Queenstown

A lot to fit in here, so bare with me...

First things first. Franz Josef glacier ice hiking. This was awesome. I've never hiked on ice before (there's not many places to do it in Norfolk). It's an odd experience. They kitted us up with spikes for our boots and ice picks for those who wanted them, he did warn us that the fun wore off after a while, but Gary and I certainly didn't seem to think so. The glacier is a pretty impressive natural phenomenon, it receeds and advances over periods of years depending on the weather. Apparently at the moment it's in a state of advance. We took a long walk up the terminal face and then the real fun began. Our guide walked ahead cutting steps for us, so we got to stop every few minutes whilst he hacked away. As we got higher we started getting into more crevases and had a few pretty tight squeezes. I confess that I did slip in a crevase and got stuck by my ass. I would have been embarrassed had it not been so cold and funny. Some of the drops were absolutely terrifying, there's something awe-inspiring about knowing that you're pretty much at nature's whim. If she decides to drop a large block of ice there's not much you can do about it. We got up fairly high and turned around to come back. An excellent hike and something really different to anything I've ever done before. Top class.

From Franz Josef we headed to Wanaka, a lovely little town where we swam in the freezing lake and kicked a ball around. We tried to take it easy, because the post glacier hike celebrations were probably a bit too prolonged for a 7am start. I managed to trick my body out of a hangover by running round a lake in the morning, others weren't so lucky. From here, after a stop at the awesome Puzzling World, we headed towards Queenstown which is where I am now. It's a town that has pretty much been built out of the tourism and adventure activities in the surrounding area. It's also famous for being the birthplace of modern Bungy Jumping. Bungy legend AJ Hackett opened the first commercial site in 1988 just outside the city from the Karawau Bridge. This is where I did my first jump. As I have been before, I tried something new on this jump, I fell backwards. This was one of the strangest things I have ever done. If you've ever played that trust game where you fall back and someone catches you, it's kind of like that, but you don't hit the ground, you just fall. I asked the guy to dip my head in the water, but the b*stard put me in up to my knees. Still great fun, watch out for the DVD release coming soon.

So on to the future. This is likely to be my last post for a while. As I am off to do a mammoth trek called the Rees-Dart trek for about 5 days. Probably tomorrow or the next day. Today however, I am doing the largest bungy in the Southern Hemisphere and then it's slightly smaller brother where you can jump with a body harness, so you can run and jump. The views from these are breathtaking so hopefully expect some good photos next time.