Broken Boat
Day 4 – Glenorchy to Queenstown
We awoke early to a bright sunny day. After some quick food and a brief shower, Tory and I met up with a bus, which would take us out to the nearby river for some jet boating. We had decided that jet boating up the river would be a fun experience and give us the opportunity to see some of the landscape. Upon boarding the boat and beginning the trip, I was immediately struck by the speed with which the craft traveled. My head was whipping around in all directions and I was wishing that I’d had the presence of mind to wear both a hat and pants. Aside from the speed of the boat, there initially seemed nothing unusual about jet boating. And yet from what I had seen from videos, I knew this would not continue. Soon we were whizzing within a few centimeters of quite solid logs and shoreline, and after about half an hour, the driver through us into a spin, utterly soaking the left side of Tory and I. As we continued up the river, the scenery changed. We were surrounded by more solid rock (and not gravel) and there were trees all about. We were approaching a point called Chinaman’s Bluff when all of the sudden, the motor stopped. It wouldn’t restart. We were drifting down stream towards the rocky embankment. At first I thought it was a ruse, or minor technical difficulty, but after the tour guide began to radio another boat, it became apparent that this was not part of the tour. Fortunately we got lodged on to a gravel bar before hitting the swifter current which would have thrown us into the rocky side of the river. After a few attempts to fix the engine, the driver resigned to the fact that the tour was over and we would have to catch a boat back to a drop-off point where we could then get a bus back to town. First of course, this meant we had to wade across a shallow section of the river to the gravel bar. The water was absolutely freezing, but I suppose one would expect that of glacier water. After catching the bus back and allowing time for all the other passengers to be brought back to the van, we returned to Glenorchy and received a full refund. I wasn’t the least disappointed, for while we had missed out on a couple hours of jet boating, now I had a novel experience. I wasn’t just someone who went jet boating in Queenstown, but I was someone whose boat broke down when he went jet boating in Queenstown. Tory didn’t share this enthusiasm, but undeterred, we journeyed in to Queenstown and set ourselves up in the YHA Hostel there. We walked to the northern part of town where we got a gondola up to the top of one of the summits above Queenstown. They offered luge, bungee jumping, and paragliding there, but we were content with just a view and a short walk. After the walk, we returned to ground level where we returned to the main area of Queenstown. After attending to some business on the Internet, we returned to the hostel. I took a nap, and when I awoke Tory and I went to get a bite to eat. We got a pizza and a few mugs of beer (it was happy hour after all), and then returned again to the hostel. I killed time by watching a little TV and chatting with a girl from the U.S. who had just been traveling in Australia. After about an hour, we decided to head back out to check out the Saturday nightlife in Queenstown. A guy named Matt, who was staying in the same dorm as us, came along. He had just come to New Zealand and was planning on working in Queenstown for a few months. He was from Minnesota but planned on staying in New Zealand for the next year. We went to three establishments for drinking. One had a private party and was otherwise dead. The next was classy and most people were eating. It was still early so I just assumed that the nightlife started much later. Our final stop actually had quite a few people. We stayed there until about 11pm at which point Matt got tired so we decided to head back. Feeling fairly inebriated off of the five handles of beer I had just had, I quickly fell asleep, despite snoring and other noises emerging from my neighbors in the dorm.
Tags: New Zealand, Queenstown, Travel
gregbilsland
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