Kiwi Land, Part VII

Location: Base hostel, Queenstown

Date: 30 May 2012

Time: 6:00 PM

I slept in until about 11 this morning, a nice luxury after a long night of partying.  Queenstown has a pretty exciting late-night scene.  With people from all three major tour companies, plus some more ‘freelance’ groups, there are significant numbers of young people around.  In fact, I happen to know a good number of them from Melbourne; apparently I wasn’t the only one with the idea to squeeze in this trip.  Small world, eh?

We did another hike this morning up Queenstown hill, a misnomer, really, because it was quite steep.  When I say we, I mean a motley crew of a myself, Mike (from England), Ida (Sweden), Sandra (Switzerland), and Abe (New Zealand via USA), and myself, the lonely Yank.  Per usual, we had a stunning panoramic vista from the top.  Had it not been for the enormous mountains, we would have been able to see for miles.

That was just the beginning of the hill.

The view from the top.

Proof that I am actually in New Zealand

When I got back to the hostel I booked a jet boat trip and a canyon swing (you’ll hear about these later) for Sunday when I get back from the deep south detour.  I also booked five luge rides for this afternoon.

The luge starting line.

Just the gondola ride would have been worth it.

That's the "ledge" bungy.  It's not much bigger of a drop than the Kawarau, but it's 400 meters above Queenstown so it's much scarier.  Also, you're attached at the waist (instead of the ankles) so you can jump or run off and do crazy things.

The luge is a really cool concept.  You take a quick gondola trip to the cliffs above Queenstown (which, of course, afforded me amazing views of the city and the lake it hugs), then a small chairlift to the top of the hill.  You strap on a helmet, and then sit in a luge, basically a glorified lunch tray with wheels and handlebars.  There are two tracks, a ‘scenic’ beginner course and a faster, more challenging one.  You have to do the easy one first to get a hang of how the gizmo works: pull backwards to go, all the way back to brake.  Gravity takes care of the rest.  You have to lean to get around the twisty track quickly.  And believe it or not, it’s completely possible to flip or get thrown out of these things.

Getting air on the Luge (note the "shit-eating" grin on my face).

I had a smile on my face the whole way down.  But let’s be honest, I needed to go faster.  So my next four runs were on the ‘expert’ track.  There are two steep drops on the trap, and if you sort of pop your weight up, you can get air.  Naturally, I did.  From the picture you’ll see me with that same stupid grin that Calvin and Hobbes have when they’re flying down the hill in the red wagon.  This is the kind of thing that Asher and I would probably get cutthroat competitive about, the kind of activity that would quickly morph from downhill luge to free-for-all Mario Kart-esque bumper car mayhem. It was great fun.

We’re leaving at 6:45 tomorrow morning for the south (Milford sound first), so it was an early night for me.  I had a quick drink at the pub adjacent to the hostel to say bye to Whales and the trainee driver Scottie (we get a different driver for the south loop), then headed up to bed.  I’m feeling a bit under the weather (I drank some questionable river water the other day, I think), but knowing my immune system I should be up and running soon.  After a couple episodes of Big Bang Theory (which I acquired via the wonders of the informal traveler file-sharing system), I hit the hay.