Jetboat Ride in Queenstown New Zealand

2025 By justmovingaround in Lifestyle, NEW ZEALAND Tags: jetboat ride, New Zealand, Queenstown, Shotover Jet

A quiet day in Queenstown turned into something a bit more exciting than planned – a quick trip up Bob’s Peak, a last-minute jetboat ride, and a good dose of fresh air (and cold spray) that we didn’t know we needed.

This post is a little out of the ordinary – and no, it’s not some half-hearted filler dredged up from the archive. The truth is, I’d completely forgotten it happened. Only recently, while scrolling through the photo library I keep specifically for this blog, I stumbled across a few pictures – and one video – that brought it all back.

Our trip to New Zealand several years ago didn’t unfold quite as planned. The idea had been to explore and discover – but then we picked up some sort of virus, and for a few days our focus shifted from scenery to searching for doctors and chemists.

By the time we reached Queenstown – often described as the adventure capital of the world – we still weren’t feeling our best. You arrive in this global hub of outdoor thrills, and you haven’t got the energy to enjoy any of it. Queenstown offers everything: bungee jumping, paragliding, rafting, canyoning, climbing, heli-skiing, mountain biking, off-road tours, skydiving, and jetboating – not to mention more relaxed pleasures like lake cruises, vineyard visits, alpine trails, and scenic helicopter flights.

That day, a few from our group opted for a quiet one: resting on benches, sipping coffee, just trying to feel better again. But two others still in relatively good shape had different plans. How about a jetboat ride through a canyon? It sounded intense. I wasn’t sure I was quite up to it, but I also didn’t want to spend yet another day watching life happen from the sidelines. So I said yes. We headed to one of the outdoor adventure centres in town and bought tickets. The selection of experiences was enormous – all well-organised, with many running on short notice. We were told to meet back in two hours, at which point a bus would take us to the jetboat launch site.

With time to kill, we decided to ride the Skyline Queenstown gondola up to Bob’s Peak. Technically, the summit is called Brecon Street Hill, but everyone – locals and tourists alike – calls it Bob’s Peak. It was named after a 19th-century settler or shepherd, possibly a logger, known simply as Bob, who lived and worked in the hills around Queenstown. At the top, it was bustling – especially near the viewing platform – so I didn’t take any photos there. But stepping just a little aside, I managed to capture the kind of views that make you pause. The mountains surrounding Queenstown looked almost otherworldly – jagged, pale, and strange, as if borrowed from a lunar surface.

Queenstown New Zealand | Queenstown Nouvelle-Zélande | Queenstown Neuseeland | Queenstown Nueva Zelanda | Queenstown Nowa Zelandia | クイーンズタウンニュージーランド | 퀸스타운 뉴질랜드 | 皇后镇新西兰

Photos taken from Bob’s Peak, plus one shot captured a bit earlier from a viewing platform several kilometres before reaching Queenstown.

From the gondola, and again at the summit, we spotted people bungee jumping – flinging themselves off a platform built right into the hillside. What I didn’t realise at the time is that bungee jumping was actually invented here in Queenstown. The first commercial jump took place in 1988, from the Kawarau Bridge, not far from town. It was AJ Hackett, whose company still runs jumps from that bridge – and also from the Ledge Bungy, the one we saw at the top of Bob’s Peak. Unlike the classic arc of the bridge jump, this version offers a straight vertical drop over the rooftops of Queenstown itself. Watching it from the calm interior of the gondola felt oddly surreal – a strange contrast between gentle sightseeing and pure, free-fall adrenaline. There were mountain bikers, too – lots of them. The slope is criss-crossed with purpose-built downhill trails, and the infrastructure is clearly made for it. Between the jumpers, the cyclists, and the hikers, the whole peak had a certain brilliant restlessness to it – the sense that something is always in motion.

We returned to town in time for the bus, which took us out to the Shotover River canyon – the starting point for our jetboat ride. The jetboat ride we took was operated by Shotover Jet. The company has been running since 1965 and is the only operator licensed to navigate the narrow Shotover River canyons, thanks to a special government act passed in 1987. Today, it’s owned by Ngāi Tahu Tourism, representing the local Māori iwi who have a deep ancestral connection to the river, known traditionally as Kimiākau.

Photos I took just before we boarded the jetboat – shots of the river ahead and of the group that set off before us.

Everything was handled with efficiency: a quick safety briefing, clear instructions (Hold on tight, no filming during the ride), lockers for personal items, life jackets, waterproof spray jackets – and then we were off. The engines roared to life and suddenly we were flying through a narrow gorge at terrifying speed – skimming past rocks, whipping around corners, doing 360-degree spins that made us shout and laugh. The ride lasted about 25 minutes, but the rush of it stayed with me much longer. It was sharp, loud, cold, and absolutely brilliant – the sort of experience that jolts you fully back into the present, especially when you’ve been feeling a bit foggy. We couldn’t film during the ride, but cameras were mounted on the boat, and I ended up with a video, the one I rediscovered recently (watch below). You can see us grinning, laughing and clearly having the time of our lives.

A short video made by the jetboat organisers – the one in the hood is me.

Looking back, it was the perfect reminder that travel isn’t just about ticking off sights – it’s also about saying yes to the spontaneous, the strange, and the serendipitous. Even on a day that began with low energy and no real plan, we wound up doing something utterly unforgettable. That blast of icy air, the slap of water on our faces, the way my stomach dropped and rose again – it was exactly what I didn’t know I needed.

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Milford Sound. Cook Missed It Twice

2020 By justmovingaround in History, NEW ZEALAND Tags: discoveries, historic figure, Milford Sound, New Zealand

During the great age of exploration, European navigators searched the southern oceans for unknown lands. Among them was James Cook, who became the first to chart New Zealand’s coastline in detail. Yet despite the precision of his voyage, he missed one of the region’s most dramatic features – the hidden fjord of Milford Sound. Why? The answer lies in optical illusion, cautious seamanship, and a landscape designed to deceive even the most skilled explorers.

Imagine sailing through unfamiliar waters, tasked with discovering lands no one from your world has ever seen. The coastline stretches endlessly ahead – sharp ridges rising steeply from the sea, blanketed in deep green forests, their flanks lost in mist. The mountains are beautiful, almost unreal, but there’s little comfort in beauty when danger may lie just below the surface. We keep our course at a safe distance. The coast is rocky, the sea restless, and the maps – if they exist – are vague at best. One submerged reef or a sudden gust of wind could end the voyage in a moment. So we watch from afar, searching for a bay or inlet that offers safe anchorage, somewhere we might land, chart, explore. What we don’t see – what none of us see – is the narrow gap in the cliffs we’ve just passed. Hidden in shadow, its entrance veiled by the overlapping ridges, it doesn’t look like a passage at all. But it is. Just beyond that curve, a deep fjord cuts nearly 14 kilometers inland – a vast, sheltered channel that no European has ever set eyes upon. We sail on, unaware. A discovery missed not by ignorance or incompetence, but by caution, distance, and the sheer trickery of the landscape. And I can’t help but wonder – had we turned in, had we looked more closely – what might we have found?

During the Age of Discovery – spanning roughly from the 15th to the 18th century – European powers – chiefly Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France and Great Britain – competed fiercely for access to new lands, trade routes and untapped wealth. Oceans, once seen as vast and perilous barriers, began to be viewed instead as highways leading to uncharted territories. It was in this context that expeditions turned their attention to the southern part of the globe – an area long believed to conceal a massive landmass balancing the known continents of the Northern Hemisphere. This hypothetical continent was referred to as Terra Australis Incognita – the unknown southern land.

In 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Tasman, sailing under the commission of the Dutch East India Company, set off from Indonesia on a voyage southeast in search of this fabled continent. During the journey, he became the first European to reach the coasts of what is now Tasmania, and shortly after, New Zealand. However, Tasman had no clear understanding of the scale or geographic nature of what he had found. He did not fully explore the islands – instead, he skirted part of the coastline and recorded an encounter with the indigenous Māori, which he perceived as hostile. This encounter discouraged further exploration and prompted a swift departure. He also did not give New Zealand its modern name – that came later, from Dutch cartographers.

Abel Tasman (1603–1659) was a Dutch seafarer and explorer working for the Dutch East India Company during the height of the Netherlands’ maritime expansion. He was the first European to reach the coasts of Tasmania, New Zealand and parts of the South Pacific – including Tonga and Fiji. Tasman’s voyages were driven largely by commercial and strategic goals rather than scientific inquiry. Though he charted important new territory, he rarely went ashore or engaged deeply with local populations. His cautious approach and limited interaction meant that his discoveries were often only partial – but they marked a turning point in European knowledge of the southern oceans.

More than a century later, in 1768, James Cook, a British naval officer and skilled cartographer, embarked on a new expedition to the southern seas. His mission was both scientific and strategic. The official objective was to observe the transit of Venus from the island of Tahiti – a rare astronomical event that would help scientists calculate the distance between the Earth and the Sun with greater precision. At the same time, Cook had secret orders to explore unknown territories in the South Pacific that might serve as future British colonies. Like the Dutch before them, the British hoped to discover a vast southern continent – possibly rich in resources or located in a strategically advantageous position relative to Asia.

James Cook (1728–1779) was a British naval officer, cartographer and explorer whose voyages redefined European understanding of the Pacific. Over three expeditions, he charted the coastlines of New Zealand, Australia and numerous Pacific islands with remarkable accuracy. Unlike many of his predecessors, Cook’s missions combined imperial ambition with scientific investigation – his ships carried astronomers, botanists and artists, and gathered detailed information about the lands and peoples they encountered. Though he ultimately died during a conflict in Hawaiʻi, Cook left behind an extraordinary legacy as a disciplined navigator and a central figure of the Enlightenment-era exploration.

James Cook was actually the second European to discover New Zealand after Abel Tasman. He was, however, the one who meticulously cartographed the New Zealand coastline. He also confirmed that New Zealand was not the big continent that was expected to be found in the Southern Hemisphere. He cartographed New Zealand’s 2,400-mile coastline during his first Pacific journey, spending five months, between October 1769 and March 1770, circumnavigating the New Zealand islands.

The two main islands of New Zealand, separated by Cook Strait and bordered to the west by the Tasman Sea – both named after European explorers whose Pacific voyages helped place this remote land on Western maps in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Cook approached New Zealand from the East after he finished a scientific mission of observing the Venus transit across the Sun from Tahiti, in the Pacific Ocean. First, he sailed around the North Island from the North and continued alongside the western coastline of the South Island, heading South. Further, he sailed alongside the East coastline of the South Island and left through a strait separating the two islands, which was later named after him as Cook Strait, heading later to Australia (that time called New Holland) through the waters of the Tasman Sea. The channel between the islands, which he discovered, was named after him as the James Cook strait. A couple of weeks earlier, he also found another strait between the South Island and another island (Stewart Island) located to its South. For military and other strategic reasons, he did not include it in the official maps he drew.

Although very precise in their work, Cook and his sailors missed the southwest entrance to the South Island through a fjord now known as Milford Sound – and they missed it twice.

Even if you are quite close to its entrance (from the Tasman Sea separating New Zealand from Australia), the high mountainsides of the fjord optically overlap, so you would not say that there is a water passage between the mountains that leads 15 km deep into the island. You can clearly see that optical distortion from the tourist ships that sail today alongside the Milford Sound there and back (compare photos below). Cook was afraid to sail too close to the coastline because the rocky shores were dangerous for his ship in unpredictable wind conditions. From away, it was hence impossible for his crew to spot the passage. The passage was, however, well known and used by the native Māori people, who had mastered its tidal patterns and coastal navigation long before European arrival. The first Western sailor who entered the Milford Sound was John Grono, a Welsh sealer, in the early 19th century.

The strait on approach from the Tasman Sea. You can see one mountain formation beyond another. The photo even got two-dimensional. In fact, between the first mountain and the second one, there is one of the Milford Sound narrow straits, but the actual entry into the Southern Island is behind a curve that turns left. From the sea, it seems to be just a bay. The sailors of the Cook expedition missed it several times as they were looking for a safe and practical entry point into the Southern Island approaching New Zealand from the West.

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About MILFORD SOUND

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A Glacier Walk in New Zealand South Island

2019 By justmovingaround in Lifestyle, NEW ZEALAND Tags: glacier, hiking, leisure time, New Zealand, outdoor activity

A glacier walk in New Zealand’s South Island is not something you do every day. We took a short helicopter ride, put on crampons, and explored a world of ice formations, crevasses, and wide-open spaces. In this post, I’m sharing photos and a few thoughts from that unique experience – one of the highlights of our trip.

Heading to New Zealand, you expect to enjoy breathtaking nature – and you absolutely will. But the country offers more than just scenic walks and stunning views. Many incredible places are not easily accessible on foot, or reaching them would cost too much time and effort. That’s why New Zealand’s outdoor tourism industry is so well developed – with helicopters, boats, water gear, and cleverly built pathways that allow access to remote spots without the need for professional equipment. What’s also important is that New Zealand isn’t easily overrun by mass tourism. Most of the time, you’ll find yourself exploring in small groups, surrounded by silence and space, with no one else around – or at least not close enough to notice. And that’s exactly how it was during our glacier walk on the South Island.

When we crossed from New Zealand’s North Island to the South Island by ferry, a storm was in the forecast – possibly even a cyclone. And sure enough, the night we were supposed to reach Fox Glacier, where our glacier walk was originally scheduled, it hit. In the Southern Alps, where our hike was meant to happen, avalanches caused by the storm damaged State Highway 6 in several places, cutting off access to the Fox Glacier valley. Our bit of luck in all this was that we had planned a night’s stay just before crossing the mountains, with the idea of continuing to Fox the next morning. So we made it to our accommodation, but it became clear that getting across the range in time for our booking wasn’t going to happen. What we learned (and what we’d keep learning throughout the trip) is that New Zealand’s outdoor industry is not only adventurous, but impressively well-organized – especially when the weather messes with your plans. We had to cancel our original tour to Fox Glacier, but luckily, there was a similar heli-hiking option available nearby, at Franz Josef Glacier, on the accessible side of the mountain. So the glacier we eventually walked on wasn’t the one we’d originally planned to visit – but we were still able to join a morning group at Franz Josef, cancel with the other operator, and make the most of the day.

The Southern Alps are the main mountain range of New Zealand’s South Island, stretching over 500 kilometers along the island’s rugged western coast. The highest peak, Aoraki / Mount Cook (3,724 m), carries both a Māori and a European name – as do many natural landmarks in New Zealand. The name Alps was given by James Cook and his crew, who thought these snow-covered peaks looked strikingly similar to the European Alps they knew from home. On the western slopes of this range – steep, wet, and densely forested – lie the two most famous glaciers: Fox Glacier and Franz Josef Glacier. What makes them unique is how low they descend, reaching almost into temperate rainforest and lying only a short distance from the sea. Franz Josef Glacier (known in Māori as Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere) was named in 1865 by Austrian geologist Julius von Haast, in honor of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria. According to Māori legend, the glacier was formed from the tears of a young woman mourning her lover, who died in the mountains – which is why its traditional name translates to The Tears of Hine Hukatere. It’s a place where alpine drama meets lush rainforest, and where raw nature, deep stories, and unexpected access come together – the perfect setting for an unforgettable walk on ice.

We reached the glacier by helicopter, after being fully equipped by the tour operator with proper clothing, sturdy boots, and crampons. When we arrived at the base at the scheduled time, we quickly learned that this wasn’t yet the time to fly. First, despite already wearing decent outdoor gear, we were taken to a changing room and given full equipment – waterproof pants, jackets, gloves, boots, and crampons. As you’ll see in the photos, everyone looked pretty similar – the gear was clearly standard issue, and very effective. It was designed to keep you dry even if you stepped in glacier meltwater, which turned out to be very useful. We were also asked to leave most of our personal belongings in lockers and only take essentials, packed into small waterproof bags provided by the staff. Then came the helicopter part. Before boarding, we were all weighed and seated accordingly – the pilot arranged us inside based on weight distribution to keep the helicopter balanced. My lucky break? I got the seat next to the pilot, which means I also got some great window shots of the glacier as we flew in. You’ll see those just below.

At first, I thought the glacier walk would be just that – a simple walk with plenty of photo opportunities. The surface where we landed looked fairly flat, and the surrounding slopes didn’t seem too steep. The crampons strapped to our boots made walking on the ice surprisingly easy. But I soon realized that the entire experience was carefully planned. After about an hour of easy strolling, we approached some ice formations that, from a distance, didn’t appear very high – but in reality, they were massive. That’s when it became clear there were more guides on the glacier than just the one who had accompanied us from the start. While we were walking on the flat surface, the other guides had been busy preparing our route across to the other side of the mountain – digging ice stairs into the steeper sections and selecting narrow ice crevasses we’d actually have to climb into. Some professional climbing gear came into play, and suddenly it wasn’t just a walk anymore. At one point, I even got wedged between two icy walls. Luckily, we had three fantastic guides with us – kind, supportive, and keeping the mood light. Lady, I’m not helping you, one of them joked as he steadied me on a tricky descent, I just wanted to hold your hand.

The whole time, we felt completely alone on the glacier – or at least that was the impression. Only if you looked far across to the other side of the slope, really far, you might have spotted a few tiny red dots moving in the distance. Honestly, I only noticed them after I saw a very small helicopter landing on that part of the mountain. Below are the photos I took during our glacier flight and walk, shown exactly in the same order in which I took them.

On a glacier walk in New Zealand, Southern Island

A glacier walk in New Zealand South Island | Une randonnée sur glacier dans l'île du Sud de la Nouvelle-Zélande | Eine Gletscherwanderung auf der Südinsel Neuseelands | Una caminata por un glaciar en la Isla Sur de Nueva Zelanda | Spacer po lodowcu na Wyspie Południowej Nowej Zelandii | ニュージーランド南島での氷河トレッキング | 뉴질랜드 남섬에서의 빙하 트레킹 | 在新西兰南岛的冰川徒步旅行

A glacier walk in New Zealand Southern Island

In New Zealand, the outdoor industry is more than just adventure – it’s a well-structured system built around safety, flexibility, and respect for nature. Any company offering outdoor activities – whether it’s heli-hiking, speed boating, bungee jumping, kayaking, or trekking – has to be officially registered, meet strict safety standards, and go through regular audits. Oversight comes from national agencies like WorkSafe NZ, the Civil Aviation Authority, or Maritime NZ, depending on the type of activity. Operators are required to assess risks, react to changing weather, and make sure everyone has a great experience without compromising safety. What happened to us – having to cancel a trip due to avalanche damage and immediately being offered a well-organized alternative – isn’t unusual. That kind of flexibility is part of the system. Another thing that makes a big difference is that most activities are run in small groups, and access to popular areas is often limited. That’s why even well-known spots don’t feel crowded, and you still get that feeling of being close to nature. Local communities are also closely involved, and many activities operate in cooperation with the Department of Conservation, which manages access to protected areas. All of this means that outdoor adventures in New Zealand aren’t just beautiful and exciting – they’re also remarkably well-managed, with a strong focus on safety, comfort, and responsibility.

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A Glacier Walk in New Zealand South Island

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Category Archives: NEW ZEALAND

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A Glacier Walk in New Zealand South Island