Jetboating alone on the Dart river, and a corrective experience of the Luge

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Wednesday morning was a beautiful one, the blue sky returned, and I headed to Glenorchy to go on a Dart River trip on a jet boat. The booking office where I booked the trip made a mistake - I wanted to go with Dart River Safaris, and they booked me on Dart Wilderness, a different company. I was a bit angry when I discovered that in the morning but eventually it was so great, I was lucky again... First of all, I was the only one on the boat that morning, just me and Kirk my driver. Dart Wilderness definitely has a great marketing problem - at the end of my trip I even gave them some ideas why their brochure is not that good and how I think they should improve it. That was interesting! But back to the Dart River - I boarded the huge jet boat - a covered one so you don't suffer the cold wind when traveling so fast on the river. One of the things that jet boats are so special for is the ability to actually "fly" on the water when it is only 10cm deep. At this time of the year, many parts of the Dart are that shallow (it was funny to wear a life vest :-). When it gets to about 1m deep they can do their famous 360 degrees on-the-spot turns, that's a bit of thrill and fun! So we "floated" or even "flew" for about an hour up the river, going through pretty narrow parts where Kirk mastered the boat really impressively. He explained to me about the mountains around us, I saw the beginning of the Routeburn track (still an "open wound", I am so sorry I didn't so it in the summer), I saw some Lord of the Ring locations, and simply enjoyed the beautiful landscape - fresh snow from yesterday on the mountain tops around us, so much green, and blue sky, bluish water, what can a lady ask more for her vacation? We had a short walk on the way and then jet boated back to town. Back in Glenorchy I had a bbq lunch that was part of my trip, again on my own - I enjoyed lots of tomatoes and other vegetables. Would you imagine one kg of tomato costs here 9$, that is about 30 Shekels???? And then I had this marketing conversation with the nice lady that runs these tours, as I mentioned before. I found it really interesting because I have seen for myself that their trip is really good and yet I myself chose earlier the other company only based on comparing their brochures. Maybe I should go to marketing after all?
Originally I planed to drive to Wanaka after the tour, I even checked out from the hostel in the morning, but the day was so nice, my mood was so high, and I wanted to stay another night in Qtown. I was lucky to find the last available bed in the Bungi backpackers, in a nice 3-bed dorm. I decided to go up the gondola and try again one of my biggest disappointments when I was here in the summer - the luge. When I was here I found it so much "not-fun" that I even wrote a post called "disappointment of the luge" (http://www.travelblog.org/Australasia/New-Zealand/South-Island/Otago/Queenstown/blog-4587.html). But apparently I did a major mistake going only for one ride. In the first ride you're still a bit unsecured. So this time I bought a ticket for 5 rides in advance. The first wasn't so good, the second was better, and then I moved to the faster lane, the steeper track, and I had soooo much fun. That was so great - a real corrective experience... I'm glad I went back to NZ..

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Photos

End of the road
This is too rocky even for my jet boat