Milford Sound to Queenstown - Day 269
Trip Start
Jan 31, 2008
1
190
251
Trip End
Ongoing
Queenstown,
South Island,
New Zealand
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Woke up this morning just after sunrise to a rather eerie looking view over the mountains which were steeped in mist and a new covering of snow. Last nights sleep as expected was pretty poor. Think it will be the tent from now on or maybe I'll try the front seat one night to see if that's any better.
Drove back to Queenstown this morning as the skies began to clear offering better views of the surrounding landscape than yesterday. Made a few stops along the way to enjoy this beautiful part of the world. It's amazing what a few glaciers, 7 metres of rainfall a year and a few million years can do to the landscape. Stopped of in Te Anau before reaching Queenstown by mid morning. Booked back into the Hippo lodge tonight before heading north tomorrow towards Mount Cook. I enquired at the lodge about doing a sky drive, can't visit Queenstown without doing something adrenaline fuelled. Anyway I had a shower and a think. I thought sod it, why not! It's one of those things you need to do before you die (Just hope I don't die doing it) and it's a lot cheaper here compared to home. So one hour after making the booking, I'm putting a jump suit on and being strapped to a Bulgarian sky diver called Kras. The weather conditions were absolutely perfect with a few wisps of cloud over the lake and surrounding mountains. We took off from a immaculately keep grass air strip only 20 minutes from Queenstown. Six of us squeezed into the back of a New Zealand build propeller plane and within seconds we were in the air. The plane climbed at over 1000 feet a minute and the views over the lake were stunning, the biggest surrounding peaks are 6000 feet and we began to tower over these mole hills, eventually climbing to 12000 feet. The plane levelled off and the Perspex door flung open with a cold rush of air filling the cabin. Two tandems jumped out before me, then it was my turn. We shuffled to the door and I looked over the precipice. I was surprising calm, I had no fear at all. Sometimes I think my lack of fear is going to get me into trouble one day. Then we jumped, a cold blast of air blew up my nose. WOW, what a rush! Had 45 seconds of free fall and reached 200kph before the chaos turned to calm after a sudden jolt of the parachute being deployed. Then the wind completely stopped and the views of the landscape were so beautiful. It took 5 minutes to drift back to down to Terra firma after doing a few spirals through the air just for fun. We made a perfect landing, what a rush! I want to it again! Think I might have just acquired another expensive hobby, shit!
Returned back to Queenstown to contemplate my experience. A pretty cool job to jump out of planes for a living. I'll add it to my potential jobs list for my post travelling life.
