South Island Part III: Queenstown Stories and VISUALS
Bus drivers, Museums, Bungy, and a scenic bike-ride
I had a good way to go in the Atomic Shuttle before reaching my next destination, Queenstown. The ride was full, and the Japanese and Korean girls I had ridden with to Hokitika two days before were seated in the back, a German girl sat to my right, and a Scottish girl had made her way into the last remaining seat beside the driver.
We stopped twice, once at a Salmon Farm, where I sat eating a mayo and lettuce sandwich I had put together to use up the last of my groceries. I talked with the German and the Scott. The German was in her mid-twenties and had been travelling with a friend on a working holidaymaker visa. But her friend had since fallen in love, and they had parted ways. The Scottish girl was also in her mid-twenties and travelling on a working holidaymaker visa, finding jobs as a physical therapist. When I looked down at their feet under the table, as I can never help looking at people’s feet, I noted they were wearing the same camel-colored shoes with red details.
“Yeah, I got mine at the Warehouse, $15” the Scott said. “My old ones had worn out. These have lasted 5 months.”
Our second stop was in the mountains. It was a lone building that doubled as a souvenier outlet and a cafe where I bought the biggest slice of cheesecake for $3 I have ever had in my life. It was about a good six-by-six inches square.
We continued on our way through the mountains, past the glacial lakes to Wanaka. Here the driver dropped the German and the Scott off at their respective backpackers, and we picked up two more. But I didn’t last long in the crowded, afternoon-heated van, and so I had to call to the driver, “Can you pull over for a second!”
After some confusion, he got the message and I hopped out to switch seats. “Sorry, I was getting sick back there.”
“That’s alright. Are you better now?”
“I’m fine.”
“So are you from the big house in London?” He looked at me sideways, with the beginning of a smile.
“Which big house in London?”
“Buckingham Palace?”
“Ha ha. No, I’m American.”
“Oh, so you’re from the other big house. I hear it’s better. You’re accent isn’t very strong.”
“Really?”
“Yes, you don’t have a drawl.”
A while later, he asked me if I would like to stop at a roadside museum.
“Does it cost anything?”
“No. It’s one of those open-air museums.”
“What is it a museum of?”
“Well. Cups mostly.”
I gotta hand it to him, he was right…
We talked a bit more and I confessed to him my fear of the bungy jumping I would be doing the next day. “I have no sense of what 43m is.”
“It’s about the size of one of those hills.” He pointed up to a great mound of grass that obliterated the sky.
“Oh. I guess that’s not so bad,” I said, leaning forward and twisting in my seat to look up. “Have you ever bungy jumped?” I asked looking back down at his tattooed forearm.
“Ha ha. No, I don’t have it in me.”
He dropped each of us off at our hostels before he headed off.
I checked into my hostel, Aspen in Queenstown for about $22 per night, and headed out to explore nervously as I waited for my impending bungy jump the next day around noon.
The downtown of queenstown was only about three blocks down the road. It was as Sue and Ross in Christchruch had described it… “New Zealand’s Aspen, Colorado, grossly overpriced.” I walked along the waterfront of the lake, and into the gardens. The gardens, which double as a golf-course and a fitness track occupy a jetty that functions to block the powerful winds that sweep across the lake from hitting Queenstown directly. As I circled the jetty, cutting through a small forest of tall pines, I was immediately thrown into a fit of sneezing, complete with itchy ears and tearing eyes. As soon as I left the forest of pines, the sneezing stopped, my eyes dried, and my ears returned to normal.
I stopped at some playground equipment just outside the gardens, parked behind an octagonal restaurant on the waterfront. I swung as high as I could, trying to calm my nerves, and allay the bit of loneliness and self-doubt that had begun to creep in, until some children came, and I figured I should let them have their turn.
So I headed on and discovered a tree perfectly equipped for climbing. I perched myself there and watched two oblivious travelers eating their lake-side picnic as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, and the cold came in.
Windswept Tussock Grass in Queenstown’s Gardens
The next morning I woke up at 7:00, far too early for my bungy jump. So I wandered around uncomfortably, telling anyone I could find about how much I was dreading this decision, but having paid a nonrefundable NZ$140, I had no choice. Around ten o’clock I walked downtown to check out the AJ Hackett Bungy Headquarters, and asked the woman if it was too late to switch to the Canyon Swing, a similar idea in which your teathered to a platform, and not in control of when you are released to drop and swing out over a canyon below. It appealed to me for the simple fact that you didn’t have to make yourself jump. But the woman assured me that, first of all Canyon Swing was not a part of the AJ Hackett company, and second, it was too late to get a refund. You have to cancel at least four hours in advance to get any refund. So I was doing it, and my stomach had flipped upside down and twisted itself into the most intricate pretzel ever made. I had lost my mind, I was sure.
“I would never bungy jump.” I used to say, “I would love to jump out of a plane though.” Well, funny, the irony of the universe, I still have never sky dived and but I was now jumping off a bridge with an especially long rubber band tied to my ankles.
I took my seat with the other four, who had arrived too early and looked about as nervous as I felt. We stared wide-eyed at the TV screens with their replays of past jumpers.
“Have any of you done this before?” I asked.
“No,” comprised the majority of answers, with one, “I have.”
“Anybody wanna do it tandem?” I asked sheepishly. Tandem, I had discovered, was jumping harnessed to another person.
“If I was going again, I would,” the bungy veteran offered. Her two friends were already planning to jump together, so I prepared myself to jump alone.
The busride to the site was long and quiet. And as I stared out the windows at the sides of the hills, I found my place. A broad grin lit across my face, and I was ready, terrified but ready.
We piled off the bus at the Kawarau Bridge, the original bungy site. It is a historic bridge, which luckily is no longer in use. The drop from the platform to the water is 43m. AJ Hackett has built a great facility with a spiral ramp leading down to the check-in/shop/viewing area on the side of the canyon wall. We all gave our names and any medical information that might be important, and signed the releases. I mentioned that I have Essential Tremor, which doesn’t really cause any problem, aside from the fact that I can shake uncontrollably when nervous (it used to make giving speeches in high school quite interesting when my vocal cords were quivering, but I have medicine for that now). Luckily I wasn’t shaking, at least no more than the other jumpers. They weighed us to determine which bungy to use and how much, etc. And after that, we headed up to the bridge to stand in line, harnessed around our hips.
A girl who had just shown up at the bridge, and asked to bungy (as you can do that, just show up), was chickening out on the platform before us. They finally gave up on her, and she gave up on herself. After her, an English couple went tandem. The girl screamed on the way down. They were followed by two Danish men, and then an Irish girl. She just jumped right off, no fuss, but her boyfriend had a hell of a time even getting himself to stand on the platform. He tried twice before he finally let go. The whole time I had been hopping up and down like some sort of stupid bunny rabbit, trying to keep my nerves under control. I continued to hop, despite a request from the guy in line before me to “hold still.”
And then it was my turn.
“Andrea, can you sit right there for me? Good.”
“So have you ever bungied before?”
“Nope. I’ve jumped off a 10m cliff before, into a lake.”
“Wow, you’ve got one up on me,” said the nice guy who had wrapped a towel and harness around my ankles, and was now proceeding to sinch off any remaining bloodflow.
“So where are you from?”
“New York.” It was my standard answer even though I’d only lived in New York a year. It was the easiest, a place everyone has heard of.
“What do you do there?”
“I’m a student.”
“What do you study?”
“Psychology.”
“Oh!”
“Yeah, so I’ve done some work with fear, I know a bit about it.”
“You scared?”
“Ha. Yeah.”
“Well, don’t worry people don’t die that often.”
I gave him a sly smile. He wasn’t going to mess with my head, as I’m sure they must like to do when given a chance.
“So do you want to touch the water. No one’s been willing to touch the water today.” Everyone before me had, in fact, turned down their offer of touching the water.
“Alright, sure.”
“You want to be dunked? Up to your shoulders?”
“No, just my fingers.”
“The top of your head?”
“Nope, fingers.”
“Ok, set it for third joint on the middle digit,” he directed toward the guy controlling the bungy cords.
My blood ran cold, and never reached my feet as I hopped out on numb toes to the edge of the platform. I looked down. “Oh, fuck!”
“Before you reach the water, make sure you tuck your head.”
“Ok.”
The guy gently pulled my hand off the safety bar I was holding, and held my harness for a moment, so I could steady myself. “Smile to the camera,” he pointed up. I smiled and waved, nervously, but sincerely. “And at the people watching, he pointed to the viewing area. “Alright, at one you jump. Ok?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Ok, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.” His voice hypnotized me. I cleared my head of every thought, and when I heard that one, I did what I had been told to do. I fell.
And I fell, and I fell, and I fell, and finally I had a thought. Man, it’s been a long time. And then I had another, Oh, right, there’s water down there.
And I fell until the bungy tightened, and I reached out, ignoring the instructions to tuck my head, and my fingers beyond the third joint on my middle digit hit the water. And on the way back up, it hit me, that rush, that high, that nirvana, and I emptied my lungs in one loud sound! And I held out my arms, and I clapped, god knows why, and I screamed some more. I bounced to a stop, as the guys in the boat held out a pole, and told me to grab it.
“So how was it?”
“Fucking Awesome!”
“Fucking awesome,” he repeated in a mocking tone. But I was too happy to care.
“You touch the water?”
“Yeah.” I giggled.
“You look a bit dry.”
“Fingertips. Oh my god!” The dumb grin remained on my face.
I got out of the boat, the two cheeky guys only a blur in my memory as the adrenaline hit every nerve. I ran back up the stairs, back up the canyon wall to watch the next one go.
Afterwards, once the initial effect had somewhat worn off, I got a chance to talk to the others, and reflect on the experience. It dawned on me… I had bungy jumped!… that, although I had not stepped anywhere near a cliff or rollercoaster in the past two years, I did then and have always loved heights. I remembered that in high school I had ridden so many roller coasters that I no longer experienced the desired effect. They simply didn’t phase me anymore. I had found my new addiction.
Unfortunately for the other jumpers, two of them discovered that bungy can bring on motion sickness with its up and down motions, and thus, they would not be bungying again. Had it not cost so much, I would have gone up and done it again, right on the spot. Poor guys, I wish they all could have felt what I felt.
When I arrived back at Queenstown that afternoon, I had all the energy in the world, so I went to the bike rental by the water. NZ$15 for 2 hours. It had been so long since I’d ridden a bike that I put the helmet on backwards, but the guy with a head covered in thick, curly black hair, and a face covered in chain grease to match, was nice enough to point it out to me.
“Do you know where’s a good place to ride?”
“Not really. There’s the trail that runs along the lake.”
“How long is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ok, then I guess I’ll have to tell you then.”
I wobbled away, trying desperately to regain my rusty skills without tipping over. It took about a block and I was ready to go. I headed around the gardens and along the path that followed the lake-shore, stopping once to chat with an older man who was working on a house.
The path took me to a small marina before ending, and giving way to grass with a skinny path worn through. I rode around to a bridge that dammed and separated the lake from a river where they once tried to mine for gold, and there I turned back. As I was nearing the gardens, I discovered a tire swing down an embankment on the stony shores of the lake.
I stopped to investigate, but was soon driven back by a cold wind and ominous clouds to my kick-standless bike which I had left lying alongside the road. I took one last loop through the gardens before returning to the bike shop.
“How much time do I have left?”
“About 45 minutes,” the guy told me.
“Oh, ok. Thanks. I have no sense of time anymore.”
So I headed around the boardwalk in the other direction around the lake. I wound through tiny trails cut deep into the grass, and down a path that directed me to a “Sunshine Falls, 10 minutes.” The path soon became far too dangerous for an inexperienced mountain biker like myself, and so I walked, pushing the bike along beside me, over the rocks and up the hills. Whether I found the falls or not, I’m not quite sure, because what I saw was fairly unspectacular, though not a waste of time. A stream cascaded down a narrow cut of rocks into the lake below. It looked more like a series of mini-rapids fit for a whitewater-rafting doll than any dramatic death-defying drops for a real canoe.
I returned the bike, and sat down alone, a single girl on a bench by the lakefront with an ice cream cone.
Back at the hostel, I decided to be brave and tell the folks who I had annoyed earlier with my incescent jabber of the impending bungy, that I had done it. A group of people sat around in the living room watching Good Will Hunting. So I joined them, two of them were Welsh, and the rest were English. Finding Nemo followed at my request, and we decided that Finding Nemo would make a great date movie, that children’s movies in general would in fact. It was a pleasent, quiet, anti-climactic evening before I had to catch my bus to Milford Sound the next morning. And I came to discover that even attractive Welsh rugby players aren’t crazy enough or bold enough to jump off a bridge.
Tags: 1. Australasia, 1A. New Zealand, 1A2. South Island, bungy, New Zealand, Photos, Queenstown
Drea
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