Queenstown again

When we got back to Queenstown I finally got myself back into a boat again and ran the Dog Leg section of the Kawarau River with the others. It’s a great run, with an easy enough shuttle, and a fantastic couple of big water rapids at the end. I started off following Sean down through the first one, but quickly decided to make my own way down after coming over a wave and seeing him heading straight for one of the crashing waves, just for the fun of it, and capsizing! I had a great run down it though, taking a more sensible route!

After that run, Sean and I got on the road again heading towards Mount Cook. However, on the drive from the river towards Queenstown we decided the groaning from our brakes could be ignored no longer and had to be fixed. So, we booked the van into a garage and stayed in Frankton again that night. Frankton is just beside Queenstown and seems to be the more practical town, complete with supermarkets and other such shops. The campsite we were in was by the lake and overlooked by the Remarkables, an amazing mountain range that has a very surreal look. It felt like a giant cardboard cut out of mountains to me, but I was assured that they are real and are great for skiing in winter.

The next day we got up bright and early and got the van to the garage. By the time it was fixed I’d woken up enough to wish Sean a happy birthday. We got in touch with Alan, Aisling, Swede and Alaska as we figured they hadn’t moved from the get out of the Dog Leg since we finished the river the day before! There is a nice quiet free camping ground there with a long drop toilet and a ring of stones for your campfire. We found them there and decided to have another run on the Dog Leg, which again was great craic. We spent a good bit of time playing on a wave half way down the river too, which mainly involved rolling practise for me!

After that run, the boys decided they’d like to run the Citroen rapid, a bit further down stream so off we went. Aisling and I did the shuttle and waited patiently for them to arrive back. And waited some more. And then thought that if they didn’t arrive back by 8pm we’d start to worry quite a bit… Finally the Swede came running towards us from up the road. They’d completely missed the take out and nearly run another rapid, Retrospect, further down. Thankfully they made the last eddy before it and realised their mistake before running it! There’s more detail of the fun they had paddling back upstream and then beating their way through 50m of bush for an hour to get out to the road on Sean’s blog if you want to take a look. Anyway, Swede, Aisling and I hopped into the vehicles and started driving down to where the others were waiting. On the way I met a pretty nice looking Porsche with hands coming out the windows flagging me down. I was a bit confused but pulled in anyway and out hopped Sean with the biggest grin possible on his face, delighted with getting a spin in a Porsche and completely amazed that a Porsche owner had given him a lift while in his smelly wet paddling gear!

We packed up pretty quickly and made our plan for the evening, agreeing to stay at the Dog Leg get out. First, we drove the van back to the get on for Citroen and filled it up with wood that was lying around there as we’d used up most of the wood lying around at the Dog Leg already on our campfires. I had also got my first lesson in back woods cooking when we stayed there before when Sean and I cooked steak, spuds and veg in tinfoil on the fire. A new experience for me! Having gathered wood, we car pooled into Queenstown and got a good feed at Fergburger, a brilliant burger joint that is well worth the visit. Their burgers are heavy to lift there’s so much food in them! We followed that up by getting icecream in Lick a few doors up the road. They make their own icecream, putting out a different selection every day, and it is delicious! To finish the day off we went back to the campground and lit ourselves a campfire. Nice!