New Zealand Jetboating The Shotover & Queenstown Hangout 02Jan23

We had a wild time jet boating the Shotover River @ Skippers Canyon. The trip began with a 50 min bus ride with some other guests on smallish bus on a one lane ultra-windy gravel road with 1000 ft drops on one side and 1000 foot high cliffs on the other. Our driver was great but it sure felt as we were gonna drive right off the road on many occasions. Whew. We thought we'd done the diciest thing of the trip, till we hopped in the jet-boat with Ben, a born and bred resident of Skippers, the tiny town an hour into the mountains near Queenstown. His parents built the company he now owns & runs and is a 20 year vet of running the Shotover. He was freakishly good at railing up and down the Shotover at 90km/hr- coming within inches of the canyon walls, rock outcroppings, and the rivers' edges. It was an absolute blast. None of the images or movies do justice to the ride or experience ~ spectacular, and a top event of our trip to NZ. We passed areas unreachable via other means; ones that were featured as the cliffs of Moordoor in Rings (which he admitted, he's been milking now for 20 years). Both the bus driver and Ben had well honed shtick.

It was like a theme park ride but so much cooler as there was a human at the wheel. After the ride we went to Ben's mom's old place high above the river. It was a very special spot.

The bus ride out of Skippers was a little more sane - maybe the experience already under the belt or maybe it was the fact that we were going up vs down. At the pass into Queenstown area again I did catch pics of the Cameron and Remarkables ski areas; the bus driver was also a ski bus driver (needed as the alpine resorts don't have parking to speak of ~ this is not your under-payed Breck town bus guy)... same freak skills with a bus are required to get to the lifts as to Skippers. I noted too the shuttled runs of mountain bikers down both sides of the pass on keen DH trails. Lot's of eMTBs too, to take  "shuttle" out of the equation. This is an adventure paradise.

What a hoot ~ but we were glad to be "down" ~ we stayed in Queenstown and searched out the best steak pie. The Kiwis do great baking and they earned lineage from the Brits on savory pies of course. We found the top rated bakery in QT and had their steak & pepper and steak & cheese pies ~ outstanding. Mine was accompanied by an Americano with and extra shot (Kiwis also like their coffee and a long black is just too small for me).

We hung in QT all day ~ ladies were out in bikinis; folks were lounging on the beach; adventurers were taking shark jets out or parachute riding behind ski boats; older teams were at the floating bar (so many so that we didn't want to barge in); we awaited the opening of Smiths, the newer but outstanding craft beer house in QT. Yet, we hiked the wharf and shoreline first... killing time :).

At Smiths we tasted the short rib burger with Cajun fries (seems QT does tavern fare well as it was delish) and scored some Wellington-borne hazy IPAs from Paddledog... very worthy offers. Smiths was cool and the vibe of ski town and alt summer adventurer spot was present.

Back @ the ranch I needed to memorialize the unusual Holiday Inn.

Outstanding day on the Shotover & Smiths... ecologically it's likely suspect, but whatever; Kiwis can do beer & pies for sure.