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Right, as you may have guessed this blog is not/has never been up-to-date, but I am steadily catching up. Enjoy this next installment.
We left the Fox Glacier and made our way to a beautiful town just north of Queenstown called Lake Wanaka. We parked up and hired kayaks for round 2. This time they were decent!! The lady told us a good trip was to head out to an island in the middle of the lake, explore that and then head back. We liked this idea, so off we all went. It took us about 45 minutes to get there, and no one fell in. It felt like a great achievement. However, our arms were aching and we were pretty hot. Luckily the island had a jetty and we all ran straight for it and off into the lake. The water was incredibly deep so we proceeded to start diving competitions for the next half an hour. It was great fun, and with the surrounding landscape being so stunning it was quite surreal. The kayaking back hurt even more but it was an awesome afternoon.
The rain came down overnight and so the next morning we headed out to play mini-golf. We then headed for Queenstown - "the adventure capital of the world." Some people had told us that Queenstown was over-rated, but we were optimistic. The tourist information centre told us to try out the gondala, that takes you up the mountain and gives you wonderful views over the town and surrounding landscape. She was not wrong. The one thing that we were all amazed by was the situation of the town - it was by a vast, beautiful lake with mountains all around, not what we had expected. At the top of the mountain was a luge ride - basically a go-kart with no engine, it just lets gravity take over. We all had 3 goes on this, and having expected it to be a bit dull, we actually found it to be wicked fun. As you are so low to the ground, with no belt or anything to hold you in, you feel you are traveling very very fast and we had a few races and bumps. It was a good afternoon, having expected the day to be a write off.
What I forgot to mention about the first day, was that as soon as we arrived, we booked ourselves onto the Nevis Bungy for 2pm the following day. We spent the morning chilling around town. The town itself is just a couple of streets, but every shop is either a bar or an adventure shop. It is a really cool place, full of backpackers and people looking for a thrill. The only trouble with it is that there is nothing to do that doesn't cost a lot of money.
Anyway, at 2pm we got picked up and we headed out to the Nevis. It is off the beaten track, on private land so people cannot watch who are not jumping. Once you are there you see this cable car suspended across this valley and you start thinking crazy thoughts. All the employees are not that helpful as they continually tell you how scary it is out there. We got weighed, as they do it in weight order and we went out to the cable car via this little open air pod - adding to the thrill. Once there you wait your turn, watching everyone jump until its time. Tom, my travel buddy, was first out of all 22 people there. He also has a fear of heights. Never fear - he jumped first time and a good one it was too. It settled everyone down and the man became a bit of a hero among us. I was 7th up. They sit you down in this dentist chair and strap you in, and tell you, you must jump out head first. You cannot jump feet first on this bungy, or you will hurt yourself a lot. I stood on the edge, with a fierce wind blowing into my face, the cable car was swaying around and time did stand still for a bit. I couldn't hear anything, there was just this silence in my mind while I thought about the drop. I heard a count of 3 in my ear and I went. It was just awesome!! Free falling, once again, is unreal. It was a strange sensation because you are heading for the ground head first, you cannot feel the harness and I couldn't even feel the moment when my bungy rope reached its limit. It was also silent, I didn't scream - no one did, you just fall and enjoy it. Its so high, that unlike the other bungy jumps, you really fall and notice it - it takes 8.4 seconds from jumping to reach the point when the bungy cord stops you hitting the ground. I thought bouncing back up and down a few times was going to be fun, but in truth I didn't really notice - it was hard to tell if you were going up or down at this point. The next part was getting back up - they haul you back up suspended in mid air, hanging. It was actually great fun because it was over so I just hung there looking around. The higher you got, the scarier it became though and I was eventually very glad to be back on safe grounds. It was a great experience, one I would definitely repeat again!! I went back to the main building and watched my dvd on the large tv and checked out the photos. I decided it was definitely worth buying them, especially for the parents and grandparents to watch.
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