5-4-3-2-1-BUNJY!!!!!!!

So the adrenaline filled town of Queenstown is upon us after the long wait! Coming from the beautiful and relaxing Milford we were well keen to step things up a few gears so straight away we booked up a whole bunch of activities and completely rinsed any remaining funds on our poor credit cards! We then went to sample the night life in Queenstown with their countless bars and clubs surely a great night was in order...Wrong!! After the bloke from our hostel who we went out with was telling us how good the previous night was (a bloody Wednesday!) the night we got there (Thursday) was a washout!

Going down, down, down

The following morning we met Sam's distant long lost second cousin or something - Jamie. We then went on the cable car gondola up to the Luge where you bomb down a track in little more than a tea-tray with a brake. But on the way up on the spur of the moment Jamie knew one of the girls working on the Ledge bungy jump which was next door to the Luge for free - how could we refuse! We thought it would serve as a good warm up for the big one which we would do on Sunday - The Nevis! The Ledge stood at 47m overlooking Queenstown and because it was my (Pipe) first bungy jump I was still personally a little nervous but the leap was made much easier because you can take a running jump so you don't have to stand their looking over the edge! That evening we went out with Jamie (top fella!) and a load of his crazy mates and had a cracker of an evening - about time too! We drank a copious amount of locally brewed beer commencing from happy hour which began at 5pm until the wee hours!

Pipe exiting the Nevis cable car!!!!

The following morning feeling somewhat fragile we met at 8am to go white water rafting - exactly what we needed! We were put in a raft with 4 small Asian's and the member of staff we were assigned was a huge Maori geezer known as The Chief - think of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest! Chief was similar to a crazy drill sergeant and didn't take to kindly to these 2 hungover and quite frankly useless English bums! After some serious ball breaking and even getting demoted to the second row of the raft we woke up and began to be useful - ha ha!

In the afternoon we had a go on the Shotover Jet, which is similar to a speedboat but uses a special hybrid engine which moves by displacing water at a ferocious rate. We were going at 80km down the river in as little as 10cm of water and getting as close to the rock faces as humanely possible! The jets pilot was supremely skilled as we could quite literally touch the rocks as we flew past them!

Sam on the gondola up to the Luge and The Ledge!

After a quiet recovery night watching England lose to the Kiwis at Rugby (no surprise there then) we psyched ourselves up for the one we had been waiting for - The Nevis Bungy!! The tallest in NZ (possibly 3rd biggest in world?!) standing at 134m (440ft) with a 8.5 second freefall! After an excruciating 45 minute bus ride up to the hills to prolong the agony even more we went out in the cable car suspended between 2 cliffs in the pouring rain and I have never been so scared in my life - my heart was pounding at a crazy rate of knots! To sum it up I will call on a quote from a well known philosopher when faced with a similar situation - "Even my Shit was scared" (Dool, 2006)...sorry mum!

The Ledge - warm-up Jump!