Queenstown has a lovely little town and reminds me of a skiing resort town. We stayed in a holiday park for three nights, near the river where you can book a ride on the best high speed boat thrill (supposedly)... The Shotover or do some white water rafting.

The following day Newton, James and I went to spend the afternoon on some rapids! We had to travel by mini bus on the old deathly mining road. One of the Kiwi instructors on board spent the whole 40 minute journey winding everybody up... 'if you look to your left, you will see a 12 roller drop... no need to worry, after doing it once, the driver isn't too happy to repeat the experience'. The road was about 3 metres wide in places.. no safety barriers and no reinforcement on weak patches. This Kiwi instructor opened the door.. And all you could see was a huge drop. No road. And the speed limit, if you dare manage it, is 100km p/h! That's Kiwi Land for you!

The rafting wasn't as good as we hoped... there was only two good sections of rapids... one was 300 metres long and the other was 170 metres long. We took a couple of hours or longer to get down the river. James got flushed by toilet. They call each small rapid a name, and the boat tipped up in Toilet. Newton went tumbling into James and the next minute james toppled out.. he wasn't expecting it and the look on his face was hilarious, he looked floundered! Newton then almost pulled him to pieces absolutely ragging him back into the boat.. hahaha. We got a couple of opportunities to get out of the raft and float down stream in our huge, over bearing life jackets and protective helmet. We also cruised about 200 metres through a pitch black tunnel cut through the mountain. Near the end, we had good views of the Shotover boat.. it didn't look that good to be honest. When we got back onto dry land we warmed up in the sauna and had a lovely piece of chocolate cake.. pile on the pounds! We thought tea this evening would be great... Shepards pie but with tinned beef... what a disaster! The beef tins had no meat in, it was just beef flavour with onions, and we also added our own onions so basically we had onion gravy with mash potato plonked on top! And all night, all we could smell was onion burps!

The next morning James and I sleepily made our way to do a canyon swing!! 60 metre freefall before you swing outwards for 200 metres. Reaching speeds of 150kms! Well, we got into the harnesses, and were attached together by one caribena for a tandem swing. We walked like Siamese twins to the edge... we both actually started to get nervous. We decided to fall backwards... So tiptoes on the edge facing inwards, the instructors told us to lean out and look at the camera on the right for a shot... that was bloody scary! The instructors kept winding us up because they were holding us as we leaned out to stop us dropping off the edge... god our stomachs were doing somersaults! They then pulled us back in after a nervy picture. They told us to both jump backwards to start the descent... and so hands clutching at each others harness behind each others back, we quickly jumped backwards... I screamed but James was screaming silence! The feeling in your stomach is unbearable but amazing... we plummeted down at an incredible speed... my legs akimbo and James' weight dragging me down quicker.. I was more or less on top of James. As the swing out eased we both couldn't stop smiling, James lost the ability to speak whilst I wouldn't shut up. Moments later the wire was being cranked up by the motor and we arrived back on the platform. James did a second swing at a cheaper rate... The Gimpboy... he was suspended upside down above the platform looking at the river and rocks below.. the instructors pulled out a pin and he dropped head first into the valley.. he said the rush was even more incredible than the first swing because you watch the rate at which you drop closer to the ground.

That afternoon, James and Newton hired some mountain bikes and went on a off road track, whilst Carry and I did a bit of retail torture in the town centre. The boys were back within 3 hours as James' groin was giving him agony, he puts that down to the climb we did up Roys Peak in Wanaka.. I did tell him to do some stretching, but does he listen!? That night we went for a few drinks in the town, and ended up at their form of a club, and had fun watching the so called dancers.

The next day we aimed to get up early for the long drive to the deserted Milford Sounds. But that didn't happen!