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Published: October 15th 2006
And so arrived in the Adventure Capital to beautiful clear blue skies and bright sunshine. We stayed in a great hostel with amazing views over the lake, and a crazy Cork girl (Liz) on reception who ensured we booked onto the HIGHEST bungy in NZ at 450ft.
With the sunshine not predicted to last, we tried to squeeze in a few activities the first day - so we hit out on Shotover Jet (a bit tame), caught the Gondola to the top of Bob's Peak and had a go on the Luge Track (see Thomas on the wee go-kart).
Typically, when the day of our bungy dawned, there were ominous grey clouds in the sky....probably reflecting our increasingly unwillingness to go through with the jump! As we made our way out to the pod via a shuttle suspended by highwire above the Nevis river, the feeling of impending doom enveloped the 20jumpers. As it was done by weight, Thomas was up first, and gamely sailed over the ledge without a second thought. Paralysed from the waist down before the jump, this ensured a Ryanair "no-frills" jump, so there was no fancy Superman moves, no gymnastics, just the simple collapse-over-the-edge
manoeuver.
I was up a few jumps later, and despite brave grins beforehand, I completely stalled on the ledge, and the you can hear me on the DVD clearly wailing "I CAN'T, I CAN'T" before I dutifully threw myself head first into the abyss. 8.4seconds of freefall, and some bouncing around later, we were glad to be back on terra firma... a view shared by Kieran Fearon when we met up later that evening for a couple of deserved schooners.
After the phsyical stress of the day, we felt fully justified in partaking in the legend of Queenstown that is the FergBurger - monstrous homemade burgers to cater for any appetite, from the simple quarterpounder Fergburger to the enormous "Big AL" halfpounder with everything on (including 2 fried eggs!).
The rest of the Queenstown stay was a bit of a washout, with the driving rain ensuring that we caught up on the 3 Lord of the Rings films, to update ourselves on the local settings. With that in mind, we took a drive out to Glenorchy, and the dodginess of the car finally set in, with a fuel needle with a mind of its own ensuring that
we finally puttered into the village of petrol fumes. Still, the scenery was fantastic, and a walk to the top of Queenstown hill overlooking the town was well worth the effort.
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Gareth
non-member comment
Christ on a Bike
I nearly destroyed myself on the views over the edge alone. Well done!! 450ft is roughly 450 feet more than I would be willing to jump off.......