19/11: Queenstown...Adrenaline Center of the World
Queenstown did not disappoint. 2 ski resorts in town and even though they were closed for the season, just the sight of chairlifts was pleasing and the vibe of the town screamed, “hip ski town with lots of hot girls and healthy people that love going fast.” My kind of place. We checked into the caravan park and hit the town for a walk around. I led us straight to the AJ Hackett Bungee Jumping Center, where I booked for 9am the next morning the Nevis Canyon Bungee, the highest legal bungee in NZ, 134m freefall which starts from a highwire cabin suspended over a gorge that requires access by a little cable car of sorts, so sick. We decided that I would do the bungee in the morning and Mom and I would do the Canyon Swing together in the afternoon. So with both those booked we spent the afternoon strolling around the town, enjoying sunset over the lake, and taking in a Mexican food dinner, so excited to eat a burrito, I never miss a chance when I get one. We went back to the caravan park for a mellow night in since I had to be up early the next morning to make my bungee appointment.
At the Center at 15 minutes to 8 to catch the 8 o’clock bus to the jumpsite. Classic to read the faces of all who have signed up; the first timers, the scared out of their minders, the friends along for the ride who look scared too, the confidently nervous, the cool and collected and the totally amped out of their minds. I was found in between the 2 latter categories, between a really cool Irish lad named John who had come to Queenstown specifically to do this jump and then bail to catch his plane in Christchurch before heading home, and another loony toon from England who was hell bent to make the jump naked and even more hell bent to let everyone know this.
When we arrived to the jumpsite I rushed to the edge of the gorge to have a look at the jump platform and I was not disappointed. So high it looks high. Perfect. Back to the bathroom to push out the nervous urine and then on with the harness to get this party started. Mr. Skin was already nakey and into his harness, covering himself with a T-shirt to the relief of all of us. They weighed us in, the heaviest people would be jumping first ending with the lightest, I suppose they want to test the bungee on the heaviest guy/gal first and then maybe only lose one jumper should it fail, anyway, I wasn’t first so I wasn’t worried. First up happened to be Mr. Skin and I got to watch his freefall from the confines of the 6 person transport from the cliff edge to the jumpsite. It was beautiful, the whole scene I mean, not Mr. Skin, the leap and freefall, the smooth extension of the bungee, the scream of fear and excitement. We were jumping.
I got to jump around 6th I think. The jump master was named Sully, so we had something in common besides being adrenaline junkies and hit it off immediately, though our friendship would last around 30 seconds while he double checked my harness and helped me to scoot to the edge of the “diving board”, a 1’ by 1’ platform that extends beyond the edge of the 15’ x 20’ cable car hanging some 150m in the middle of Nevis Canyon. On the way to the diving board I asked him if it would be OK if I did a “gainer”, jump off forwards but slowly rotate into a backflip, “No chance,” he replied, “OK, how ‘bout I jump off backwards?”. “No can do”, he denied me again. With no amount of persuasion was I able to convince Sully that it would be OK for me to do something stupid, so to the edge of the diving board I waddled, 100m of bungee hanging from my ankles. I took a deep breath and looked out among the expanse that revealed itself all around me. The landscape was dry, dull, and surreal. The rock, shale, and small bush that lined the edges of the canyons began to merge into a sort of kaleidoscopic imagery that was I suppose induced by the adrenaline and the surreality of standing at the edge of what seemed like infinite space. I did not lose my myself or my surroundings though, turning around to give my new adrenaline forged friends a smile and a big hoot before the 3, 2, 1 countdown. Now, I know that Sully couldn’t let me jump off and do a flip, and now that jumping backwards was out of the question and all I could do was dive off forward, I figured that once I left the platform there were essentially no rules, so upon my toes leaving the edge of the diving board, I rotated my head to the left and dove into a spin that essentially gave me the view of a forward dive and the freakout of the backwards fall as I rotated around and freefell looking back up at the jumpsite and sky beyond. It was epic. I love falling. Complete lack of control at any level but total confidence that everything is going to be OK in the end. Freedom on some whacked out level of adrenaline junky justification.
The fall lasts 8 seconds and it feels like 4, the bungee was smooth and the rebound was quick. In my experience the bigger the bungee the smoother the transition from falling to rebounding, making it a more pleasant experience, but lacking in the excitement of a second or third feeling of weightlessness from the rebound. Hanging upside down looking into the canyon and up at the sky, I was delighted to be upside down in such a backwards situation and instead of pulling the pin in my waist harness that would have righted me for the ride back up to the jumpsite as they reeled me in like a fish, I decided to enjoy the upside down view. When I got back to the jumpsite, I don’t think Sully was too pleased with my style of departure, nor my return, but he wasn’t going to make a scene of it and just unhooked me and continued with the next person.
Sitting through the rest of the jumpers was like torture, I just wanted to do it again. So I got off the platform, back to the edge of the canyon, and worked myself back to reality. I met another guy, remarkably also from Novato, his name was Adam, he had just done the bungee and he was going to do the Nevis swing in a combo deal, a novelty similar to the Canyon Swing I would be doing later that afternoon, so I decided to go with him to check it out while he did the swing. The Nevis Canyon forks just above the bungee jump and over one of the forks is another set of cables suspended across the gorge with an anchor point in the middle making the biggest “swing set” you have ever seen. The Nevis guys were incredibly professional, quiet and reassuring as they harnessed Adam into the swing. The swing mechanically levers out away from the harnessing platform and then when Adam was ready they gave a 3, 2, 1 countdown and let him rip. Looked like a lot of fun, but it wasn’t bungee jumping, and I wasn’t going to fork out more cash for this, even in my adrenaline deficient come down.
Back to town and out to lunch with mom to fill her in on my morning adventures. We grabbed a big burger at the town’s famous burger joint, absolutely delicious, and mom told me about her morning hike up the mountain. Back to the van to unload what we didn’t need from our pockets and then down to the Canyon Swing HQ for a ride out to their jumpsite. It was quickly apparent that the Canyon Swing was a totally different operation from the bungee company in just about every way. They took our name and had us sign a contract, validating our participation in today’s jump by doodling on the backs of our hands with markers colorful markers, everyone got a different doodle. We passé the time waiting by watching their promotional video, all of us gathered around an LCD TV. The promo video showed that not only were there no rules in how you could jump off of the platform at the Canyon Swing, but also that the employees who controlled the jump could mess with the guests to whatever degree they felt necessary. By mess I mean, pushing them off before they were ready, teasing them with false pushes and pulling them back onto the platform, hanging them out over the gorge and making them beg to be dropped. Now certainly these were only special cases, but it was a sort of preparation for what was to come.
The van arrived for transport and the guy who drove us up the mountain was so classic. My favorite line from him was, “As we pass over this bridge, if you look out the left side of the van, you’ll miss what you could see out the right side…”, as everyone looked left and then laughed at what he had just pulled on us. Another promotional video played over the LCD TV in the van, this one was a little more preparatory, showing us what we were in for. It portrayed employees trying to figure out how a harness works, reading “Canyon Swings for Dummies” books, and generally turning the whole experience into mind numbing nervousness for the anxious and absolute hilarity for the confident. When we arrived the canyon we made our way down to the jump platform to harness up and Mom quickly volunteered to go first, no weight rules here, who wants to go, goes. They only messed with Mom a little bit, holding her out over the gorge, heels on the platform, and giving her a good shake as if to fake letting her fall. She took 2 steps back once they had finished harassing her and she let it rip with a 2 steps and a dive into the infinite. “Wooohooo”, she loved it. She came back up, a few others jumped and then she wanted to do it again so I told her to jump off backwards, a very different feeling, so she did, and she loved it again.
My turn. I chatted it up with the guy who harnessed me up, talking about different ways to jump off, I had just seen him jump off into a flat spin so I knew he would be a good one to consult. He said that in between groups they get to just session the swing and that the owner lets the employees jump as often as they want. I told him I wanted to do a gainer and he approved, one of his favorites. By now the guys all knew I was confident and that I had done the Nevis Bungee that morning, so they were pretty bent on getting me as shaken as possible. Chris, the guy who drove us up the mountain was the one running the jump platform and he was classic. He held me out over the gorge and really had me wondering if he was just going to let me fall, I mean I was really not sure if this guy would go so far as to not let me do what I wanted just to try and scare the piss out of me by letting me go when I wasn’t ready. But he didn’t, he just told me to jump away from the cliff to my left and have fun. Step 1, step 2, and I was off, back flipping through the infinite space, so good. I came back up and immediately wanted a second jump. I asked if they recommended anything and my friend that had harnessed me up suggested kart wheels…kart wheels…good one. So they set me up on the edge sideways and said to rock away, towards, away, and then over the edge and just cartwheel into the abyss. This ended up being my favorite, even better than the gainer. The way everything was just spinning in front of me and the sensation of falling sideways was so foreign, I loved it. Back for thirds, again asking for suggestions. Chris asked me if I had any shoulder issues. Shoulder issues? Nice. No, none, why? They harnessed me up real tight and then hooked me up and swung me out over the gorge. Turned me upside down and backwards and had me look back and down and let me rip. This was a really cool jump cause I was able to watch the cliff face go racing by and it was further enhanced by a group of river rafters drifting by on the current below all yelling and ooohing as I came soaring by overhead. The Canyon swing, in the end, was by far a better and more exhilarating experience than the bungee jump, proving that it’s not the size of the jump, but rather how you execute it that matters…
That night I hooked up with Matt and Erin, a great young couple from the UK that mom and I met in Milford Sound who were really cool and really excited to go out in Queenstown, being that the rest of NZ is pretty darn quiet, when you get a chance to party in NZ, you take it. Matt and Erin had both done a bungee jump earlier that day too so there were lots of stories to share and much to celebrate. We planned on doing a whole tour of the town, Matt had a pub crawl planned out, but we got to the first bar, Moose’s, and met a whole crew from my bungee jumping experience plus some other friends from Milford Sound and just ended up staying there drinking and dancing with a good band jamming live tunes til 2 am.
Queenstown was not a disappointment. Looking forward to coming back here in the winter to feel the energy when the place is fresh with pow pow.
At the Center at 15 minutes to 8 to catch the 8 o’clock bus to the jumpsite. Classic to read the faces of all who have signed up; the first timers, the scared out of their minders, the friends along for the ride who look scared too, the confidently nervous, the cool and collected and the totally amped out of their minds. I was found in between the 2 latter categories, between a really cool Irish lad named John who had come to Queenstown specifically to do this jump and then bail to catch his plane in Christchurch before heading home, and another loony toon from England who was hell bent to make the jump naked and even more hell bent to let everyone know this.
When we arrived to the jumpsite I rushed to the edge of the gorge to have a look at the jump platform and I was not disappointed. So high it looks high. Perfect. Back to the bathroom to push out the nervous urine and then on with the harness to get this party started. Mr. Skin was already nakey and into his harness, covering himself with a T-shirt to the relief of all of us. They weighed us in, the heaviest people would be jumping first ending with the lightest, I suppose they want to test the bungee on the heaviest guy/gal first and then maybe only lose one jumper should it fail, anyway, I wasn’t first so I wasn’t worried. First up happened to be Mr. Skin and I got to watch his freefall from the confines of the 6 person transport from the cliff edge to the jumpsite. It was beautiful, the whole scene I mean, not Mr. Skin, the leap and freefall, the smooth extension of the bungee, the scream of fear and excitement. We were jumping.
I got to jump around 6th I think. The jump master was named Sully, so we had something in common besides being adrenaline junkies and hit it off immediately, though our friendship would last around 30 seconds while he double checked my harness and helped me to scoot to the edge of the “diving board”, a 1’ by 1’ platform that extends beyond the edge of the 15’ x 20’ cable car hanging some 150m in the middle of Nevis Canyon. On the way to the diving board I asked him if it would be OK if I did a “gainer”, jump off forwards but slowly rotate into a backflip, “No chance,” he replied, “OK, how ‘bout I jump off backwards?”. “No can do”, he denied me again. With no amount of persuasion was I able to convince Sully that it would be OK for me to do something stupid, so to the edge of the diving board I waddled, 100m of bungee hanging from my ankles. I took a deep breath and looked out among the expanse that revealed itself all around me. The landscape was dry, dull, and surreal. The rock, shale, and small bush that lined the edges of the canyons began to merge into a sort of kaleidoscopic imagery that was I suppose induced by the adrenaline and the surreality of standing at the edge of what seemed like infinite space. I did not lose my myself or my surroundings though, turning around to give my new adrenaline forged friends a smile and a big hoot before the 3, 2, 1 countdown. Now, I know that Sully couldn’t let me jump off and do a flip, and now that jumping backwards was out of the question and all I could do was dive off forward, I figured that once I left the platform there were essentially no rules, so upon my toes leaving the edge of the diving board, I rotated my head to the left and dove into a spin that essentially gave me the view of a forward dive and the freakout of the backwards fall as I rotated around and freefell looking back up at the jumpsite and sky beyond. It was epic. I love falling. Complete lack of control at any level but total confidence that everything is going to be OK in the end. Freedom on some whacked out level of adrenaline junky justification.
The fall lasts 8 seconds and it feels like 4, the bungee was smooth and the rebound was quick. In my experience the bigger the bungee the smoother the transition from falling to rebounding, making it a more pleasant experience, but lacking in the excitement of a second or third feeling of weightlessness from the rebound. Hanging upside down looking into the canyon and up at the sky, I was delighted to be upside down in such a backwards situation and instead of pulling the pin in my waist harness that would have righted me for the ride back up to the jumpsite as they reeled me in like a fish, I decided to enjoy the upside down view. When I got back to the jumpsite, I don’t think Sully was too pleased with my style of departure, nor my return, but he wasn’t going to make a scene of it and just unhooked me and continued with the next person.
Sitting through the rest of the jumpers was like torture, I just wanted to do it again. So I got off the platform, back to the edge of the canyon, and worked myself back to reality. I met another guy, remarkably also from Novato, his name was Adam, he had just done the bungee and he was going to do the Nevis swing in a combo deal, a novelty similar to the Canyon Swing I would be doing later that afternoon, so I decided to go with him to check it out while he did the swing. The Nevis Canyon forks just above the bungee jump and over one of the forks is another set of cables suspended across the gorge with an anchor point in the middle making the biggest “swing set” you have ever seen. The Nevis guys were incredibly professional, quiet and reassuring as they harnessed Adam into the swing. The swing mechanically levers out away from the harnessing platform and then when Adam was ready they gave a 3, 2, 1 countdown and let him rip. Looked like a lot of fun, but it wasn’t bungee jumping, and I wasn’t going to fork out more cash for this, even in my adrenaline deficient come down.
Back to town and out to lunch with mom to fill her in on my morning adventures. We grabbed a big burger at the town’s famous burger joint, absolutely delicious, and mom told me about her morning hike up the mountain. Back to the van to unload what we didn’t need from our pockets and then down to the Canyon Swing HQ for a ride out to their jumpsite. It was quickly apparent that the Canyon Swing was a totally different operation from the bungee company in just about every way. They took our name and had us sign a contract, validating our participation in today’s jump by doodling on the backs of our hands with markers colorful markers, everyone got a different doodle. We passé the time waiting by watching their promotional video, all of us gathered around an LCD TV. The promo video showed that not only were there no rules in how you could jump off of the platform at the Canyon Swing, but also that the employees who controlled the jump could mess with the guests to whatever degree they felt necessary. By mess I mean, pushing them off before they were ready, teasing them with false pushes and pulling them back onto the platform, hanging them out over the gorge and making them beg to be dropped. Now certainly these were only special cases, but it was a sort of preparation for what was to come.
The van arrived for transport and the guy who drove us up the mountain was so classic. My favorite line from him was, “As we pass over this bridge, if you look out the left side of the van, you’ll miss what you could see out the right side…”, as everyone looked left and then laughed at what he had just pulled on us. Another promotional video played over the LCD TV in the van, this one was a little more preparatory, showing us what we were in for. It portrayed employees trying to figure out how a harness works, reading “Canyon Swings for Dummies” books, and generally turning the whole experience into mind numbing nervousness for the anxious and absolute hilarity for the confident. When we arrived the canyon we made our way down to the jump platform to harness up and Mom quickly volunteered to go first, no weight rules here, who wants to go, goes. They only messed with Mom a little bit, holding her out over the gorge, heels on the platform, and giving her a good shake as if to fake letting her fall. She took 2 steps back once they had finished harassing her and she let it rip with a 2 steps and a dive into the infinite. “Wooohooo”, she loved it. She came back up, a few others jumped and then she wanted to do it again so I told her to jump off backwards, a very different feeling, so she did, and she loved it again.
My turn. I chatted it up with the guy who harnessed me up, talking about different ways to jump off, I had just seen him jump off into a flat spin so I knew he would be a good one to consult. He said that in between groups they get to just session the swing and that the owner lets the employees jump as often as they want. I told him I wanted to do a gainer and he approved, one of his favorites. By now the guys all knew I was confident and that I had done the Nevis Bungee that morning, so they were pretty bent on getting me as shaken as possible. Chris, the guy who drove us up the mountain was the one running the jump platform and he was classic. He held me out over the gorge and really had me wondering if he was just going to let me fall, I mean I was really not sure if this guy would go so far as to not let me do what I wanted just to try and scare the piss out of me by letting me go when I wasn’t ready. But he didn’t, he just told me to jump away from the cliff to my left and have fun. Step 1, step 2, and I was off, back flipping through the infinite space, so good. I came back up and immediately wanted a second jump. I asked if they recommended anything and my friend that had harnessed me up suggested kart wheels…kart wheels…good one. So they set me up on the edge sideways and said to rock away, towards, away, and then over the edge and just cartwheel into the abyss. This ended up being my favorite, even better than the gainer. The way everything was just spinning in front of me and the sensation of falling sideways was so foreign, I loved it. Back for thirds, again asking for suggestions. Chris asked me if I had any shoulder issues. Shoulder issues? Nice. No, none, why? They harnessed me up real tight and then hooked me up and swung me out over the gorge. Turned me upside down and backwards and had me look back and down and let me rip. This was a really cool jump cause I was able to watch the cliff face go racing by and it was further enhanced by a group of river rafters drifting by on the current below all yelling and ooohing as I came soaring by overhead. The Canyon swing, in the end, was by far a better and more exhilarating experience than the bungee jump, proving that it’s not the size of the jump, but rather how you execute it that matters…
That night I hooked up with Matt and Erin, a great young couple from the UK that mom and I met in Milford Sound who were really cool and really excited to go out in Queenstown, being that the rest of NZ is pretty darn quiet, when you get a chance to party in NZ, you take it. Matt and Erin had both done a bungee jump earlier that day too so there were lots of stories to share and much to celebrate. We planned on doing a whole tour of the town, Matt had a pub crawl planned out, but we got to the first bar, Moose’s, and met a whole crew from my bungee jumping experience plus some other friends from Milford Sound and just ended up staying there drinking and dancing with a good band jamming live tunes til 2 am.
Queenstown was not a disappointment. Looking forward to coming back here in the winter to feel the energy when the place is fresh with pow pow.
