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Published: September 26th 2010
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Our second day in Queenstown and Im pretty sure I felt more nervous than I have ever been. As I mentioned before Kish, Paul and I won best dressed at our Poo Party and we had been given a free Canyon Swing between us, which we had booked for today. Im sure people have different expectations as to what a canyon swing might be, but I will just clarify that its basically a 60m freefall into a canyon followed by a 200m swing which can propel you up to 150kph! Best thing to do on a cold, hungover morning in New Zealand right?
We travel down to Shotover Gorge where the Canyon Swing main building is and through the large glass windows stands the platform hanging over the edge of the gorge that we shall soon be falling from. The great thing about the canyon swing is that its not a straight up bungy so you are given a choice of 8 or 9 different jump styles ranging from upside down to flips to the chair. Which I did. My thinking was that if Im going to fall into a gorge anyway, I may as well give myself one hell of
a fright. So I will set the scene for you now: I have been harnessed up and I make my way along the platform to be strapped into multiple ropes that I am trusting not to break as I fall.. Next I am sat down in 3 plastic garden chairs with a seat belt and placed backwards on the edge of the platform while two of the staff casually chat to me about the other places I have visited. Soon enough though one of them says to me 'ok, just lean back'. But these guys don't play nice and instead of just letting fall backwards the guy pulls me back, not once, not twice, but three times before I actually leave the platform and get the rush of my life! In the fall I flipped two and a half times before hitting the swing and its safe to say I had no idea where I was. But my god was it an amazing experience and the video is just hilarious.
Once we are back in Queenstown we head straight for Fergburger for a celebratory burger and since we have a free afternoon we take the opportunity to watch Inception in
the nearby cinema. It is one hell of a mind blast but really worth a watch, I guess you could say its The Matrix meets James Bond. Its one of those films which makes you think for a good while afterwards and I kinda hate Christopher Nolan a little bit for the cliffhanger he leaves it on! That night we say a fond farewell to Paul and Naomi before they move on up the coast and hit the sac soon after for a 7am start the next day.
Kish and I were really eager to get a day of skiing done while we had some free time in Queenstown so we hired out a load of gear and booked ourselves a day pass for July 31st which wasn't a bad price to be honest. Unfortunately mother nature had ideas of her own and decided it would be fun to ruin our day by blowing up a storm which meant all the ski resorts were closed! Not only that, but we found out after we had got up at 6.30 and gone down to meet the bus taking us up to the resort called Cordrona. So we decided to make up
for it by having a huge night out with all the guys and girls we met from Yorkshire and Devon and, well, the next day was basically a write off which definitely had nothing to do with us drinking...
The next day however was a busy one involving the one and only Nevis Bunjy. Jess, Kish and I hopped on a bus which would take us to the Nevis Bunjy site and our friend Sean decided to join us purely to freak us out which was just so helpful of him! Its hard to get a sense of how scary the bunjy looks until you are there but just imagine a platform suspended 160m above a canyon floor where idiots like me intend to freefall for 134m in the space of 8.5 seconds before being slowed by a bunjy cord where the inertia takes you even closer to the river. The rush is absolutely incredible and my feet still tingle a little bit now whenever I think about leaving that platform. Its a real personal test but I would recommend it to anyone. I would also recommend our second activity of the day which involved us heading up a gondola
to go lugeing. For anyone who doesnt know what this incredible activity involves. Its basically sitting in an unpowered go kart on a downhill track and letting gravity do its thing, which was awesome because the track sits at the top of a massive hill with a stunning view over Queenstown. Though we may have broken the beautiful peace with our ridiculously competitive driving, but the important thing is we had fun, right?
The fun didn't stop there though, as tonight our hostel was doing a blind barcrawl where you got in pairs and led each other in turn to a different bar with a blindfold on. We all decided to dress up using whatever fancy dress-ish things we could find and ended up with 2 people in morph suits, 2 mexicans and 4 babies. Success!
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