The ShotOver

Queenstown - tourist central.
Not my cuppa-tea really ...... far far too many people, too tourist based and much too expensive!!
However, in the poor towns defence, it is home to the ShotOver river - which makes up for all the touristy bullcrap we had to put up with:
We ran the "Gorge Section" of the river. Not the most demanding river I've done here, infact most of it was riffling grade 2 stuff (reminded me very much of the Ardech'e). However the sun was shining, it was a decent length and the scenery was next to none - which made it a very enjoyable run.
The only real action to report came in the last 1.5km's:- a few really nice grade 4 rapids, "mother-in-law", "jaws" and "the Germans" (the last Doni wasnt too pleased about).
The best part was a 100m-or-so tunnel through a cliff-face you had to paddle through! It was really weird (and quite scarey) to paddle rapids into the dark abyse.... the guidebook said to 'just keep your boat straight and aim for the blob of light at the end'. This was followed by a rocky slide/drop .... really nice but a little painful on the elbows!

The Fox

hey hey hey ........... im in Queenstown!

Finally, we've left Hoky! We headed south a few days back now - visiting the glaciers en ruite, ie Franz Joseph and The Fox.

Franz Joseph was cool but the Fox was awesome! We paddled the river from right under the glacier (not entirely sure how legal this was - but noone complained!). This was amazing. The river itself wasnt too challenging but the fact it was coming directly from a huge ice-structure added a whole new dimension:
1 - Being entirely ice-melt it was FREEZING!!; it actually stung to get water on the skin. Swimming was not really an option as even a capsize was potentially serious.
2 - Visibility was awful - ie - the water was a merky white-ish colour (rather than the traditional 'blue' that God usually goes with) this, unfortunatly, making the river hard to scout; lines were not always obvious and stoppers were hard to spot.
3 - Last, but certainly not least - Ice. Sooo, so much ice. It was crazy to be paddling down a river with these huge chunks of frozen water! At the top they were worst (biggest); big enough to make features of their own - eddies, pour-overs and the like. Further down the shank to the size of large footballs, then, towards the end, to about the size of a fist.
The trip was a total success with no problems. Doni was the only one to capsize. This really was the funniest thing ever. He rolled up with what must have been the worst ice-cream head in history! I've never heard so many German swear words!
It was absolutely fantastic, one of my favourite rivers - just due to the experience factor more than anything else.

Oh yeah, we're onto our THIRD car now; 'the Lunchbox' blew-up after only a couple of hundred km's ...... now we have a red 'Nissan ?Something?' - its pretty cool:- '92 and pretty damn quick!!!For the third time ..... $500, super! We've named it "the Red Barron" - due to its cool tough awesome-ness.

The Taipo

Wow. Just run the Taipo river (making it the fourth heli-trip I've done). It was a brilliant trip and probably the most continuous whitewater I've ever paddled.
The river was 30/40kms long, so we split it into a multi-day trip, stopping in a 'tramp'-hut halfway down. This was a new experience for all; having to carry all our own food, clothes and sleeping equiptment was fun but meant very heavy boats ........ and thus plenty of stern-squirting!
It was an early start (9.20) but the action started right from the get-in - giving us quite the wakeup! The first 6kms was pretty much a continuous bouldergarden with only small eddies to rest in - fantastic! After this the river opened up and the gradient lessoned giving us a little space to breathe; a couple more larger rapids existed in this section, two of which were "solid grade 5", which i portaged.
Day 2 of the Taipo was much easier - grade 3 the whole way down. It was beautiful, just as one would picture Kiwi rivers; super clear water, smooth stone and snow capped mountains in the background.
It was a fantastic trip, one of the best Ive done here.

Thats the good news........ the bad news is that the car has died
We travelled some seriously rough ground on the way to the get-in of the Hokitika/Whitcombe... and i mean rough ground, u'd need some sort of monster truck to get through there safely. And unfortunatly, although the car battled hard and put in a heroic effort, it bottomed out and is now as good as written off (sniff sniff).
Thus ... we have a new car. A Nissan Bluebird, again costing $500. Its an old banger, but hey, its cheap - it only needs to last three months anyway (touch wood).