Queenstown, 13th March 2010
After our day
conquering the Franz Josef Glacier, we booked ourselves back onto the Naked Bus
(no nudity required thankfully), to take us to Queenstown, the expensive
adrenaline-junkie capital of New Zealand. We left Glow Worm hostel, and our
temporary travelling companion Dafna behind. We weren’t too sorry to be leaving
either one – Glow Worm was a lot more quiet than Chateau Franz where we’d spent
the night before (all the changing was due to our lack of pre-booking anywhere),
and the hot tub was broken! As for Dafna, she was quite..blunt. She happily
told us that, except for Elaine and myself, all Irish people were fat (she was
bigger than both of us but we kept that to ourselves)!
We hopped on the
bus only to find Dafna already in place in the bus, talking of changing her
plans (again) to join in with us. We encouraged that she see what she wanted to
see and made our way to the back of the bus, where we collected another
straggler, Vince. Vince had just finished a 6-month stint as a glacier guide,
something which Elaine and I enquired about but were told you had to sign up
for a minimum of two years (we may have been lied to!). Needless to say, we
were still on our high from the glacier and quizzed poor Vince for the first
hour (ish) on the ins and outs of possibly the coolest job I’ve ever come
across! Thankfully, Vince was also quite chatty as we found out for the other 5
hours of the trip, which flew by.
We got to
Queenstown hoping to organise accommodation at the last minute again..not a
good idea in Queenstown as all the places we wanted to go to were full, so we
ended up going to Base Backpackers Hostel. Oh God. It seemed lovely when we got
in there, in the late afternoon, the rooms were cheap and there was a bar next
door with cheap food and drinks offers. Warning sign number one. We threw our
bags onto the nearest available-looking bunk bed in our 8-bed dorms and grabbed
dinner and then went to the cinema – a genius idea after sitting on a bus all
day! (We laughed solidly through “From Paris With Love”, which turned out to be
not only slightly racist, but not a comedy.)
When we got back
to Base, the party was just getting started –warning sign number two. We bought
some pricey internet cards and faffed around there since there was only one TV
room for the entire monster-sized hostel which was, of course, packed to the
rafters. When we eventually decided to go to try and sleep (I’m still amazed at
how I’m tired after a day-long bus journey, what have I done other than sit around
and eat carrot sticks and hummus?), we discovered that Base was just a summer
camp for 18-19 year old English gap year students masquerading as a hostel.
Blindfolds and iPods/earplugs were sorely needed to stay here. Elaine and I
envied Vince, who was leaving the following morning, as we’d already booked in
for five nights. When I’m sleep deprived, it’s not pretty, it’s closer to the
Exorcist (especially if combined with an empty stomach)!
We said goodbye
to Vince and got to know Queenstown, which didn’t take long but was still
breathtaking. The lake stretched into the horizon and was surrounded by the
hulking Remarkables, like huge bodyguards. We then decided that if we gave
ourselves more time to think about things, we’d never do the bungy jump that
we’d been talking about since we arrived in Christchurch – we wanted those free
T-shirts! We booked in for the following morning, after a minor barrage of
questions regarding safety and likelihood of injuries (or death). We spent the
rest of the day and night talking about our imminent jump, not sure if it was
helping our nerves or making the whole thing worse. We went for a quiet two
drinks in Monty’s to reduce the time spent in bed in Base as we didn’t think
much sleep would come to us for a number of reasons this time!
On the 13th, we
had a very light breakfast and headed to AJ Hackett to sign in, with my heart
starting to kick up a fuss already.. Here we were introduced to a Brazilian
girl, who seemed to be sick with nerves, by one of the staff who was trying to
show us how to go faster when we jump – I politely nodded but ignored anything
that involved more speed whilst flying through the air on an elastic band. The
poor Brazilian girl was on the verge of tears the entire time we were talking
to her – she kept asking incredulously “Are you guys not nervous?” because we
kept laughing, she clearly couldn’t differentiate between laughing and laughing
hysterically.
We hopped on the
bus to the Nevis Bungy Jump, each of us having our private moments with our
iPods to keep our minds off the task at hand. A vision of what was to come
passed by on our left as we drove past the bridge over the turquoise Kawarau
River where the Kawarau Bungy of a measly 43m was located, it seemed huge when
we passed by. I started to get positively edgy when we turned onto a dirt track
(referred to by the driver as a goat track, maybe because it was so steep?),
which was such a challenge for the bus to get up that we needed to stop halfway
up, change into first gear and attack it a second time. Once we reached the top
of the hill, we came face to face with the Nevis Swing – a giant pendulum with
a person (or two) attached to the bottom of the rope instead of the little
steel balls in an office (and without the other four little steel balls to
clack up against, thankfully). My stomach dropped back to the bottom of the
goat track as we drove further on to the bungy area, where there was a cable
car with people jumping out of it at regular intervals. At this stage I was a
mixture of excitement and nerves, because deep down I knew I’d be too stubborn
to back out (there were no refunds if you changed your mind), and even deeper
down I knew I’d survive.
We got harnessed
up and took photos of each other (at this stage the Brazilian girl had sprinted
from the bus to the bathrooms, her fight or flight had decided it wanted her to
flee) before we got the cable car over. This was almost definitely the worst
part, it was really windy and the cable car was like the baskets in a hot air
ballon, but steel and with a bar to clip your harness onto. As a result, we
were swinging around inside and by the time we crashed against the receiver for
the cable car in the middle of the valley/canyon, my heart was pounding so
loudly I thought it’d drown out the metal that was playing in the bungy centre.
We got there in
time to see the Brazilian girl pass out as she was on the platform, she had to
be dragged to the seating area as we all looked on, wondering was it really
that scary from the platform?
Since we went
according to weight, I went before Elaine, who stood by to take photos of the
momentous occasion. I gave up trying to pretend I wasn’t nervous and instead
tried to smile for the cameras that were all over the shop – I don’t think I
convinced anyone, especially the hot guy who was in charge of the bungy cord
(in a way, I’m glad he wasn’t distracted).
When I got up to
the platform, shuffling like a penguin since my feet were tied together in a
warped three-legged race, I asked the instructor if I could hold onto his arm
to help edge to the edge – he politely said “Not really, no”, makes sense now!
By the time I was spreading my arms out wide and listening to the famous
countdown, I was taking deep breaths because I didn’t want to pass out either.
Then suddenly, I had just launched myself 143 metres in the air with no safety
net below me, just a valley with a river below it which still looked like a
thin strip even as I sped toward it. The screaming started about halfway down –
the first half was predominantly shock and realisation at what I had done, my
curious nature had forced me to jump out of a perfectly lovely building – but
the screams of fear changed to excitement and joy as I felt myself being pulled
gently back upwards, realising that the giant rubber band was a success and I
was going to survive the ordeal.
On the second
upwards bounce I was enjoying myself nearly too much to remember to pull the
foot release, which meant I tumbled free like a ragdoll so that I could be
pulled back up right way up, instead of upside down like Elaine (at that stage
all the blood was well and truly in her head and red face). The return journey
was spectacular, I was delighted to have survived my first (and possibly last)
bungy jump, and it was also a perfect moment to calm down a bit after the flood
of adrenaline the burst through the synapses shortly beforehand. The cursing
started when I got back up but I got my words back by the time Elaine completed
her jump.
Like the easy
marks that we were, we of course bought the photos and video footage of the
jumps, encouraging each other with the mantra of the trip – “When will you ever
do this again?” or the other rational argument – “When will we ever be back
here?”. With that logic, we may have to skip the country due to a string of bad
debts in a few weeks’ time! We got free T-shirts though..bargain.
We buzzed back to
Queenstown, still applauding each other on our extreme bravery, in time to book
in for a pole dancing party with some of the girls in the hostel, we were just
going for the free champagne and a girls night.
Turns out pole
dancing is really hard, and it could be a sport if it didn’t have to take place
in darkened rooms filled with mirrors, in the equivalent of a bikini (we got to
wear shorts and T-shirts though). Our group of 5 was actually quite good, and
the glass of champagne at the start helped us to feel less stupid about the
whole thing. By the end of the 2-hour session, we were aching from pulling our
weight on our arms the whole time, laughing our heads off, and I had a new
found respect for pole dancers, their core strength is amazing. That said
though, i wouldn’t be encouraging young girls to take it up if they don’t enjoy
your “average” sports!
By the time we
got back to Base, a pub crawl (Big Night Out) had just started, and so we
decided we’d just tag along with that. We had adopted a “sure we might as well
just join in with them” approach to staying in Base, plus we were still on a
high from our busy day’s activities. We did a quick costume change (and
reapplied the ole make up), and off we went. What we learned was that all of
the people on the pub crawl were on the Kiwi Experience bus (which had been
given another name due to the promiscuous nature of its passengers), and they
were all very cliquey and stayed within their own groups. We carried on
regardless (troopers that we are), and ended up chatting to random drips and
drabs of people in the various pubs we stopped in. I ended up being given a
Jagerbomb from the pub crawl leader, and Elaine and I were given free pizza
slices from a Cork fella purely because we were Irish! This all kept us fizzing
along until we fell into the beds, and strangely sleep wasn’t a problem that
night (but I can’t speak for our roommates).
