Penny's First Day in New Zealand

My mom arrived in Queenstown today after almost 24 hours of traveling. Hooray! We knew she'd be a bit tired, maybe a little jet-lagged, but we knew we had to break her in in style. We picked her up this morning at the airport (5 minutes away) and gave her a little tour of town. No surprise she liked the gardens, and it was interesting to see her go through the same 'these plants look like the ones from home, but different' thing that we went through when we first got here. It's Saturday so we went to the crafts market, walked around town a bit, then split a couple of the popular "10 dollar thai" meals for lunch (every thai restaurant in town, and there are lot of them, have a $10 lunch menu). This being the adventure capital of the world and all, and her only having about 3 days here, we had to add some adrenaline to the schedule - if for no other reason than to keep her awake all day. I have been able to do a couple jet boat trips in the past week on famils, so I figured that would be a perfect first day activity. I even got a 'local's discount' for Steph and my mom (over 50% off) and they let me go again for free! Sweet! So if anybody comes to Queenstown anytime soon, do the Skipper's Canyon jetboat - it really is the best one. The tour takes you about an hour out of town to the upper Shotover River in, wait for it, the Skipper's Canyon. The drive is crazy, there's no other way to put it. It's literally carved out of the side of a mountain by gold miner's - the Shotover River is said to be the richest gold-producing river in the world. You drive along 100-meter cliffs with literally inches to spare. Steph was terrified. It was great.

view from stop along the way

do you see the gorilla?

The jetboat ride was fantastic. You go up to 50 mph over water that is sometimes no more than 3 inches deep. Plus you're dodging rocks so close you literally cannot believe you didn't hit it and doing 360 spins across the top of the water. Here's a video to give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

Skippers Canyon Jetboat NZ
Uploaded by nzjetboat. - Discover the latest sports and extreme videos.

If that didn't work click here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x83g9r_skippers-canyon-jetboat-nz_sport

look familiar? it's from Lord of the Rings - where the river floods and washes away the bad guys on horses

nice view of the canyon

Steph's throat had to be sore from all the screaming she did, but both her and my mom really loved it - though I'm not sure they'd want to do it again! We planned to drive up to the top of the Remarkables to watch the sunset, but everyone was a little tired by the time we got back, so tonight we just had dinner here and did some more planning for the rest of my mom's visit. Tomorrow we drive about 5 hours to Fox Glacier, which is on the west coast. It's supposed to be a nice drive with some great scenery along the way. We don't have anything else planned so we can take our time and stop wherever we'd like. Then the next day we have a half-day glacier hike planned - gonna be awesome! To see the rest of the photos from my mom's trip so far click here. Be back soon...