Queenstown

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Trip Start Nov 05, 2007 Previous
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  Queenstown, New Zealand
Sunday, February 10, 2008

We've been in Queenstown about a week now. The place is fairly sweet. It's easy to see how people get sucked into staying here for months. It's probably the adrenaline capital of the world. The streets are full of shops offering adventure this and that. There's a lash of brochures in every hostel trying to get your business for numerous bungy jumps, sky-dives, canyon swings, rafting, hang-glidieing...everything you can think of. It's not a town to get bored in. On top of that there are plenty of bars. There's something surreal about the whole place. I was watching 'back to the future' on the box this morning in the hostel with my tea and all you could see out the window was paragliders and parachutes float by.

One day we went jetboating. It was a better thrill than i expected. The driver did a couple of good 360spins at full speed. He narrowly missed a bridge and a few poles along the way. The camera got soaked, it's probably on it's last legs

360 spin video

. After that we jumped into a helicopter which took us up through the valleys and mountains. The pilot wasn't afraid to weave in and out of the valleys at full speed and turn the chopper at the weirdest of angles. We landed down by a river and got our wetsuits on for some white-water rafting. There were a few decent rapids, but if it were winter here i'd say it would have been lethal. One of the best parts of the course was towards the end when we went through a long dark tunnel before hitting some rapids. We always seem to attract the weirdest guides who love nothing more than working you into the ground - our guide was a maori lad called 'chief', who enjoyed barking the orders from his cosy seat at the back of the raft.

Yesterday i ran off a cliff with a hang-glider. There's a serious rush as you leave the edge and get sucked up into the sky. After a while i thought it was fairly peaceful up in the clouds but the instructor next to me was having none of it and pointed the glider straight towards the ground. The speed of the thing was crazy. Landing was hilarious. Your face is at the front of the glider and your feet are behind, as you approach the ground your face is touching off the grass as you bomb along. Then you stop. Good buz. Those hang-glider lads have a sweet deal. Just flying about all day. When they're not flying they are talking about it...they chatter on about thermals, glider loading weights bla bla.

So we leave here tomorrow after a week. This place will be missed.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures & Videos

Cablecar up to the luge track	chicane	cruiseing along in the wetland	dangerous spin
DJ getting some action	don't want to mess with these hogs	floating along	flying high
getting dressed up for the whitewater rafting	glideing	glideing along nicely	good 360 spin
Hang-glide landing video!!!!!!!!!!!! worth a look	jetboating through the trees	luge track	near Queenstown
outside qtown	over the valley	pointing at something	qtown lake
Queenstown	Queenstown lake (lake wakitipu)	ready to run off that cliff and glide	speeding under the bridge
T and Myself dressed like Ninjas b4 the rafting	take-off	the 3 of us with the jetboating gear	the cablecar down to qtown
the chicane on the luge track	the hang-glide valley	the hang-glider	the jetbaot
the mad cheif playing the guitar at the back	the magic bus - our transport	the Queenstown lake	the raft
the shallow water - the boat cruises down to 10cm	the shotover jetboat - some machine	turning	video from above qtown
video over the lake and qtown	View from the hostel dorm window	view over the valley before jumping over the edge	wink

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