Green with NZ: Veni, Vedi, Bungy (Apr. 13-15)

Deciding to skip Stewart Island for the time being due to the spell of bad weather, we left Invercargill, and hopefully its rainy and cold southwesterlies, for Queenstown to the north. As we drove up to Queenstown through increasing altitudes, rain turned to snow and sleet, and many of the Otago mountainsides were frosted with a fresh coat. Congrats if you picked April 13^th as the day we’d first see snow here!

If you’re unfamiliar with Queenstown, it’s basically a ski town on steroids, full of nightclubs and seemingly home to every extreme activity you can think of, and some you probably haven’t heard of. Jetboating, skydiving, whitewater rafting, several flavors of bungee jumping, paragliding are all on the menu, not to mention winter sports, in season. If there’s a possible way to deliver an adrenalin rush, an entrepreneur in Queenstown is probably selling it.

We’re not exactly sure how Queenstown became the adrenalin-fueled burg it is, but a bunch of is probably due to its location, perhaps the best in NZ, which is certainly saying something. It’s wedged in a relatively small stretch of land between the picturesque Remarkables mountain range and similarly stunning Lake Wakatipu, providing gorgeous backdrops from most vantages. Part of the town consists of a heavily-developed narrow peninsula that has caused me to decide that God, or whoever designed the topography in the area, is obviously a fan of high-rent real estate. No other explanation makes sense.

Unfortunately for the town, the past decade of growth seems to be both good and bad, as there doesn’t seem like there’s much of a coherent plan for the heaps of developments and apartment buildings shooting up on most of the developable mountainside. Between that and the thrill-seeking/party scene, Queenstown has an odd out-of-control energy for what is essentially a small-to-medium sized ski resort town, especially in NZ. It might just be the country’s most “remarkable” and dynamic town.

Thus, we definitely had to do Queenstown at some point; it’s just a moral imperative. I’d say most of the activities are aimed at the club-hopping, college-age set, but the town does have a bunch to offer to all ages, so long as you bring your credit cards. We’ve remarked before that with its tourism-driven economy, there’s no shortage of things to do in NZ as long as you’ve got a good budget to work with. But I dare say that Queenstown elevates it to a new level, and makes it all look appealing. You almost get to feeling, “Hey I’m in Queenstown, I definitely need to go bungy jumping, skydiving, jetboating, and paragliding this week!” before reason takes hold of you and you calculate that it would blow a jetboat-sized hole in your trip budget.

Still, I figured, when in Queenstown…So I went to do the Nevis bungy jump, one of the highest in the world at 134m. It’s a pretty amazing set-up they have for the jump, with a metal pod hanging from a metal cable strung up above a canyon outside of town. You take a cable car (like the skyline ride at an amusement park) out to the pod, and in a nice touch, the floor in the car is metal grating, so you can see the 500 or so foot drop below you. With the anticipation of the jump and the wind blowing the car around, it definitely gets the heart pumping.

At Nevis, the jumping order is set from heaviest to lowest, and I fell in the middle of the distribution, so I got to watch a number of jumpers go first. After watching a bunch of girls go before me, my main concern was looking cool and confident as possible for my jump DVD. That thought works until they strap you up in the dentist chair next to the platform, at which point even the coolest dudes shuffle over to the edge, trying not to look down.

Was it scary? Heck yeah, but the thing I remember most is a surreal feeling of “It’s weird that I’m about to jump off this ledge,” and then jumping, followed by about 8-9 seconds of free-fall. What a rush! It’s really tough to describe, but it’s quite a cool feeling to fall that far that fast, and not end up smushed on the canyon floor. Even watching the DVD now, I find it strange watching that really good-looking guy jump off the platform, like it’s not quite real. Surreal. Right now I have a few pictures that give an idea of the jump, if I figure out how to rip the DVD and post a video of it, I’ll do that as well.

Besides the bungy we did a nice hike up to a vantage point above Queenstown and rode the gondola down. We also stayed a night in Arrowtown, a nearby much slower-paced town that reminded us of many Vermont towns with its picture-perfect quaintness, but with many more Japanese tourists. From what we could see there’ll be a lot of pictures of the Arrowtown post office going back to the Land of the Rising Sun.

Overall, we enjoyed a few well-deserved days of postcard weather with beautiful foliage in the Otago highlands; this is seriously gorgeous country. Compared to the bungy, hiking might seem a bit anti-climactic, but even though I’ll always remember NZ’s adrenaline-filled pursuits, the pleasures of a nice (and free) hike on a gorgeous day are seriously tough to beat.