Friday, January 19, 2007

Bungy Jumping, Jet Boating and Tea Pots!!

Just before we arrived into Queenstown, we stopped off at the AJ Hackett Bungy site at the Kawarau Bridge - a 43m high bungy jump over a river. Well it was just screaming out to be jumped!! We saw a video about the history of bungy and how AJ Hackett and Henry von Asch developed the modern day bungy jump (even doing a test jump from the Eiffel Tower!)
Fiona and I had already signed up to do the jump and, after seeing the jump, Kate decided to risk it too! Dermot & Ian point blank refused to do it so they were left in charge of the cameras!
While we were queueing up though, Ian changed his mind and decided to join us insane people and jump (using nothing more than several layers of knicker elastic tied to our ankles!!!)
Up on the bridge they were playing upbeat music whilst we watched others from our tour bus jump. Kate was before me and (despite her fear of heights) only screamed all the way day and back up again. It was pretty impressive that she managed to fling herself off the top in the first place!

Then it was my turn - the guy asked if I wanted to get dunked into the water and I decided that I only wanted to get my finger tips wet (but what I wanted and what I got were totally different!!) I then penguin shuffled to the edge (very embarrassingly!) and smiled for the photo before being counted down and diving off the bridge! The fall was brilliant and very soon I was near the water so I closed my eyes and felt myself get a little wet (which was very refreshing on a warm day).

After bouncing a few times, the recovery boat came out and I was hauled into it and unstrapped. It was in here that I realised that I'd been dunked in up to my waist and I was now looking like a contestant in a wet t-shirt competition! watching the DVD of it was really funny and had to be bought!

Once all the jumps had been done (everyone survived!) we journeyed on into Queenstown. That night we ventured into Altitude Bar which was underneath our hostel (Discovery Lodge). Not before too long, most of our bus had joined us party animals and were dancing on the chairs with us! Princess, our driver, then bought two rounds of shots for us all - I'm not sure what they were but they tasted great! We danced on into the night (well until the bar closed and they kicked us out)!

The next day Kate, Fiona & I went on the Shotover Jet - a jet boat ride that does 360 degree spins in very shallow water! It lasted about 25 minutes and we had about 7-8 360 degree spins and got a little wet down one side. It was great fun thought!

That evening Sam, Ian, Chad, Jon, Henrik, a German girl and I headed up on the gondola to race each other in the luge! We got 6 rides each down an 800 metre track and, due to limited time, racing each other was the only way to go! We were made to do the 'scenic route' first to get used to the luge cars then we could go on the faster route.

To get up to the start, we had to go on a mini chairlift. On our 2nd time up there, Sam lost one of his flip flops and had to race with his one remaining flip flop (and rescue his other one once we'd finished!) I seemed to not get the hang of the cars (its my excuse!) and came last, except in the last race when Sam & Ian were too busy trying to ram each other off the course that I was able to almost finish the race before they realised I was ahead but it was too late to do anything!

We stayed up at the top admiring the amazing views of Queenstown and got our photos taken by a passing group of Japanese tourists!

That night we went for dinner at Fergburger (which is a must for anyone going to Queenstown)! They are huge and very yummy! We'd decided to go speed dating in one of the local pubs and spent the time over dinner trying to come up with abstract questions!! We turned up at the pub, only to see the people who were going to be taking part and decided to leg it out of the pub as quickly as possible!!

So we decided to go to The World Bar and have a teapot. This may sound strange to many people - why would we want to have a cup of tea on a night out but they actually serve their cocktails in white teapots! Carrying on with our 'illusion' theme, we had to go with 'The Illusion' cocktail - gin, vodka, Bacardi, triple sec, coconut, melon and pineapple juice. The gave us shot glasses to pour our drinks into or straws (to put into the spout) but eventually we ended up just drinking from the spout (so classy!)
We spent the rest of the night dancing away until we got bored of the DJ changing the music to dodgy dance tunes and went off to bed!
It was our last night as a group and we are really going to miss the Stray Bus people! We haven't laughed so much and for so long for a very long time! Cheers for the memories guys - its been one of the highlights of my trip! xx

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