Squeaky Bum Day
Trip Start
Jun 11, 2008
1
153
349
Trip End
May 14, 2009
Queenstown,
South Island,
New Zealand
Friday, October 31, 2008
It had been a good night!
Movement in the dorm started around 10.30am. Apparently the cleaners had walked in and walked straight back out again within a second. They were last seen heading for intensive care. Obviously, all in the room were oblivious to this wonderful aroma....until we went out and came back in again. We were dropping like flies!
That's probably enough about that. Me, Adam, Lauren & Chris were picked up at 12noon for our Canyon Swing. Lorna also came along to watched. She wasn't too bothered about throwing herself off a cliff today! When we got to the site, it began to sink in how high we were - oh dear! There were actually loads of photos and videos around of all the famous people that have done this as well. I wasn't aware that this activity was that well known.
Anyway, as I described yesterday, it's a big drop then as the rope kicks in you are sent swinging across the canyon. Obviously at first, you are basically just free falling off the cliff at 150kmph!
My first jump was called the Pin Drop, and although it looks straight forward, it is classed as the scariest. You put your hands behind your back and keep them there all the time. You also need to look down all the time for added adrenaline rush. But the killer is, you have to jump yourself. You just hop to the left! As in the Time Warp - "It's just a jump to the left"...."then a sh*t to the riiiiiigggght"! The two guys who strap you up put their hands on you arm to make sure you don't leg it, but they aren't allowed to push you on this jump - you have to do it yourself (on photos & video it looks like they push, but trust me they don't!). Got to say I was changing the colour of my underwear as I stood there, but as soon as they said it was safe to go, I just flung myself off - it was absolutely awesome. The beauty is that after the rush of just freefalling and hoping the rope kicks in, you then get the added bonus of being flung across the canyon and swinging back & forth! After the jump I spoke to Lorna and it seems she was more nervous than me!
Think that was mad, well I did another jump. This one was called the Elvis Cutaway. The jump guys said the best two jump combo to do was a forwards one, like the Pin Drop, then a backwards one. This is so you get both aspects of the fall. This time I was suspended facing upwards with my legs folded around the rope. The longer you keep your legs round the rope, the longer you stay upside down. Then when the guys are just casually talking to you about the dangers, they just cut you loose without warning! This was awesome.
Both jumps gave me such an adrenaline rush. Really was a great activity. When they asked me to put down my comments of when I first saw the drop, I put "First my eyes popped, then my arse did!".
We were all buzzing on the way back into town and went for a subway to relax. By the way, Queenstown is a really nice quaint town. We really have enjoyed our time here. We stopped at Base Backpackers and it was very clean and friendly here.
At about 3pm we were off again. This time up the gondola to do 6 luge rides. The views from the gondola and from the viewpoint at the top were immense. Just for the ride and the views it was worth the money. On the way up we went past The Ledge Bungy Jump. We all said that it looked really tame compared to the Canyon Swing.
We also got a chairlift to the start of the luge track, which we had to after each run. This was also fun and another little added bonus. The luge races were brilliant fun. There were 12 of us all bombing down the tracks like maniacs, it was great. A lot of times you were going that fast you were up on 2 wheels! I discovered that Lorna is a psycho luge driver. I have decided to keep her away from the campervan steering wheel in Australia.
After the fun of the luge, we got the gondola back into town absolutely knackered. Me & Lorna decided to go for pizza and do a bit of uploading of photos to T'internet. Afterwards we had to get ourselves sorted for our walk along the Milford Track. We are getting dropped off in Te Anau tomorrow and our driver, Nana, has kindly offered to drop one of our big bags off at Milford Lodge so that it's there for when we finish our walk in 5 days time. So, we had to sort out what we were taking with us on the hike and what we wanted to send on to Milford.
As it happens, everyone had decided to chill out in our dorm for the night, so we got to have a chat and a laugh whilst we packed. We also said our goodbye's to everyone as we would be leaving at 6.30am in the morning.
Got to say, we are really looking forward to walking the World famous Milford Track.
Comments
canyon swing!
We think your CRAZY!