They offer two booking options for these boats, one is a hands on cruise through the bay, the other is a hands on race against another boat. Who doesn’t like a little friendly competition?
WE WILL CRUSH YOU!!!
Once we hoisted our main sail, it was ON!
Oh snap! The competition is gaining on is! Deploy the spinnaker on the double!
Now we’re cookin!
Blazing through the bay with the wind in our hair.
There’s no looking back now!
Oh wait! Look back! It’s the harbor patrol! We’re busted! Breaking maritime speed limits I presume?
So fast that even our own captain got nauseous!
OK, I cannot tell a lie. Actually I can, I just did. Everything you just read was made up. Fact is, we motored out to the bay and there wasn’t a single gust of wind. I don’t know a lot about sailing, but I do know that wind is a requirement, or as the captain put it “It’s like playing tennis without a tennis ball.” We sat there, stationary for a good 30 minutes waiting for a knot or two. It was all for naught. Not a single breeze came our way.
Speaking of tennis, apparently there is a tournament in town.
I really wish we could make it, but we’ll be off to Chile by then! Drats!
We flew into Auckland on the Northern Island the other day, and it’s pretty much the polar opposite of Queenstown. While Queenstownhas a population of about 13,000, Auckland has almost half of the entire population of the country of New Zealand at 2 million heads. Queenstown is rivers, lakes, mountains and trees. Auckland is buildings, bulldozers and cranes.
Oh, and volcanos! Lots and lots of volcanos. Approximately 50 volcanic vents in and around Auckland take the form of lakes, lagoons, islands, depressions and cones, such as this one at Mt. Eden…
BTW, that’s the Auckland city skyline in the background.
And here’s the skyline of Aucklands suburbs.
And here’s a bovine-line…
…and a navigation line for us to find our way back home.
I was bummed when we left Japan and am also bummed about leaving Queenstown. It’s truly one of the highlights from the last 6 months. I spent the final day today just trying to take it all in one last time. How can you have any complaints about a place with views like this in your back yard?
Or as a backdrop for a rugby match?
I mean come on, they even have a Frisbee Golf course…
With only a couple days left here in Queenstown, we’re trying to pack in as many exhilarating experiences as possible! And the uber-popular Shotover Jet is uber-exhilarating! It’s probably one of the most advertised adventure sports here, and from a business POV probably one of the most successful. The name comes from the fact that this particular company is the only one permitted to operate in the Shotover River Canyons.
And with good reason, as these canyons are really narrow! You can barely fit one of these boats through the rock walls…
…let alone two or more.
The trip starts in Queenstown where a bus takes you 10 minutes up the road and over the river…
Then you grab a smock to keep you dry and life jacket to keep you… well, alive I guess.
And then you pile into the 500 horsepower boat. These custom designed boats can travel at speeds of up to 85kmph in as little as 10 centimeters of water! Not only that, but with the twin-engines thrusting 800 liters of water a second out the back, these boats can whip around in a full 360 degrees! And whip we did! Whipping through the canyon at break neck speeds just inches from the rock walls.
And when we’d reach a clearing, the captain would give the hand signal for a 360, so you hold on tight and WOOOSH! He spins the boat in one full rotation. Sometimes it actually felt like the captain was trying to scare the crap out of us! Sheesh! The nerve of the guy! He would steer the boat directly at a giant rock and then just seconds before impact he’d whip the steering wheel and the boat would drift sideways past the obstacle, missing it only by a matter if centimeters! The guy was clearly insane! But at least he was trained to be insane! Only 10 people on the entire planet are licensed to be this insane. Each pilot has to go through a minimum of 120 hours of insanity training before taking any customers. It’s just so much more comforting knowing you’re putting your life in the hands of a highly trained insane person!
I took a video of the experience, but don’t currently have the bandwidth to upload it, so here’s another persons video so you can get the full experience of the insanity:
Looks like today we will FINALLY catch a break with the weather. We got the call this morning that the sky was clear over Milford Sound, which is apparently a rare occurrence seeing as they average about 28 inches of rainfall during the month of January! So with the good news about the clear skies, we made our way back to the airport for yet another altitude based adventure. Right next door to the hangar where we took off in a helicopter a few days prior…
…was the hangar for Milford Air, and the home of our little 5-passenger Cessna 206. This high-winged plan is basically the big brother of the 152 model that I trained on and let me tell ya, it felt great to get back behind the yoke of a plane again!
God I missed that feeling! There’s just something really comforting knowing that if for some reason the pilot passed out, I’d know exactly how to put the plane on the ground safely. Only problem is… there wasn’t exactly a plethora of good emergency landing spots! Once you leave Queenstown, your options to ditch are either in the water…
…or into the side of a jagged mountain…
…because I don’t think gliding it into a glacier is recommended by the FAA.
The flight there was just stunning. One photo after the next, after the next, after the next. I’m actually glad I didn’t have to land the plane because I would have been far too busy operating the camera to be distracted with air speed, ailerons and rudders.
After about 25 minutes of weaving through mountain peaks and ducking in and out of clouds…
…we arrived at the mouth of Milford Sound.
Which we then followed inland…
…towards the small airstrip at the end…
where the pilot set her down.
We then walked a few meters along the coast line through the rain forest…
…to the ferry terminal, where we hopped on a boat to take a cruise through the bay…
The pictures really don’t do it justice. You just HAVE to go there and see it yourself. It’s just magical.
With waterfalls…
…and wildlife…
…throughout the glacier carved fjord.
It’s safe to say that New Zealand is the most beautiful place I’ve seen on this entire trip. It’s picture perfect from both the land, sea and air.
