 2 minutes and 10 seconds into the song). I didn’t want the sun to actually set, but eventually it got really dark and I decided to head back to the town. I walked around town for a bit and came across the pub crawl that the backpacker hotels organize. I thought about joining in for a bit, but I was so crazy tired that I just wanted to go sleep. I also will need to get up early tomorrow morning, so I think that was probably a good decision!
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