Fear above sea-level

Sadly spending an extra couple of days in Rotorua threw my itinerary out and I had only one night to experience the skii-ing mecca that is Queenstown. Thankfully I wasn't interested in that angle so I didn't miss much. Queenstown in late autumn was quite possibly the coldest I have ever been, never having ventured far from the equator, so when I was standing 500 feet up on one of the mountains overlooking the little city, preparing to throw myself off, my knees weren't knocking only from fright. Everyone else had plans for that night, so not wanting to miss my only chance to do the Queenstown ledge swing I stood on the platform alone, contemplating the city lights twinking far below in a sea of darkness. Alone, that is, but for three trained bungy-jump attendants who had obviously talked terrified girls through all this a million times, to judge by the gentle, slightly patronising way they talked me out of clinging to the tethering-rope like grim death and pulling the realease line. Because, you see, when they'd strung me out above the city in my flimsy harness, feet dangling above that dark abyss, I had to release the catch that would send me plummeting down the cliff-side myself. No passive uncertainty about when the final moment off terror would come apon me, my silly decision was in my own hands now.

So somehow I found myself dropping 40 ft into the dark before swinging in wild loops below the chuckling attendants. I had been told that bungee-ing never gets any less terrifying no matter how often you do it. Untill then I hadn't really appreciated the truth of that statement, but my fear as I fell through the cold night air up on that mountain wasn't a bit reduced from the nail-biting terror I'd felt back on the bridge. By the time I'd travelled back down the mountainside to ground level in the gondola my hands had stopped shaking, but only just.

Back at base camp I found that the rest of the bus was going to have a night on the town. The hostel bar was hosting the world famous horizontal bungy jump, a feat so bizarre we just had to stay and watch. Surely a game devised by some very drunk bungy-instructors one night for a dare, the horizontal bungy turned out to be a race through the bar. To grab a pint off a waiting bar-maid, whilst strapped into a bungy harness tethered at the other end of the bar. Bungy ropes are not designed to be stretched easily without a full man's weight behind them, but have such an elastic quality that once maximum stretch has been reached they will snap back (harnessed man in tow) at about ten times the speed they ran at. The idea was to safely bring back the pint to the waiting partner at the starting line who would drink it, and when finished, in deference to long-standing sculling tradition, upturn the glass on their head. Hilarity and spilled drinks ensue.

Next came a bar recomended by our driver Gollum. If the moose-head wearing sunnies on the wall as we walked in wasn't a clue that this was an unusual bar, the method our cocktails arrived in clinched it. Continuing the theme of inventions that seemed to be though up whilst in a state of advanced inebriation, cocktails were served in a teapot, with half a dozen shot glasses. After we'd got over the shock and amusement it was decided that this was the best way to serve drinks anyone had yet thought of. After someone experimented with drinking out of the spout that opinion was cemented.
After I finally made it back to bed that night I was quite thankfull all I had to look forward to tomorrow was an eight hour bus ride.



-- H in Oz