White water rafting, River boarding & Christchurch!

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Sorry I haven’t updated the blog for a couple of days, but having so much on and there only one computer in the hostel I didn’t find time!

We are back in Christchurch now, the city that always sleeps! After a 7 hour bus Journey. we are now accustomed to these long bus journeys so they don’t bother as much now!

On Wednesday we woke up all feeling like a bag of shit after partying hard for St Patrick’s day, managing to polish of a bottle of Duty free vodka before we went out! We had to be at the bus for 12, and we woke up at 11.45, so legged it down the road and managed to get there with a minute to spair.

We got taken to the finish place got kitted up still feeling like a sack of shit and then set off to the put in point up river. To get there we had to go down a 107 year old road through the mountains, which was built by the Chinese for gold mining. This road was like something of a film, about 6 inches wide, sheer drops and bendy as hell. You can imagine after 30 minutes on this road how we felt!

We completed the rafting down the shotover river in about 2 hours. It was low water so the rapids where not as big as usual but we still got soaked and thrown out a few times! The water was freezing though, but crystal clear, and it was pretty cool seeing all the old gold mining gear washed down the river and left everywhere.

We managed to sober up before getting pissed again the following night, and again waking up late for river boarding!

Basically river boarding is going down white water rapids on a body board! By far this was the most dangerous and physically demanding of all the stuff we have down here in New Zealand!

After 5 minutes we where bloody knackered from being dunked underwater getting tossed about and loosing our boards! there was one particular bit called the "Man eater" Basically a big drop in the water due to huge stones, you had to head straight down the middle and go under the surging water, pretty scary at the time!

After the first 5km of rapids is calmed down and we flatend down stream, playing on the jet ski rock jump’s and water slides. But one thing is we all felt knackered after 1 run! The guides do it 3 times a day!

We have had a crazy week here in new Zealand, just a shame we haven’t had more time and money to see the rest of it as its amazing! The best day we all agreed was the first when we did 5 bungee jumps, but in all it was pretty crazy!

Back to coogee now to get a job, will write again soon!
xxx

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