Queenstown has it all: luxury, beauty, delicious food, great nightlife, shopping and atmosphere. It can all be a bit overwhelming at times, with the tacky commercialization and loud, raucous backpackers seeming to plague the city like sandflies at a west coast beach. Luckily there is an infinite of empty, quiet wilderness to make an escape from all of it if you so desire. Well, we had had our fill of that quiet wilderness and were ready to tackle the town head on. Queenstown is known as the adventure capital of the world due to the innumerable adrenaline activities on offer, many you've heard of and some you haven't.
The first activity of our adrenaline filled day could be one of the latter. We got up bright and early (and had quite an amazing coffee I must say) for a morningful of jet-boating. The Shotover Jet Company opened for tourists in the 1970s, becoming one of QT's first adrenaline attractions. The boats are capable of reaching a maximum speed of 85km/h and only require 10 cm of water once up to speed. Oh, and did I mention that you aren't strapped in? The ride immediately began with 180's, 360's and some serious speed whipping the bitingly cold morning air right through your clothes. Luckily the hand bar was liquid heated! Fancy stuff! We bulleted down river through the bleach white Shotover River Gorge, coming nail bitingly close to the rocky outcroppings. One could easily imagine that the guy driving the boat had once had aspirations of becoming a Formula One driver. After the ride we clambered off the ship to get warm in the gift shop where we found a wall full of photos of famous customers who'd been through, including Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman!
Next up on our big day out was the big kahuna, the mother of all QT adrenaline sports. That's right, bungy jumping. Let me just start by saying that I'd been absolutely dreading the thought of it all morning. As many of you may know I have a quite powerful fear of heights, so I wasn't off to a good start right off the bat. By the time we were on the shuttle to the jump site I was practically crapping my pants. Nervously we filled out all the paperwork and went through the prep steps at the site (where I found out I'd lost around 10lbs since leaving Auckland btw! WTF?) before going out to the observation platform. From there we watched a brave soul take the 43m plunge before we decided it was better to go at get it over with than sit and wait in slow torture.
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| The job - the Kawerau River |
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| Just before we got tied up |
We silently walked across to the center of the bridge, only waiting a moment before they called us down onto the jumping platform. The guy made small talk with us as he bound us together by the ankles (we decided to do a tandem jump) and secured the cord. At this point I was doing all I could to avoid having a full blown panic attack. Why the hell did I want to do this? Why the hell did I PAY to do this!? Such questions I was asking myself as they told us to stand up and put our toes to the line, which of course you must verify by looking straight down into the river below. I managed to get my toes there, but the rest of my body wouldn't come with. I was leaning so far back that it almost put Kayleigh off balance, my hand clinging white knuckled to a pole. Then the moment of truth when they told us "Now just lean forward and go". I sent the signal to my hand to let go the pole but received no response in return, it was like a pit bull with lock jaw. So the guy helped me out a bit and gave us a little nudge and down we went. From that moment on it was fun. Well, maybe I confused fun with the overwhelming sense of relief I felt for it being over. That said Kayleigh and I were totally bummed that we closed our eyes when we fell, so we've vowed to do it again someday.
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| This picture speaks for itself |
The final activity for the day was some light fun in comparison. We took the steep Skyline Gondola up the hill for an awesome view over QT and Lake Wakatipu. At the top of the gondola is a concrete luge track on which we had tons-o-fun racing, drifting and trying to cut down our track time.
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| The luge track |
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| The view from atop the gondola |
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