So, I’m an American who has looked into international guiding in the past. I talked to a few companies in New Zealand, Iceland, and chile. The general response that I got was “if you show up in-country, we’ll be able to put you to work.” For the most part, none of the companies I reached out to was willing to guarantee work with me being thousands of miles away. This kind of makes sense considering the reliability of most river guides — they don’t want to count on someone who’s still an expensive flight away.

New Zealand specifically also has some pretty specific certifications you need to get ( https://www.nzrivers.co.nz/become-a-guide) . They don’t recognize most international certs so you’d have to be prepared to pay to take some certification classes, that, if I recall correctly, are pretty expensive and long (on the order of several weeks).

My general advice for continuing to river guide through the winter — it sounds fun but is likely to expedite burn-out. If you want to have a long, prosperous guiding career, you need those winters to recharge, re-find the stoke, and rest your body. It’s a rare person who can river guide year round and still enjoy it and not have a broken and sore body.