Queenstown

The good news is that I'm pretty much recovered from that awful cold that totally knocked me out for 3 full days...I spent a whole day in Wanaka just sleeping, then got to Queenstown (self-styled "adventure capital of NZ") got straight into bed and carried on with feeling ill and sorry for myself.

Queenstown was SO beautiful and amazing. From the way people talked about it we were really expecting a horrible package holiday town of hotels and bars, but it's just gorgeous - all built around this huge lake, lovely clear water and stony beaches, lush greenery everywhere, and surrounded by amazing snow-capped mountains. It's big for skiing in winter, and it really felt like a ski resort...full of tourists doing crazily active things all day and drinking all night, yet managed to be somewhat less soulless than that makes it sound. Well, I enjoyed it anyway, although it was a rubbish place to be ill - everyone from our tour was off doing bunjee jumping/white water rafting/sky diving etc, and then drinking all night, while I was just lurking in the dormitory. Vic's knees (alot better now also) were still playing up so she joined me mostly, although there was one night when EVERYBODY, including her, was out having fun and I skulked in the dorm, coughing and blowing my nose. That was a bad evening for the self-pity spiral...

Anyway, finally yesterday I woke up feeling so much better, and we decided to launch ourselves headfirst into the joys of Queenstown and partake in some adventure. We chose to do this in the form of the Canyon Swing - the world's largest swing: it's basically a bungee jump, only instead of bouncing, you swing out across this canyon. You're in a harness and everything...I was really thinking "come on, how scary can this be, I know loads of people who've done it, I'll be strapped in...and isn't this the most incredible waste of money?" (The last point I can't refute, obviously). However, it turned out to be...alot more terrifying than I'd realised. We had to stand on this platform on a cliffside, high above this gorge with a river running through it far below, and...jump off. Which is SO hard to do. It was the first time I'd tried to do anything so counter-intuitive I think. Oh man...I just couldn't believe that I actually had to jump. The guys who run it didn't help - they were standing there responding to my "oh man do I really have to jump off this thing?!" by feigning shock and going "what?! huh? Did you say you're going to jump off? No..." Funny guys. It must be such a great job, they get to mess around with tourists all day and do lots of free jumps.

Anyway, I didn't allow myself to hesitate for too long - because I'd seen that Vic did, and that it made it so much more scary for her - so I just launched myself off. And it was amazing - the first few seconds of freefall were so scary it was ridiculous, but after the rope kicked in and I realised that this wasn't actually the end it was fantastic. I went back and had a second turn, this time going for the "chair of death" where they tie you to a chair and you have to rock yourself backwards, over the edge of the platform. Eeek, that was fun.

We followed our afternoon of ridiculous thrill seeking by going out on the town with almost everybody from our tour which was so much fun - and I finally felt less left out than I had all week. We dropped into an open mic night for Vic to dazzle the locals with some singing - she did 3 songs and sounded really great - and then headed back to the beaten track for drinking games, being stupid and dancing about. We had to appreciate the group as we've now parted ways with some of our favourite new friends who are staying in Queenstown for longer (though we hope to catch up with them in Fiji).

The night was great and culminated in Vic and I climbing into bed at 5am. Which was very sensible as we had a 7am wake up call to get back on the bus to take us back to Christchurch (where we are now). Ouch...today's been a blur of sleeping on the coach, waking up to see amazing scenery (I'll say it again, NZ's south island is so so so beautiful...we went past Mount Cook today, and all these glacial streams and lakes that were that amazing petrol blue colour) and giggling hysterically. I'll be going to bed early tonight...possibly in about 10 minutes.