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Published: February 3rd 2008
Hello there!
Well we travelled to Fox glacier and stopped at the very picturesque Lake Matheson for lunch. Unfortunatley the weather was a little windy so we couldn't get any pics of the reflection of Mt. Cook in the lake but nevertheless it was still very beautiful and gave us a chance to stretch our legs.
The next day we set off to Lake Wanaka however the rain set in and it poured it down which caused the only route into Wanaka to close. We decided to drive as far as we could passing overflowing waterfalls everywhere (some of which were flowing into the road) and were getting ready to camp in a conservation campsite called Pleasant Flat which only had two toilets and plenty of sandflies to keep us company. Fortunatley for us the road soon opened up and we were off again travelling through the quiet, scenic roads of NZ.
WANAKA
Lake Wanaka is a stunning little town which has loads of thrill seeking activities to keep you occupied. I (becka) was fascinated by the skydiving leaflet advertising scenic skydives which took you over Mt. Cook and Mt. Aspiring. Well what better way to skydive
than to be able to take in the enormous snowy mountains as you fall? I had the option to either fall from 9k (freefall for 30 seconds), 12k (freefall for 45 seconds) or 15k (freefall for 60 seconds). Falling out of a plane is falling out of a plane so it basically came down to the cost of each dive. I opted for a safe 12k feet dive in the end and had it was scheduled in for the very same day i booked it! I was told to come back in an hour so I paced up and down until it was time to be picked up. Unfortunately due to the wind my scheduled time slot got cancelled so I was told to come back in another hour. Si and I decided to go get a beer to ease my pain of having to plumit out of a plane at 12k feet and i can't tell you how many times I had to go to the toilet due to nerves!. Once again I went back and they advised me that it was cancelled all together due to the weather, so part relieved and part disappointed I booked it again
for the same day as we were leaving town. I also decided that if I was going to do something, I may as well do it right so I changed my fall from 12k to 15k feet.
Si and i also booked ourselves onto a White water sledging trip for the following day at dawns crack on the Kawarau river. White water sledging is one of the more recent "extreme" activities you can do, everyone is probably familiar with white water rafting, well this is much the same without the support of a super buoyant raft to keep you afloat! Each sledger gets kitted out in a wetsuit, helmet, life vest, fins and a sledge thing that the upper part of your body holds on to. We watched one of the guides do a safety brief before we plunged into the icy water. There was no time to get used to the gear before we hit our first rapids and realised just how little control you actually have against the river. Once we completed the run we got taken a bit further up from the point we started on before and went down for our second dose. All went
well until we hit a rapid dubbed "maneater" before I (Si) went over the rapid and got pushed straight down under it whilst becka flew over the top of it. This was the scariest thing I have ever experienced as even with all my gear on and holding the sledge I was deep under water and couldn't get up to the surface. I was down there for what felt like an enternity (but in actual fact was probably no more than 10 seconds) thinking that my time was up, of course as soon as I thought this I popped back up gasping for breath! We both had great fun!
After the sledging I (becka) went and bought a bottle of vodka to assist me with my nerves, unfortunately I woke up the next day with a rather fuzzy head! I got picked up nice and early from town for my skydive and asked Simon if he had any wise words for me before I went to my death and si's response was whether he could have my Ipod! When i got to the skydive centre they briefed me with a DVD, got me to sign my life away and
then presented me with an A4 sheet of information about diving from 15k feet. Well it appears that you can quite easily suffer from Hypoxia when diving from 15k feet and this risk is increased when suffering from a hangover!!! Oh well I couldn't let some silly little thing like Hypoxia stop me from diving as I had already paid and had geared myself up it😊 I got kitted up and asigned my skydiver and camera man. Not a lot was said and I didn't really get a lot of time to think about what I was doing before they had me sat in the very small plane heading through the skies. I remember thinking that we must be nearly there as we were flying pretty high so I asked my skydiver if it was nearly time to jump, he laughed and said that we weren't even half way up yet! 😞! Feeling actually pretty calm it was time to do my skydive and boy what a rush! I loved every minute of it although by the time the parachute came out I had shouted so much that i didn't get enough oxygen and felt very light headed indeed to
the point of where I think i nearly fainted. After a few minutes the blood came rushing back into my body and I got to enjoy the mountainous scenery around me. I was on a high all day!
QUEENSTOWN
Queenstown - The adventure capital of the world! This is where we (well more becka) spent some serious money seeing how close we could (safely) get to death. The first activity we both did was the Luge at the top of the Queenstown gondola (cable car). The luge is actually one of the few things where you can actually hurt yourself but to look at it looks the most tame. You take a chairlift up to the start of a concrete track and sit in a kind of skateboard with stearing and a brake, once you go you just let yourself go and steer down the track trying not to flip over of go off into a bank. For the price this was great value and great fun.
Hang Gliding was also something we both wanted to do, as most of you know I (Si again) have a fear of heights which is why I haven't done most
of the things Becka has. I was pretty nervous about doing this but as we booked about an hour before we did it I didn't have time to think about it too much. Becka of course had jumped out of a plane so this was a welcome break for her. The guides set up the hang gliders whilst we were kitted up. As these were tandem hang glides we didn't really have to worry about too much. Each of our guides had slight differences in how they wanted us to hold on and take off (mine I have discovered looks like i'm holding on for dear life in the pictures). Each of us waited for our gust of wind to run into before we ran down the hill, each step becoming lighter as we gradually became weightless. This was amazing fun, gliding over the land and every so often (or in Becka's case all the time) doing dives straight down so our stomachs nearly came out of our mouths. Sadly it was all over too quickly.
Straight after the hang glide I (becka) on was a roll with doing extreme activities so I went and booked myself on the
Becka & Si - Queenstown
Looking very fetching in our hang gliding suites!Canyon Swing (200m arc, and 109m high ). Just walking into the shop made my sphincter tighten! They had TV screens everywhere showing what jumps could and have been done. Apparently Jack Osbourne did the canyon swing for his TV series Adrenalin Junkies? Anyway I really wanted to do a bungy jump so I thought that the canyon swing would ease me into falling off a ledge at a very great height? My theory was start easy (skydive) and leave the worse till last (bungy). I'm not quite sure now that I did them in the right order? The day of my canyon swing i met up with the group of people who were falling to their death with me. A really nice English girl who seemed just as nervous as me and two crazy twins from Tasmania. In the van on the way to the canyon I felt physically sick asking myself over and over again why I was doing this?
Up at the canyon you got to choose which jump you wanted to do and they were scored by how many extra underpants you needed to do them. One extra pair was the cutaway, two were needed
for jumping off forward etc etc. The two twins wanted to go first and opted for five extra underpants. One was released upside down and the other went backwards! Next in line was me and somehow i was convinced to go for two extra underpants (jumping forward). I can't tell you how nervous I was. On the canyon ledge they had a swear bucket ($1 per swear word) well the amount of expletives coming out of my mouth I was nearly required to throw my credit card and pin in the bucket. I tipped toed to the ledge (where I was required to jump off a 109m ledge) and looked fear in the eye and then cryed for my dad to come and collect me. Actually I just clutched onto my harness to the point where my fingers went blue and then ungracefully fell forwards in a sort of foetus position freefalling 60m and then swinging a further 49m into the canyon! I think my hair stood on it's end and all that came out of my mouth was eerrr. It was brillant but you definitely saw your life flash before your eyes! If you want to see a grown
man cry like a baby send him to do the canyon swing.
After slowly growing a pair of steel balls I decided to book my bungy jump off the kawarau Bridge as soon as i got back from my canyon swing. The next day I was scheduled to do my bungy jump before leaving for Milford Sounds. I was getting slowly used to the feeling of giant mutated butterflies in my stomach by now so I was feeling pretty calm driving us to the bungy jump centre (si clearly didn't see my tight grip of the steering wheel in an effort to stop my hands from shaking). I was scheduled to jump at 10.30am but as i was awake at 5am that morning we got to the centre early. I was weighed up (due to extreme sports I had lost 2kg in three/four days - great diet) and advised that as they were quiet I could do my jump straight away. After one last trip to the loo I walked to the bridge to get my bungy over and done with (i was beginning to develop a split personality, one side of my brain was telling me I was
a fool and to run, run, run and the other pushing me to do something I have always wanted to do but never had the bottle). They tied the bungy to my legs (which seemed quite primitive) and helped me hobble to the ledge. Quick smile for the camera and the audience staring at me, then 54321 and I just jumped. It was so much easier than the canyon but perhaps I was getting used to falling from great heights by now, who knows, all I can say is that there is nothing like it, it's such a massive buzz!!!! With a huge smile across my face, an empty wallet and the knowledge that my heart works extremely well we made our way to Milford sound.
MILFORD SOUND
We drove down to Te Anau where we booked a kayaking trip on Milford sound the next day. Our first choice of company was booked up but thankfully our second (and the only other company that kayaks on the sounds) had 2 spaces left for us. We arranged to be picked up rather than drive all the way down to Milford (which takes 2 hours each way) so got up
at around 5am and headed down in the dark. Once we got there we were kitted out in our kayaking gear which included thermal leggings and took the kayaks into the water and prepared for our first bit of physical exercise in a long time. We kayaked at least 12k's round some of the sounds taking in the amazing scenery, seals, plants, birds etc. Our guide was great, very imformative and very funny. At one point he was chatting away to a seagull after we had all kayaked passed him.
THE CATLINS & OTAGO PENINSULA
After we left Te Anau (and after speaking to our guide from the kayaking) we decided to head the long way round the bottom of South Island so we could head through a national park called the Catlins. We stopped at various points on the way to watch seals, birds and dolphins stopping overnight at a campsite at Curio Bay. Once the tide was out you could see the fossilised remains of trees millions of years old apparently proving that NZ was once part of a super continent known as Gondwanaland.
The next day we continued driving up the East coast stopping
to see the Moeraki boulders then just past a city called Dunedin to see the abundant wildlife of Otago Peninsula. We'd initially intended to see penguins here but we first drove up to see the Albatross colony here. At first all we were seeing were seagulls and shags but eventually the Albatross' appeared. They are huge, I think they have something like a 10 foot wingspan but they just looked like gliders cruising around us. All was going great until I (Si) got the inevitable from a seagulls backside, thankfully it was the seagull and not the Albatross! We then planned to see the penguins but could not figure how you were supposed to get there as the map showed a road that you couldn't actually get to. We ended up going back to the campsite a met a friendly couple from Newcastle, same age as us who we went to the pub with. After Becka and myself spending every single day for over 3 months together you can imagine it was nice for us to speak to other people. So much so that I don't actually think they got a word in edgeways!
LAKE TEKAPO
On our
way to Kaikoura we stopped off at Lake Tekapo for the night. The lake has a green mineral colour to it which looks really amazing against the mountainous background. Unfortunately it started to rain shortly after we arrived so we just bought some wine and watched a dvd. The next morning Becka took some piccies and we set off for a very long drive to Kaikoura.
KAIKOURA
Well we'd completed our circuit of South Island with a few days to spare so we thought we'd head back up to Kaikoura to see if we could do the Seal Swim again. This time we were in luck! Although the water was freezing we got to see a fair few fur seals up close and personal. You soon forgot about the cold and the fact that you couldn't feel your fingers anymore when you had seals playfully swimming around you.
One last stop to Nelson before heading back to Christchurch.
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Gareth Jones
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