New Zealand Trip Day 11 - Post by Stuart

anuary 21st..... Best Monday InYears

21st January 2013 We awoke to a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and crisp mountain air nipping at our ears. We had a half hour to kill before heading out to the quad bike ride so we grabbed some breaky and walked along the bay.

It’s official, I’m allowed to buy us all quad bikes now, Jodi had a ball. They spent the first half an hour seeing how to split the groups up, so I didn’t see Jodi much while we were out there, she was in the “not so fast group” on a little automatic CanAm while I was on a little Suzuki.

Being a bike rider I kept stuffing up the brake, throttle and gears. A bike is 1 down 5 up, the quad is 5 up with neutral at the bottom. The left lever is the rear brake, not the clutch, there is a thumb throttle not a twist grip.....

After a quick “do’s and don’ts” we were off into the hills, creeks, gullies, cow paddocks and whatever else we could find on this 11,000acre property.

We were back in town on the bay for a drink by 1.30pm.

Mmmmm.... what to do next..... how about paragliding, you bet.

That’s me, I have video footage to put up later. Let me tell you that paragliding is a hoot, after a slight anxiety attack when I looked down and realised we were 2000’ above Queenstown I calmed down and just enjoyed the flight. We were back at the harbour about 4.00pm too early to head back to the motel .... what to do....how about a Jetboat ride across the lake and up the Shotover River, sounds fair to me.

Well, tomorrow we fly back home, Jodi doesn’t want too, I keep telling her I’m going to print a heap of photo’s and make a collage with the caption under it saying “this is why we work”. It’s been a huge 12 days looking back, we’ve ticked a number of things off the list but we’ll be back, guaranteed, this place is awesome.