This next day in New Zealand was hands down my favorite of the trip. The first experience of the day was the famous Shotover Jet. As a kid growing up we had a ski movie that I would watch every time the first snow of the season came, and about 20 times after that. It was a Warren Miller film from the mid 80's titled Steep and Deep. One of the segments featured skiing in New Zealand and included a few minutes of the Shotover Jet. Having seen this countless times as a kid I was really looking forward to doing this even as soon as I found out I would be studying in Australia. They gave us some raincoats and life jackets and then it was on the boat. I was fortunate enough to get a seat at the end of the row and really got to experience the river up close and personal. The Shotover River is a very narrow river that has chiseled its way deep through the rocks. The river also opens up to some pretty wide spots with nice views, but the catch with these wider areas is that they are quite shallow. No worries though, the little red boats can operate in just 4 inches of water. They're powered by twin jets putting out 8,000 lieters of water a second taking the boat to 85km/hr. Sure many other boats go faster but man going 85km/hr with walls of rock about two inchs away not exaggerating) from the boat you feel like you're going 200km/hr. The ride was absolutely exhilarating and surpassed all my childhood expectations! 
About 20 steps away from there we hopped into some wet suites to get ready for white water rafting. Then we hopped into a bus and got dropped of on the side of a mountain.... then a helicopter came and picked us up! and that was just awesome!!! I did some quick math and realized if we waited to the end of the groups we would have a few less people in our helicopter meaning better views for us so we hung back until the end. When we got in the helicopter the pilot took off and told us we were in for a treat because we had less weight due to less people and from burning off flue from the other trips before us. It was amazing! flying around the mountains, criss crossing the river, and flying over the occasional mountain bikers. The pilot took us into zero gravity (or pretty dam near zero gravity) about 4 times and did some killer bank turns that drove you deep into your seats. The flights was pretty disorientating with all the crazy turns and no flat line of sight but it was perfect! 
My day was more than made with the Shotover Jet and the Heli ride all alone or hell just from being in New Zealand but there was still white water rafting left to do! So we rafted up and headed down the Shotover River. The water was so nice and cold and once again it was safe to drink so were just gobbling it up left and right. The rapids weren't as crazy as I was hoping for but that was ok. In the quite stretches of the river we would jump out of the boats and try and pull each other in, it was pretty entertaining. The final stretch of the river was really neat because it had been diverted into a cave by a few Australia blokes back in the day. This meant we got to do some black water rafting and to make it even better exciting the cave let out into the best stretch of rapids the whole day. The rafting ended exactly where the Shotover Jets were earlier in the day so it was really neat having the jet boats zip around us. We loaded up the boats and headed back to return the wetsuits. The day was wrapped up by a nice sauna at the rafting headquarters.
- Evan
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