Wanaka River Journeys - Much more than just Jet-Boating!

It was my lucky day.

Of all the trips on offer in Wanaka, I chose a trip with ‘Wanaka River Journeys' at Lake Wanaka. I met the lovely owners, Brent and Sue Pihama, and took an unforgettable half day ‘jet boat' ride with a difference - mixing thrills with Maori myths, natural history and fun!

Brent is one of those people you meet who have a lasting effect on you. You can't quite put your finger on it, but you know you are in safe hands when you meet this engaging character.

A smartly painted minibus arrived to pick up a group of ten us in the main street of Wanaka. We were given a warm welcome by Brent's wife Sue, and their daughter as we were driven to a clearing just a few miles away on the beautiful ‘MATUKITUKI RIVER'. Where we were given our life jackets and led to the jet boat for a safety briefing.

Brent started off by solemnly saying a Maori prayer - a 'karakia ' and called on his ancestors to look after us and thanked them for bringing us together to take this special journey through their sacred land.

It was an moving start to an inspiring afternoon with Brent and his jet-boat.

Minutes later, we were zooming along the Matukituki River, just a couple of inches deep in places. Spray shot outwards from beneath us as Brent skilfully skimmed the jet boat over boulders and close to fallen tree trunks as we headed into some of the most majestic scenery I'd ever seen. All ten of us were grinning from ear to ear.

When we stopped for a few minutes, Brent told us more Maori tales about the mountains and the silver braided river. For the Matukituki River twists and turns beneath the glaciers of World Heritage listed Mount Aspiring National Park, bringing with it grey silt from the huge mountains. As the boat sped along the valley, Brent pointed out the many different places and their connection to Maori culture - with a few of his jokes thrown in. Then he'd whirl his fingers in the air in a circular motion - our signal to hold on, as he was about to spin the boat 360 degrees at high speed, sending spray in all directions, a young honeymooning couple from Las Vegas were ‘whooping' with excitement.

With spray in our hair, after the thrilling turns, we stopped close to Mount Aspiring, and Brent moored the boat against the bank, all the time making us laugh with his fantastic tales. He explained how the Matukituki River had been carved by glacial ice hundreds of metres deep about 14,000 years ago, which went more than one hundred metres from their source.

We left the jet boat and were led into a beautiful ancient beech forest, for a leisurely ‘Wilderness Walk'. Brent knows his stuff and named the various plants and trees and told us how the Maoris had used them over the centuries. The woods were magical, and looked like something from a storybook. The forest floor and fallen branches were all covered in a soft green moss which was springy underfoot as we headed to a waterfall, where Brent told us more stories and facts about our amazing surroundings.

As we wandered through the beech wood along the valley, it felt as if we were treading on undiscovered land. It was such a natural, unspoilt wilderness, it really felt as if we'd just discovered somewhere for the first time.

We were then treated to another of Brent's stories, told with such conviction. This time about ‘How the Kiwi came to be a flightless bird.' The story had us all smiling as we listened to the long - very long and funny tale of all the birds in the forest and how it came to pass that it was the Kiwi that was finally chosen by the forest elders to look after the forest floor.

As we neared the end of this tale, a distant humming noise interrupted the storytelling and we headed back towards the riverbank.

Brent talked on his two-way radio as a brilliant white helicopter came around a bend, glinting in the afternoon sunshine. As an optional extra to the tour, we could take a helicopter flight up around the Mount Aspiring National Park for a ‘snow landing' on one of the glaciers high above us.

Six of us clambered aboard the brand new helicopter and put on headphones, as the pilot, a pretty blonde girl with a ponytail, introduced herself to us. Within seconds we were lifting off from the soft green grass, waving at the ones left behind, and began following the winding river valley between the mountains, then gradually gained height and climbed up to the rim of the snow-covered mountains. A few jokes about ‘women drivers' soon stopped when our pilot explained she was part of the local mountain ‘Search and Rescue Team' and had been flying with her father since she was very young.

We swooped and turned between the mountains, cameras clicking at the amazing views from the windows all around us and we got a great view of ‘avalanche gully', a steep area of blue-white jagged snow to our left. Then turning to the right, the pilot slowed, and hovered, sending snow scattering all around us as she set us gently down in the crisp snow at the top of a mountain.

Keeping our heads low, we walked through knee deep snow to take in our amazing surroundings. The view was utterly breathtaking - almost surreal. We were surrounded by jagged mountain peaks, beneath a deep blue sky.

Once again it felt as though we were the first to set foot in this special place, it was so pristine and completely natural. We wandered about for a while, threw snowballs and took pictures of each other in the snow. We felt very privileged to be there and lucky to have been able to add this very special extra to our trip.

When we were ready, we were flown back around the glaciers and had a great view of the winding silver ribbon of the Matukituki river far below us, where the rest of our group were waiting for us, having come further down the river in the jet boat to meet us.

As our white helicopter lifted off without us, I knew we all felt the same, that we'd witnessed something extra special and unforgettable up above the mountains.

But our trip still wasn't over by any means. We had another thrilling ride back along the river, with a few more stops as Brent told us more myths and legends about the area, in his knowledgeable but funny way.

We gasped as he skimmed over stones and turned the speeding boat between huge boulders and within inches of overhanging branches with amazing accuracy, not taking his eyes off the river for a second.

As I looked behind at the spray shooting up in our wake, I took my last few glimpses at Mount Aspiring, as it gradually became more distant and sadly disappeared from view as we rounded another sharp bend in the river.

We returned to Sue waiting by the riverbank to welcome us and take us back into Lake Wanaka, no longer strangers, but a group of ten people lucky enough to take part in this wonderful experience.

I wished we could turn around and do it all over again