White Water Rafting the Shotover River

How to survive a raft flip

Two busloads of thrill-seekers get of the buses. The guides load four rafts into the water, leaving one on land for a safety demonstration – yah know, what to do in case the raft flips. Meanwhile, Lea from Germany is capturing all the moments to put together a video and pictures for rafters to pick up at the end of the trip. (By the way, you can thank the talented Lea Schuler-Beck for capturing most of the moments on this blog post).

We are then divided into rafts, meet our guides, and there’s nothing left to do but hop in and let the river take us!

Power to the paddles

Our guide is Sam from Australia. Before we get into any of the craziness and big rapids, we do some practice paddle commands. Sam is going to be shouting instructions to us to make sure we stay in the raft as best as possible. This is all in between going around the group for each person to “tell their story”. It’s a good way for us to relax a little, work as a team, and overall improve on our paddling skills.

All in all, it feels like we are just all having a casual conversation while someone shouts: “Forward paddle, team… And stop,” every so often.

Chaos at Red Rock

Our first obstacle, and test of our skills, is Red Rock, named after a bar in Queenstown that the rafting guides like to go to. The river gorge suddenly gets narrower, squeezing the water into some fierce rapids. As we approach, all we can think is: “Holy sh*t!” But we have never acted upon someone’s instructions so hard to get ourselves down there. We made it! Because we are the first raft through, we paddle to the side of the river to make sure everyone else gets through Ok… They don’t.

The next raft that comes through flips over straight away. Instructions from Sam, from the other guides, and from the safety kayak are being thrown everywhere. It feels a bit like chaos! We pull two people out of the river, while the others wash downstream with a safety kayaker chasing them.

The Queenstown Rafting Dream Team

The walk of shame

Man, the shock on the rafters’ faces! We can’t help but laugh at the craziness that just occurred but feel a bit bad for laughing. We hope Karma doesn’t come back to get us further down the river…

As the fallen rafters do the Walk of Shame along the rocky riverside, their guide loses the raft further down the river!

“What the hell is going on?!” Sam exclaims half laughing half concerned by the whole thing. Oh well, this is all part of white water rafting, ay?

Nailing it!

The rest of the rapid sections are obviously taken on like a pro for all the rafts after that incident. Next up is Rock Garden, a grade three rapid. Somehow, while Sam is giving the paddle commands, we can feel ourselves clenching on our way through the rapids hoping we make it all the way down still in the boat! Once we make it through, we have a resounding feeling of achievement, whooping and cheering and so forth! We do a paddle high-five!

Swimming in the Shotover river

Between rapids, Sam says, “The water’s deep, if you want to go for a…”

Robin is already in the water, floating along… Feeling the icy chill of the glacial water on his hands.

“Hold onto the rope!” Sam shouts as girl in our raft has dived in and has been left for dead upstream. She holds onto another raft, floats to the river banks, runs and jumps back into our raft. It is so ridiculous! We love it!