Willy’s Wild Weekend Day 3

This was the view from our apartment in Queenstown, New Zealand, for Willy’s bucks weekend. Amazing right, I couldn’t stop staring at this for the whole weekend. I was also really happy with this shot as I took it just as twilight was coming on using long exposure and feel like it came up really well.

After two nights of sleep deprivation and a lot of drinking I was in the need for a good sleep, unfortunately I didn’t get it. My room mate is one of the most impressive snorers I’ve ever met and after trying to ignore it for way too long and then hitting him with my pillow to no avail I eventually moved myself into the lounge room to sleep. Unfortunately this was at three am and we all had to get up at six am. I was a walking corpse for most of this day. We had to get up early because we had booked in a heli-rafting trip.

After meeting our guides in town we got driven a bit out of Queenstown to a lodge to get into some wetsuits, and then were driven over to the helicopter. The helicopter would take us down the river and into a gorge were we would then raft our way back down the river to the lodge. The helicopter ride was something else. Very different to being in a plane, and for me equally as scary. This wasn’t helped by the pilots decision to do a few wild manoeuvres while in the air that left most of the guys whooping in delight but left me feeling a bit nauseous. I wasn’t the only one however as Nick Boothman also left the helicopter feeling like he needed a good spew.

While our rafts were inflated we all watched the quickly running river coming straight for a glacier while standing around in one degree weather. This rafting was meant to be enjoyable? We were also about to go over level four rapids. For those of you who don’t know the degree of rapids they only go up to level five, which is usually left to the experts. We were far from experts but luckily we did have one in each raft. The six of us piled into a raft with our expert, Swisse (from Switzerland believe it or not), and before long we were all paddling away.

The rafting was intense, these rapids were not fooling around. While fighting down the urge to just hang on tight we all instead had to pay close attention to Swisses’ instructions and paddle exactly when and how he told us. On the first rapid the raft very almost flipped over. This was properly terrifying as it would have sent us all into the minus who-knows-what degree water mid rapid, to try and avoid hitting any part of our body on the many rocks that the river would quickly be whipping us by. They guides even started the trip by telling us all the horror stories of people who have done exactly that, and how they hurt themselves, of which there are many. However through our expert paddling skills and Swisses expert yelling skills we made it through with only one of our guys falling out. It was Nick Fleming and luckily he was fine, he fell out at a calm point when Swisse thought it would be fun to purposely ride our raft into a rather large rock.

The reward came afterwards however in the form of a sauna and a shower. We headed once more back into town for some lunch and some shopping, mostly to kill time before our next activity, a canyon swing. This swing was intense and one I flat out refused to do. It’s kind of like a massive bungee jump except at the end it catches you and swings you out, back and forth, over the canyon. Josh, Willy, and Nick Fleming were all crazy enough to give this a go, with Josh and Willy making it look easy. Nick Fleming, not so much, as he half crouched then rolled off the platform rather than the impressive series of flips he was attempting to do. But still he did it and that’s a lot more than I’ll ever be able to say for myself.

We had dinner at a really fantastic restaurant called flame where we all ate way too much meat, but it was a bucks weekend so I guess it’s kind of expected. For myself I had a giant set of ribs that I challenged myself to finish. I won the challenge but also lost as my stomach then hurt for the rest of the night.

After that it was back to the apartment and straight to bed, after a long weekend we were all ready for a good sleep.

- Damian