Canyon swining and other ridicululous sports


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Oceania » New Zealand » South Island » Queenstown
March 12th 2006
Published: March 12th 2006
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I'm in Queenstown now. Eloise and I decided on the bus here that it would be a good idea to go on this lovely swing thing that sounded like a nice activity. It's called the canyon swing and we bought our trip and paid for it on the spur of the moment. It was only when we got here and saw pictures of a tiny bungy platform perched above a canyon that I started to worry.
We drove up there and met the crew who are full of amusing jokes like "don't worry, we've ironed out the problem with the bungy wires" and "don't worry, we haven't killed anyone in at least a month."
Having been weighed and had a snail drawn on my hand (still don't know what that means!) I was quickly ushered towards the bungy platform. It was really windy and it was at this point that my legs started to shake. We were able to watch the people jumping before us, but the canyon went down so far you couldn't see the whole free fall, just this tiny black dot swinging out along the riverbed.
I decided the only way forward was to just jump straight off
clinging to evil men while having my photo takenclinging to evil men while having my photo takenclinging to evil men while having my photo taken

note lack of blood in my face and how tightly I'm gripping his arm.
it forwards without looking down. The mentalists who run the thing do all sorts of jokes while you are on the platform lke jumping on your back and pushing you so you think you're going to dfall off the edge, so I was fairly nervous by the time I got there.
But then I jumped and it was amazing.....so I decided to do it again backwards. Now this was actually a lot more scary because the evil men made me lean out backwards to have my photo taken first. With just my heels resting on the backof the platform, and having seen them just throw an English girl off when she wasn't ready, I decided to start pleading not to have the photo and just to jump, but they insisted anyway (see photo of me gripping man's wirst). All the blood drained from my face and I am very pale. Then I did it and it was cool again, but I accidentally did a somersault and my stomach muscles are very sore today, so I'm walking in a slightly crumpled up way and hoping there's no permanent damage.
Afterwards it only took about 5 cups of tea and sugar and then 10 vodkas until I stopped shaking. And now I'm back to normal (and slightly relieved to be heading to China on Wed, where I'm hoping I won't feel the need to to scare myself by jumping off high up things!)
We also did a luge thing, which was cool, especially when we discovered you can go round the corners on 2 wheels...!!!!





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