On Tuesday, we had a great chance to explore a wilderness. The site seeing bus picked us up in Queenstown for a drive to Glenorchy along the shore of Lake
Wakapitu, the 3rd largest lake and 2nd deepest lake (at 1000 feet deep)
in New Zealand.The drive gave us beautiful views of the Southern Alps across the lake. We passed three small islands, and one of them,
Pidgeon Island is a place where all predators have been removed. This is where the kiwi yearlings are released to safely grow to adulthood before being returned to their point of origin.
The lake is long and narrow, cut by a glacier and fed by two
rivers. The Rees River is filled with snow melt and is very clear green
water, and the Dart River is fed by the Dart glacier and is a light
green water filled with silt from the glacier. When we arrived in Glenorchy, we were given splash jackets with hoods and life jackets for our ride in a jet boat. The jet boat was developed in Glenorchy in 1951 and is the engine design that current jet skis use. The man who developed the engine gave Archimedes credit for the invention, but he developed the twin engines using the internal water flow and screw to deliver 950 horse power for the metal boat propulsion
Our boat driver told us he was an extra in the movie the Lord of the Rings. It was an interesting story that the producer came to his high school and recruited the rugby team to come dress up and participate in the battle. He said the team thought it was great fun and they even got paid!
The steering is controlled solely by aiming the jets (the boat has no rudder and no keel for sideways stabililty). The trick to this ride is to find the water as we jetted upstream in a river that varied in depth from 1.5 feet to 6 inches. The boat ran 50 to 75 mph, and the pilot did some 360 degree turns that were really fun. Since we were driving upstream on the Dart River, we climbed during the whole ride 525 feet in elevation before the water got to shallow to continue. Then we went back down stream and had a short ride up the Rees River where you could see a difference in color (not glacier fed). The water was deep here and very clear.
Our guide also showed us a waterfall that was not there two days before. It indicated that the snow melt had increased enough to produce the torrent.
Next we took a short trek through a World Heritage Forest of old Arctic Birch trees at an area they called Paradise..
time lumber was taken from this area, they cut 700 year of red Arctic Birch to make fence posts. The trees were named by early English explorers who thought these trees were birch trees, but they are not; they are their own unique species with tiny leaves and rough dark bark. Many of these huge trees are hollowed out in the center. There was a little cavern inside this tree where several people could stand upright. The hollow streak goes high up through the tree in the darkness. 
They had a giant chair in the woods. Portions of the movie the Hobbit were in this area and it demonstrates how they minimized the size of the actors who played the hobbits.
We also passed an area where there was a settlement from North America during the gold rush in the late 1800s. There are silver birch and sequoiya trees growing there that they brought with then and planted. The trees are the only evidence of the settlement left.
They showed us a sheep station which they said was very small, on 1600 acres. However, the owner, makes all his money off of movie production contracts. These meadows, with snow peaks in the back ground were the setting of many movies including Prince Caspian. 
The huge greenstone was a historical marker for the enterprise.
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