Queenstown (New Zealand)

Hello all,

Queenstown - The town itself has a stunning setting, with the Remarkables nestling in behind Lake Wakatipu. Firstly a Gold Rush town, lately the adventure capital of NZ (which is saying something as most places have a good number of crazy activities). When in 1988 AJ Hackett was a bit bored and decided it would be fun to chuck himself off a bridge, the town found a new purpose as home to just about every crazy activity Kiwi's can think up (which is a lot). After a quick publicity stunt leap off the Eiffel tower, the 43-metre bungy off a bridge across the Kawarau became the world's first commerical bungy operation. It was hailed as the birth of adventure tourism in New Zealand and was integral towards putting New Zealand on the world adventure tourism map. If you want to try some skydiving, parachuting, bungy, hang-gliding, white-water rafting, canyoning, jet-boating.....the lists goes on.....then this is your place.


We checked in to our hostel to find we had a superb view of the lake and mountains, and better still, the weather was still wall-to-wall sunshine! We spent a day relaxing after doing the Routeburn trek (see separate post). Thankfully Vania finally got to see the Kiwi bird she had been going on about since we arrived (although one in captivity - does that count)?!

In order to appreciate the views even more, we took the Gondola cable car up to the top of the mountain. We had a couple of runs down the luge, and some time spent watching a group of americans doing the bungy jump at the top (cue lots of shrieked oh my gooooooooddddds)!

You don't spend much time in Queenstown relaxing though, so we started to venture into the realm of daft activites. Here I am at the top of Coronet Peak preparing for my maiden hang-glide (tandem, obviously)! My German instructor Ulf informed me it was all very straightforward. All we had to do was run very fast off the top of the mountain and then enjoy the ride. Seeing as he had done 1000 glides, I decided that despite the apparent oversimplification, he knew what he was talking about. Plus he has a website calling himself "Skysailor", so he must be good! Here's me all set to go........no,wait wheres my instructor gone? I signed up for a tandem you know, this isn't funny!




Fortunately Ulf appeared and managed to get us off the mountain. It's not actually that easy running at full pelt when you're tied to a frame and a german bloke, but we managed it. Then we took a few turns to get closer to the mountains and find some thermals. Admittedly this involved getting slightly closer to the mountains than I was expecting, but the glide was amazing and we swooped down like a bird along the side of the mountain. It was exhilarating, I would highly recommend it if you ever get the chance to do a hang-glide.

It's not as frantic as a skydive, but with more
manoeuvrability than parachuting and time to

appreciate the stunning views around us. From
a height of 3800ft, the glide lasted about 10 mins and after a while Ulf made the error of letting me steer the thing. After a few unplanned sudden drops, I decided he should probably take over again! He then asked if I wanted to do some acrobatics, so we got to fit in some sharp swoops down and turns before coming in for the landing. A tail wind meant that the landing wasn't as controlled as I had imagined, the frame sped along the grass at high speed until a sharp turn left brought us skidding to a halt. I have a video of the acrobatics and landing which I'll try and post soon.

Vania went for some white-water rafting along the Shootover River, one of the places used in the Lord of the Rings. She managed to come back in one piece.

I also went River Surfing, which is basically going along grade 2-4 rapids on a bodyboard! One of the double rapids has a standing wave where you can try and stay on although to be honest fighting the speed of the river makes it a brief stay! I Basically you have to go backwards down the river, then kick really hard to fight against it when you hit the wave. River surfing was fun but really hard work fighting the river when you needed to cross the channel. The final rapid was a 800m grade 4 run which was incredible, duck diving into the rapids and attempting to exert some control over where you are going (didn't manage that bit too well, fortunately the instructors weren't too far away!).

After all this activity, the sun set on our time in Queenstown. All that remained was a flight back to Auckland, which turned into another of those NZ normal transport cum incredible scenic ride. The pilot pointed out the endless sights - starting by taking off alongside the Remarkables, over Lake Wanaka and then Mount Cook with the Franz Josef glacier beside it. It was some scenic flight and this from a low-cost airline! It made me appreciate more the geography of the south island, seeing all island, seeing all these places that had taken us hours to get to by road closely tucked in to each other in the Southern Alps.

Take care,

Tom