West Otago and near-death experiences

We still stayed some time in Wanaka, which we had selected as the most beautiful part of New Zealand until now, and it kept to be as beautiful. The sunshine stayed during all the time and brightened our mood even more. We went a lot hiking to some small lakes as the Diamond Lake, which was pretty nice, and many times into the mountains to get the good views over the surrounding areas. It was truly wonderful and also our camp site at the lake.

With our trip over the Mount Cardrona to Queenstown, we were unlucky and got the only bad day in for a long time. It was cloudy and we couldn’t see as mauch as we had hoped. But, the view was good enough to see down to the valley, also one of the Lord of the Rings scenic locations. We stopped some more times at some less shooting spots of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit as for example, the river, where Arwen escaped the black riders with Frodo on Asfaloth. One stop was the small town Arrowtown, a cute gold digger village.

Queenstown resembled a bit Wanaka, just louder and more crowded. Getting to know the city a bit better, we strolled through the sunlit city, watching some street artists, looking at the lake, eating the most famous burgers in New Zealand. But that is just marketing. I don’t know who, but someone always starts spreading that and everyone runs there to try had. We stood for over an hour in line – the only good thing is that you get a number and know when you can approximately come back – and the burgers were just average. The next day, we found just few steps away another burger restaurant, who offered for the same prices a lot better burgers, with much more and more fancy options, for example a whole variety if really delicious vegetarian burgers. Little tip to everyone: Go on search for these hidden gems and don’t follow the masses.

Here, you can do all the extreme sports you could dream of. Diving on the lake, jet boat driving, bungee jumping, skydiving, huge swings, drive in shark shaped boats… Choose whatever you want. This was also our reason to come here, or at least my boyfriend’s reason. He wanted to go bungee jumping and – surprise, surprise – by pure chance had gotten a voucher for exactly that for his birthday. After a day of relaxing, thinking and looking at the options, he decided to take the Nevis Bungy, a 142-metre-high jump, the highest in New Zealand by the way. There, you jump from a high wire cabin, meaning a small platform dangling from the wires, down into the gorge between the mountains. Deep down you can see the river, which a few kilometres further was used as the river Anduin in the Lord of the Rinds. Should I stop with the Lord of the Rings locations? No, because we are truly in the land of Middle Earth, so sorry guys, you will have to keep reading about that. Ok, back to the bungee jumping. Of course, I was forced to join, but luckily only to take pictures. I have to be honest, I was totally not interested in jumping. I know that it is one of the safest sports in the world, but there is a chance that the rope breaks and I don’t want to die for stupid sport and what for I paid a lot of money. I mean, I saw the rope, it’s just thousands of normal elastic bands, like the ones that you use in the kitchen. No, I really didn’t trust it. And then head first? What, why should I do that? For having a lot of blood in my head and seeing the world upside down? I can imagine some lot better and preferable things.

Already the drive to the jumping station confirmed my thoughts about that. If I had known what would happen, I would never have entered the bus. But I will tell the story from the beginning. At first I thought the driver was just testing the courage of the jumpers as he was always going a bit over the speed limit and did tight turns. When, we had a stop to pick up some people, he stopped way too late and also very abrupt. The first time that I got worried, was when he did the same thing on the highway. Meaning, he missed the exit, did an abrupt halt and then – on the highway with a speed limit of 100 and only one line on each side! – started reversing for about 50 metres. That should already left us worried and alerted. We turned onto a gravel road and there, he started speeding – ok, it was not very fast, but obviously too fast for a gravel road – and didn’t break before the turns, so that we slided several times from the road into the grass. The road went up higher into the mountains and got narrower. The same thing happened again, the whole bus was drifting to the left and getting closer to the slope. Everyone started screaming. Only then was it that we got alerted and told the driver to stop. He stopped … but didn’t put in the break, so the bus started rolling backwards, down the hill. Again, everyone started screaming: “Stop, put the hand break… let us out”. We all got out and the driver was sitting with his head on the steering wheel. One of the passengers was a doctor from the Netherlands and he went to talk to the driver. He didn’t really react. When a car passed by- apparently, people who lived close by), we stopped it and told them to tell the responsible people at the station to send another bus and driver, we would not get in there again. The girlfriend of the Dutch doctor was highly pregnant and completely beside herself, the poor girl. After some time, the doctor managed to talk to the driver and when he took off his sunglasses, it got clear that he must be on drugs.

After this experience, I was just encouraged not to jump, because even without provoking anything, life is already dangerous enough. I already had had absolutely enough adrenaline for one day, for a second I really thought that that was it, we had been so close to falling down that slope. One near-death experience per day is definitely enough, when you ask me.

The others didn’t have enough and, when the other bus fetched us, still wanted to jump and afterwards all said they would immediately do it again. Watching was enough for me. I cannot understand the sense of this sport. Most of them were completely pale before jumping and couldn’t even talk. You saw their fear in their faces and their feet trembling, when they hopped to the jumping point. After jumping, all of them were completely on adrenaline and also not very clear in their minds. They seemed very happy, but I really think that this is the feeling of having survived, the adrenaline manipulates your feeling and you don’t really notice your surroundings while jumping, only when you are already used to it. My boyfriend for example, bought for a lot of money the pictures, which he loved in that moment, even if I told him that they were shit and the ones that I had taken were at least as good. Several days later, he regretted it, but in this moment, couldn’t think clearly.

Apart from the adrenaline sports, Queenstown doesn’t have a lot to offer, so we continued in the direction of the Fjordlands.

Photo gallery