When people talk about New Zealand, one extreme sport always mentioned is white water rafting. In New Zealand, particularly, white water rapids can reach grade 4 and grade 5 level (grade 5 being the highest in white water rafting) – meaning that you’re in for a thrilling ride. Does white water rafting in New Zealand live up to its hype? I had to find out at the Shotover river in Queenstown.
Verdict: Being brutally honest here, I just didn’t think white water rafting was that exciting. Do it if you must, but don’t blame me if you find this experience quite underwhelming. More of a family friendly activity than an adrenaline filled adventure.
Bucket list rating: 2/5
Cost: 3/5
Having rafted in grade 3 to 4 white water rapids in Japan before and found the experience quite tame (it was mainly sitting around with minimal paddling), I was keen to see whether grade 4 to 5 white water rapids would be much more exciting. I therefore signed up to the Shotover white water rafting tour in Queenstown to find out.
It takes around 1 hour from Queenstown to the Shotover river by the tour shuttle. The route there was quite interesting – as we traversed past a narrow and winding road on the canyon called Skippers Canyon Road. Apparently this is the 7th most dangerous road in the world due to the steep canyon cliffs. Because of the difficulty in navigating this road, the tour actually recommended us to take the shuttle rather than driving on our own. As a footnote, if you’re curious on what the most dangerous road in the world is, you can click here.
All equipment including wetsuit, helmet, boots etc are provided by the tour so the only thing you need really is your swimmers, a towel and some warm clothes to change into afterwards. If you feel anxious about the cold, you can wear a bit more inside, although this isn’t really necessary.
But that was as good as it got. My first complaint was that I wasn’t allowed to fix my Go Pro to the helmet. There didn’t seem to be any reason for this, other than that they wanted me to pay for their photos. They had a photographer going from spot to spot in the canyon to take photographs of you. While this is certainly commendable, this just doesn’t replace documenting things on a Go Pro. They also produce a video of the trip but this video is a compilation for all the rafts so you’ll only likely to be in the video for a couple of seconds. Frustrating.
The rafting experience itself goes on for around 1.5 to 2 hours. There were around 5 to 6 of us in each raft. The first half of the rafting was extremely mellow. There weren’t even any rapids at this stage, and all we were doing were practicing our paddling so we were in sync with each other. We weren’t even allowed to paddle fast as we had to travel in line with the other rafts. So I spent most of my time counting fingers and chatting with the others on the raft.
The second half got a bit better. Our guide told us to brace ourselves as we would be coming to a number of rapids. These were going to be grade 4 rapids with a 300 meter height drop in this section. The guide also warned us that on average, one to three persons on a raft would flip over in this section. My pupils started to dilate as we were finally getting some action!
Our raft started going through white water rapids, which were narrow streams of fast water created nearby big boulders. They had different names for each section of the rapids – Aftershock, Squeeze, Toilet, Oh Sh*t and Paintball. Unfortunately, most of these seemed like a mediocre version of an amusement park water ride. Toilet was probably the most exciting one of all, with a mild three meter drop. Squeeze and Oh Sh*t were a little lame, as they involved either the whole raft shifting their bodies to the right or to the left to stay in balance.
The rest of the raft ride was relatively eventful. After getting past the rapids above, a couple of us jumped in the river for a quick cold dip. We then got back on the raft and went through a pitch-black tunnel (the Oxenbridge tunnel), which was created for gold mining. There were one or two final rapids (Mother in Law and Cascade) before the trip ended, but these were short drops that felt fairly anti-climatic.
Unsurprisingly, no one fell off the raft at all in our trip. I did have a quick word with our guide after the trip expressing how I thought the river was a little tame. He explained that the river levels are shallower in the summer so the rapids were not as strong as they could be. Perhaps the rafting experience would have been much better in the wet season in winter – but I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed.
In conclusion, this is more of a family friendly trip than an extreme sport for adrenaline junkies. The risk of actually being thrown into the river (at least during the dry season in summer) I think is minimal. I didn’t even get much of a splash sitting at the back of the raft. There was simply too much downtime and chatting with the guide.
Additional information
| When to do it? | Best to do it in Winter months when it rains. |
| How to book? | Purchase with Queenstown Rafting online or at their shop in Queenstown. |
| How much does it cost? | NZD229 |
| How to get there? | Shuttle from the Queenstown Rafting shop. |
| How long does it take? | Around 4 hours in total including traveling time. |
| Is it difficult/safe? | Ride is quite safe – you won’t need to worry about falling off the raft if the group follows the paddling instructions of the guide. |
| What to wear? | Equipment provided by Queenstown Rafting. |
| Language | Guides will speak English. |