29.11.09 - 01.12.09 Queenstown - Otago

We journey up from Te Anau to Queenstown on a beautiful sunny day which helps to illuminate the mighty peaks and rolling hills of the Lake Wakatipu region. The lake itself is huge and shaped in an L with the resort town of Queenstown located on its banks on the corner of the L. Queenstown is the most frequented of all New Zealand and, as such, is a little disappointing in its lack of authenticity- even the operators working behind the counters of the trillions of adrenalin sports booking offices are tourists themselves and have little local knowledge. The town certainly has money with its impressive array of plush lakeside apartments and swish holiday chateaux. It's known as the adrenalin capital of New Zealand because it offers bungies by the bus load, jet boating, sky diving, paragliding and the highest swing in the world.

Our first taste of this is a trip in the Shotover River Jetboating expeience, a 1/2 hour trip through the narrow gorges of Shotover Canyon, our driver missing the sharp protruding rocks by centimetres and performing 360 degree turns in the shallow waters at very high speeds. Cool! After surviving this first activity we slow down a bit and spend the following day trekking the end of the Routeburn Track from glorious Glenorchy, at the other end of the lake, where the scenery is specifically reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands. The day is not so sunny and we actually start out with hats and gloves. But these are soon shed as we pick up our pace through the beech forests gently climbing uphill for about 2 hours. The path then gets steeper and we have to negotiate our way past avalanches, one of which completely destroyed the path in 1994 and is still very treacherous in bad weather.

It's very impressive, the power of the rocks and the water shows its evidence of its force in the fantastically eroded twists and turns of the numerous waterfalls we pass over on suspension bridges. We reach the summit pass for lunchtime and choose a picnic spot right up in the hidden valley of craggy peaks, a calm oasis away from the freezing winds. It's an eerie place up here especially with the cloud cover descending over the tops of the mountains. Unfortunately we can't continue any further because it's time to turn back so we begin the 3 1/2 hour descent back to the shelter. We've covered 24km today, so that's another tally to add to our book. The next day we make the interesting decision of doing the highest swing in the world, the Nevis Arc. I say interesting because, having done it, I 'think' I can say I did enjoy it but it's very difficult to remember the exact feelings I had when the trapeze that was holding us both, suspended 164m over the canyon floor was released into tens of seconds of freefall before catching it taut and swinging us gently across the expanse, our feet dangling in mid air. I think it was feelings of intense fright and the sensation of vast amounts of air whizzing past us as we dropped though the air, letting gravity do its work. Wowee!

after doing the highest swing in the world