Got the chance to Canyoning with some friends today! It was a scorcher of a day, so spending it in an ice cold river seemed like a pretty good option to us.
The photos of the canyon (deep narrow gorge, filled with waterfalls and drops) are on our friends waterproof camera, so we'll have to wait to get hold of them, but I'll briefly fill you in about the trip.
We got wetsuits etc on and walked a short way down through the woods to a small stream. This we follow to a narrowing, where the action started! To continue we had to make a smallish jump into a plunge pool. A bit of floating, scrambling and swimming followed. The sides of the gorge by now were very steep and it felt quite enclosed. After a while we found ourselves at the top of a chute. To continue onwards, as the sheer rock walls prevented any other way of escape, you had to lie in the flow which shot you down a three metre chute and then jetted you off a two or three metre high waterfall spout into a big plunge pool! As soon as you entered the flow you were off at lightening speed and I was bobbing up in the pool below before you I had time to remember to hold my breath!
Further down there was a big (5m) jump into what I would consider to be a pool that was 'questionably deep enough'! The locals were undeterred though and to my amazement, launched themselves off from the highest possible take offs. I spread my weight so as not to go too deep, but still made gentle contact with the river bottom! After various back flips (not by me!) and other jaw dropping stunts the finale came when one of the team jumped from a bridge which was high up above a very narrow part of the canyon. We'd just swam through the slot and it was very deep, but what was amazing was that from the bridge, he had to jump with pin point accuracy to fit through the gap of the gorge which was only a metre wide! Terrifying to watch really! Nutters these Queenstown extreme sports lot!
Having arrived safely back to the truck unscathed, we were then taken straight on our next adventure with Rob's friend Megan, who introduced us to her hobby of panning for gold! She also happened to be the national champion of such things and had been competing in 'The Rural Games' that morning.
After a bit of a history lesson about mining in the area, she set us to work with some pans and straight away Clare hit the jackpot! Well, sort of. She did find some genuine gold flakes, but not enough for us to retire on just yet. I dug out silt from the river bank and we took in turns panning. After an hour or so, we had a few flakes to take as souvenirs.
Rob also took us for a short walk up the Shotover canyon and while we were panning, a big team of rafts floated by and the famous jet boats razed upstream.
The neighbours were keen for a BBQ when we got home, so we joined them
(with our pizzas!) outside for some social munching, before crawling into Wendy utterly shattered!
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