A Peak, Broken Glass, and Two Big Jumps

It's been a pretty eventful week and a half. I finally got the courage to leave the comfort of the city and hit the road for the country by myself. It was definitely a strange feeling. Both good and hard at the same time. Great to be seeing what New Zealand is best known for - it's beautiful mountains and scenery. Hard because it really isn't easy traveling alone, although it does begin to get more comfortable as time passes. So after leaving Christchurch I decided on taking a drive up to Arthur's Pass which is one of a few ways to get back and forth from East Coast to West Coast of the Island. It's a great drive through the country and once in the Pass it is all National Park land and has spectacular mountain views. I arrived around dinner time and the only plan I had was to spend the night in Ivan. I had to drive around a bit to find a place I could park the van but in decent time I had a place to set up camp. In the early evening hours of night is sand fly time and it was a bit brutal outside with them eating me alive. So shortly after parking I found myself in the van with the sun going down fast. It turned out to be a really early night but I was rewarded with a great night of sleep in the van. It is very comfortable and the drapes on the windows shut out the light perfectly. It did feel a little weird though since I was going to sleep so early and there wasn't anyone else around.
Next morning I decided to go up to the top of Avalanche Peak which would be about a six hour hike. The peak towers over the town of Arthur's pass over 1,000 meters high. The track starts straight up and never stops going up till the peak is reached. It was a pretty hard climb and there was a lot of stopping on the trail to catch my breath. The trail itself also calls for quite a bit of scrambling at times as there is quite a bit of boulders to climb up. I got lucky with the weather once again and it could not have been a better day to do the climb. It was warm, almost hot, with no wind, and not hardly a cloud in the sky. Throughout the climb the view just kept getting better and better. Here are a couple pictures of the climb and the view at the top:

It was such a beautiful day I spent almost an hour at the top just enjoying the view. It was definitely an accomplishment considering my fear of the heights. At certain times during the hike I kept thinking how crazy I am and how easily I could fall. I made it an while it was a hard day it was definitely worth it.
After another early night in the van and a little bit of loneliness setting in I decided to get out of the pass and was planning on it down to Dunedin, the college town of the south island, and spend a few days there. On the way out of the area I did stop at a place called the Cave Stream and did a quick hour hike through what the name implies. It was good running stream through a gorgeous cave. Thanks to Deb and Matt for recommending it! The trip to Dunedin is a two day affair and I arrived in small town to spend the night while moving on the next morning. I had planned on also meeting up with a kiwi student who I'd met on the ice. However, during this time I realized it was going to be Easter weekend and quickly changed my plans on the fear that nothing was going to be open in Dunedin. Most people got a 5 day weekend for the holiday and there was a good chance my friend wasn't going to be around to visit. Since I knew Queenstown would be operating pretty much as normal I figured it was the place to be for Easter.

I arrived on Friday, spent a couple nice quiet nights at backpacker, met and talked with some nice travelers, and went on a nice run along the lakehere. Chatting with other people was definitely something I was missing after leaving the family and so it was a good feeling to be around people again. I think because of how social the ice can be and how social it was traveling for a few weeks in New Zealand, those first days on my own were extremely hard on me. Looking back it was only two days but it certainly seemed a lot longer when experiencing those two days. I think now I'm craving being on my own again. Weird how that has all worked out. At first I was having the hardest time learning how to rough it and learn the art of the hippie. Now it seems like it would be a nice way to spend at least the next week.

On Easter Sunday I decided I needed to get out of town and do a hike and there was a nice short one about 10 minutes out of town. I got in my van and was ready to go driving along the road west of town when a car passed my slow little van. It's pretty normal for Ivan to get passed on the hills. The car had just passed and everything was fine one second and then boom! All of a sudden the windshield was blasted by a rock and it was instantly shattered. Not just a crack or two. It looked as if frost had instantly appeared on the windshield as there were thousands of cracks at once. Scared out of my mind I got the van pulled over on the side of the rode and could hear the cracks getting worse. Soon the glass started caving into the car and I had no clue what to do. I was absolutely shocked that this was happening to me. I was going back and forth from shaking my head to putting my head in my hands trying to figure out what I was going to do. I started to leave the van to walk back to town but I had most of my stuff in the van and couldn't just leave it. I decided that I would try and flag down a car and get a ride back to town with all my stuff and leave the van. Thank god a nice kiwi man stopped on my first wave down and was going to give me a ride to town. As I was frantically pulling stuff out of the van the guy came over and suggested we knock out the window so I could drive it back to town. After putting a sheet down over the dash and steering wheel, which was already covered in glass from the part of the window already caved in we knocked the rest out and I was good for getting back to town. I still remember the looks I got going through the center of Queenstown with the window knocked out and with glass still everywhere inside the cab. I really couldn't help but smile at the luck of it and the situation. At least it happened close to a town. The timing was a little unfortunate because of the holiday and nothing was going to be open until Tuesday (yesterday here). I got the window fixed but because it wasn't an easy windshield to find it was a cost of 450 kiwi. It hurts to pay it but it sure could have been worse for me.
In the mean time, right before getting the windshield crashed I signed up to do two of the most adventurous things I've ever done in my life. I signed up for skydiving and for the 4th largest bungy jump in the world. Skydiving was set for Easter Monday and the bungy jump for Tuesday. It might have been a good thing the window got messed up shortly after booking it because it definitely distracted me from thinking about what I was going to do. Again, me and heights are not a good match and I've always wanted to conquer my fear of it. I've wanted to do skydiving for a long time but wanted to do it in a place that would be the most enjoyable. Over a corn field in Ohio just didn't have the same draw as the mountains and lakes in New Zealand. This was definitely on my list of things to do here since coming back. I've done a bungy jump before and at the time it was a major step in getting over my fear of heights. It was in Queenstown in 2005 with both Matt and Deb looking on. Unbelievable experience that I wanted to relive again and since the Nevus bungy is the biggest around it had to be done.
Monday was the skydive and it was absolutely one of the best experiences of my life. The staff were all extremely friendly and the people in my group were more nervous than me and so I was set at ease throughout the whole process. It was a quick process to get into the equipment for the tandem jump of 12,ooo feet. Since I was jumping with a professional it definitely helped. The fear level was high though as soon as we boarded the aircraft and started climbing. At 3,000 feet I was already thinking we were high enough. After the short 15 minute flight we got to altitude and were ready to go. Glad that there was a guy I was strapped to who did all the work he pushed us off from the plain and dropped. After a few seconds of spinning and tumbling we stabilized and instead of a feeling of falling it was like a feeling of flying. The mountains in the background were spectacular and the feeling was indescribable. It was fantastic. 45 seconds of free falling and the shoot opened up and allowed for a quick trip to the ground. I survived! And as soon as I got on the ground I wanted another jump. It was such a rush! I was definitely on a high for the rest of the day, and maybe that is why I was able to run 8 miles that evening with little problem. I will definitely be doing skydiving again. It's cheaper in the states so it will probably be there. I am glad I waited though to do it here. Just an amazing experience. I've got the DVD and pictures to remember it all.
As life in Queenstown is all about outdoor adventure, next up on the list was the bungy jump. I new that the bungy would be a harder thing to do since it was all up to me to take the jump. I didn't have the benefit of a skydiver pushing me off the plane and taking care of pulling the ripcord. I didn't sleep extremely well the night before because the dorm mates weren't the quietest and I was definitely feeling the nerves. On the way out of town to the bungy site I met some great people from the UK and our conversation distracted me from the jump to come. As soon as we started climbing the side of the mountain in the bus though thing got a lot more scary. Once at the site and looking out at the small structure suspended on cables over the gorge the fear level jumped again. After another quick briefing and getting the gear on it was on to the cable car and over to the jump site. The maximum level of fear was generated after the guy leading us over mentioned that the jump was 440 feet and 44 stores. That's when it all became serious. 134 meters is what the sign up sheet said and that really didn't register the magnitude of 440 feet in my mind. I really couldn't believe I was attempting this. It was outrageous and being in the structure I didn't want to look at anything but the wall. There was a clear panel on the bottom that allowed for you to view the bottom of the gorge and the other jumpers plummeting downward. I couldn't even walk over the clear platform without fear. After a number of jumpers were taking the dive off the platform it was finally my turn to go. I was able to psych myself up and get out there and do it. I got hooked up to the cord and soon found myself tip toeing to the ledge and was told to put my toes over the ledge. I got that far pretty easily and at that point I wasn't even really thinking about the fear. All that I thought about was following orders and it hadn't been for the women who threw my bungy cord over the edge and yelled go-go-go I might have stood there all day long. I jumped and took the dive and with an almost nice second free fall it was brilliant. At first I was in shock that I was falling. As the ground was approaching fast, and it was real fast, I definitely let out a scream half way through the fall. And then the greatest feeling in the world was the cord catching and being thrown back up into the air. I got pulled back up to the structure and what a change of feeling. From being scared to hell of looking around and down to enjoying everything around me and being able to look down without no fear. I don't know if it cured my fear of heights completely but it definitely did something to diminish it.
Here is a picture from the skydive and two from the bungy:



Ivan came back fixed today and I think it is about time I leave Queenstown. It has been fun and I've met a lot of fun people at the backpackers but it is about time I get on a hike somewhere. I've been itching to go and so if everything works out I may be leaving tomorrow. One of the things I was hoping to accomplish by staying in a backpackers was to meet some people and possible travel with them. While there have been a lot of nice people I've met in Queenstown, there hasn't been anyone who I think I could travel with. Hopefully, I'll meet someone on the great walk.