Katy Shorthouse and Steve Wilson, of Aspiring Adventures.
Photo by Joanne Carroll.
The owners of Queenstown's newest adventure travel
company are hoping the venture will allow them to combine their
love of travel, mountain biking and guiding.
Steve Wilson and Katy Shorthouse have just set up Aspiring
Adventures, which will be based in Queenstown but will run
trips in New Zealand, Peru, Australia and Vanuatu.
Mr Wilson and Ms Shorthouse both have experience working in
the tourism industry, and thought it was time to start
working for themselves.
"What we like doing is running the trips ourselves. We enjoy
the challenge of creating itineraries. Our aim is to run a
few trips a year. One of us will guide the trip, the other
will do all the behind-the-scenes stuff," Mr Wilson said.
Both keen mountain bikers, they decided to run their first
trip to Peru for Queenstown mountain bikers, and are
organising a cost-price "mates rates" trip.
"This gives us the opportunity to run a real trip to help us
figure out our systems. It's a trip we're going to enjoy
running, so we're happy to do it for little or no financial
gain," he said.
The trip will be for 12 days from June 6, 2010 for up to 19
people for about $2500, excluding flights.
It will include a downhill race, one of the fixtures on the
local race calendar in Cusco, Peru.
Mr Wilson said it was an opportunity to experience a real
event in Peru.
Ms Shorthouse is the author of the Cusco and Lake Titicaca
chapters of the new edition of Lonely Planet's Guide to Peru,
to be published in April 2010.
She also owns and manages a bar in Cusco.
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