We scheduled five nights in Queenstown because there’s an abundance of stuff to do here. The town sits alongside the snaking Lake Wakatipu amongst The Remarkables mountain range. 14,000 people live here and the town’s relatively high population (there’s only four million people in the whole of NZ) owes itself to the gold rush that happened here, the largest the country ever saw. More recently, Queenstown’s popularity is down to it’s international reputation as an activity and adventure hot spot. There’s just no limit to what you can get up to.
On my first night everyone from our bus met up for a good old piss up. We terrorised a few bars in town including the World Bar where they serve all their cocktails in tea pots. Wednesday was a bit of a recovery day, although Pete, Ed, Joe and I found time in the afternoon to play a spot of frisbee golf. It was a new concept to me but the idea is simple: you ‘tea-off’ from designated spots, in this case it was certain rocks and trees in Queenstown’s botanic gardens. The ‘hole’ is just a tree which has been marked and you keep throwing the frisbee until you hit the tree. The match was unfortunately cut short due to bad light.
On Thursday we all did the Canyon Swing which is notorious amongst the activities here. It’s a kind of bungee jump and giant swing all in one. There’s a platform mounted to a cliff 109m above the Shotover River. A rope is attached to you - thank buggery - and you jump off, plunging yourself into a 60m freefall into the canyon before the ropes tighten and swing you into a giant 200m arc at a blistering 150kph. You swing there back and forth above the river for a while before they winch you back up to the platform. I did it twice because it was only an extra $39 to do a second jump. For my first, I did the Superman dive, turning in to a flip during the freefall. For my second attempt I did what the Canyon Swing crew call the ‘Elvis Cutaway’. They attach the rope and winch you out off the platform so you’re suspended in mid-air, facing the sky. When they pull the pin, which releases the extra rope keeping you suspended, you fall (rather unexpectedly) down with the walls of the canyon racing past your head, at which point it’s new-pair-of-underpants-time. On their ’scary scale’ my first jump was a 3/5 and the Elvis was a 5.5. I was actually more scared the first time because I had to physically jump off the ledge myself, rather than being released by the staff. Peering over to what would be certain death if you weren’t strapped to a bungee rope and then making the decision to leap off is not easy - or natural. It goes against your most predominant human instinct. However, once I realised I wasn’t dead it was one of the funnest things I’ve ever done. Extreme!!
On Friday I was supposed to be going on a day trip to Milford Sound. It’s one of the most beautiful parts of New Zealand and the trip, worth $160, was given to me for nothing as a bonus when I booked the Kiwi Experience back in Christchurch. None of the other guys booked at the same time so I was the only one going. Unfortunately, ever since having my phone stolen in Thailand I haven’t had any kind of alarm so I entrusted my good friend Ed to set his alarm and wake me up. However, he seems not to have quite yet grasped the concepts of am and pm and set his watch to go off at quarter past six at night instead of quarter past six in the morning, a fact we discovered when we both arose at 8am, an hour after the bus had departed. Oh well, apparently it rained all day there anyway.
Instead, we all took the gondola up the mountain to The Luge track. It’s a small, downhill race circuit which you fly down in mini go karts, bumping eachother off the track and going on to two wheels as you whizz around the tight corners. That was wicked fun, I’ll upload a video soon (see below.)