New Zealand is where extreme sports happen and Queenstown is the mecca. If you have some crazy idea, you can probably find someone in NZ to do it, wearing clothing is always optional. I took advantage and got to do some crazy things that I always wanted to do or never considered. Sky diving has always been on the top of my extreme list and I fulfilled it in Abel Tasmin, over the national park. Although I honestly didn´t appreciate too much of the view as I was falling from an airplane to my potential death (not really), but the thrill and rush is unbelievable. I had an awesome instructor, Jason, who was just a few jumps away from his 10,000th sky dive. I decided to get my hair-raising experience on tape and had a video cameraman jumping with me too. I was pretty calm and confident until about 10 seconds before I was to fall from the plane 13,000 ft in the air. We did a quick spin from the plane and then were off, falling... the air is rushing past you so fast that your brain cannot comprehend how high up you are or how quickly you are falling. It is shocking and terrifying, then amazing and exhilarating, then peaceful and beautiful. All those emotions in just about 8 minutes. There were about 6 of us that all went for our first time jump that day and we all got to share the mixed emotions together.
Probably my highlight of NZ was doing the glacier climbing in Fraz Josef. I did a full day climb and spent about 6 hours on the glacier, going into crevices, between the glacier walls, and over the melting ravines. The ice got so so blue the deeper and further into the glacier we went. It was spectacular to see and unlike anything I had been so close to or inside before. It definitely beats your daily ice cube. The ice in the glacier is always changing and everyday the guides need to find new paths to take people on, often carving through the glacier walls with their ice picks to get to new openings in the ice. As we got further inside the glacier the walls started to get smaller and tighter, many times we had to twist our bodies to get through some archways. As we continued our hike suddenly things came to a stop and after awhile we found out that we were stuck in the glacier and the guides couldn't get us through it. That meant that we were going to have to climb out of it. It was so cold just standing between two giant ice cubes that Team Sweden put on some music that they had on their cell phone. We all started dancing to "Poker Face" and it will always remind me of being in the glacier and dancing to keep warm. Eventually a rope was secured and we had to climb with our crampons up this wall of ice. It was an amazing experience, you could even say it was chilling.
I had never had a huge desire to bungy jump, but when in Rome... so I decided to take the plunge while in Queenstown. I jumped, really you run off, from "The Ledge" which is a 47 m drop on a ledge that is 400 meters above Queenstown. I was pretty scared right before I jumped and had a few false starts. I was not nearly as brave as my friend Paul who went before me in just his underwear. He isn´t the only clothesless guy that does this. When I finally went, in full cartoon style, after going off the ledge my legs continued to move like I was still running. We lovingly referred to it as the chicken legs move. Once I jumped all I could see was that the ground was so so far away, although I knew I wasn´t going to be falling 400m it was still so scary. A few seconds later it is over and I could hear all the cheering from my friends that came to see us "go off the ledge". After the jump we all enjoyed the go-carts above the city and the amazing views around us.
Queenstown offers lots of other crazy sports and it seems that sky diving was an option at almost every town or city that we visited. The craziest thing there was to do was jumping from one of the highest bungees in the world, The Nevis, which is a 134m bungy. We watched all of our friends DVD tapes of this and it is one of the scariest things I have ever seen. 8 full seconds of free fall with just a rope attached to you. Way too extreme for me. Queenstown is also a huge party town, with lots of bars and clubs that go late into the night. For most of us this was our last stop together and we took full advantage of the nightlife most of us going late into the morning at World Bar. Additionally Queenstown is home of the Ferge Burger, an amazing burger place offering hamburgers big enough to feed multiple people or one guy for the entire day. Good times.
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