Star Jumping Over New Zealand Week One.

Sunday 15th.

I have two weeks in New Zealand so there will be a long update for the next few entries.

The flight was ok, but I would only fly with Jetstar for a maximum three to four hour flight as it was a budget airline. Even the seat arm rests felt quite hard and weren’t padded. Having to pay for the food and drink wasn’t that nice either, even the water had a cost with it.

Christchurch was a nice place, only nice. It’s described as the most English city in New Zealand and I could see why. We didn’t arrive here till gone ten pm so got to the hotel at eleven. Asked around for a late night place to eat that wasn’t McDonalds or Burger King (yes they have Burger King here instead of Hungry Jacks in Australia). Finally found a place called the Honey Trap, which was a café restaurant. Had a quite tasty chicken salad and we then went for a walk around the city.

The city was quite open in layout and also surprisingly quite dirty as well. We felt quite safe enough at night, unfortunately everything was closed when we got here as it was a Sunday night.

Monday 16th

Managed to get up late today, as I had forgotten to change my mobile phone time so it was set for 7.30am, but wouldn’t have gone off till 10:30am! I woke up when I heard the cathedral church bells ring nine times.

We picked up our car hire and drove down to Queenstown. The scenery along the way was quite stunning. Here is a picture of the very turquoise Lake Pukaka, with Mount Cook in the distance. Well we would have been able to see Mount Cook if the cloud cover wasn’t so low. We decided not to drive up to the summit because we wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyhow.

The lake was just so calm with barely any ripples along the surface. We walked down to the edge of the lake along the rocky stones. The water felt quite icy cold, which doesn’t bode well for the planned white water rafting later on this week.

The third piture is me, catching up on some exercise seeing as I had to miss the gym on Saturday morning.

Steve took some more photos along the six-hour drive from Christchurch to Queenstown. This one is of Lindis Pass, the roads would have been fantastic to drive along if only we had a decent car to drive with instead of the obligatory white Toyota Corolla saloon car. Still I had fun driving along the roads anyhow.

Once we got to Queenstown we checked into our pre booked hotel. The hotel was the Thomas hotel, which was recommended by the Lonely Planet book. Unfortunately it was a guesthouse rather than a hotel. It was a quite grubby room and the shower didn’t work properly. When we complained about this and decided to tell them that we wanted to check out immediately, the receptionist then offered us a much better studio apartment that was in a separate part of town but was much cleaner and newer.

We have also booked a skydive for tomorrow morning at 10.30 because the weather is predicted to be much better then. Hopefully I’ll survive to update more on this blog tomorrow night. :-), But even if I die, don’t be too sad as it’ll be a good way for me to go.

Tuesday 17th

Sky diving, but only from 9,000ft!

I can only show you the pictures. It was amazing fun and I would love to do it again and again. I was surprised how calm I was on the way up while Steve was more than a little nervous. I just thought well I’m going up in this small plane and then would jump out when I was told to. The pre-briefing was just that very brief, and then we were put into the plane and ready to go. I was lucky enough to get a good window seat right by the exit and saw the great views as the plane took off and climbed. Then it was all go and I was jumping out of the plane. Fantastic, what fun!

Just take a look at the pictures.

I wonder how mad I must have been to remember to wave at the camera just before my jump. Steve said he was too busy not looking at the ground and trying not to think about what he was about to do.

Me just exiting the plane and enjoying the view down.

I did try to fly like superman, quite obviously the adrenaline had got to me by this point. The line coming out the back of my instructor is a small chute to stabilise us while falling.

Big thumbs up because I was having so much fun falling at 200kph towards the earth.

This is one of the funniest photos of me ‘whooping’ just as the main chute is deployed.

Me and my instructor Peter just after landing. It was quite good fun jumping and I would love to do it again and again. It wasn’t the adrenaline rush that I quite hoped for though as I did take it all in my stride and even felt quite calm afterwards. Maybe subsequent jumps will be more fun when I can take it all in.

This is a very good one as Steve was the second one out of the plane, you can see that the plane pilot was obviously a total nutter. Steve said that when he saw me jump out of the plane he though, shit, Will has just jumped out of the plane! He was quite thankful when his chute opened.

Later on we went to the gondola station in Queenstown after lunch. There were some great views of the surrounding lakes and mountains of Queenstown. The place would be a great snowboarding resort in the winter and I’d love to come back to do some boarding here as well as another jump. You can see that the views of the mountains were just breathtaking.



At the top of the gondola station there was a walk that you could follow that went further up the mountain. At times the path did get quite narrow with a lovely drop on one side but it was quite refreshing to climb up and walk along to enjoy the scenery. I could have been Julie Andrews in another life.



Wednesday 18th

We had a long lie in today and white water rafting wasn’t planned till just after lunch. We went for the more difficult course despite the fact that initially Steve was a little wary of going for it rather than the easier course. The guide at the shop said that we would enjoy the more difficult course more than the easier one.

The 45-minute drive along Skippers Canyon Road was quite spectacular. It is one of only two roads in New Zealand that people aren’t insured to drive along. The sign clearly stated that mini busses and trailers weren’t allowed along it. Of course we were in a mini bus and had a trailer with three rafts on it!

At times you could only look out and down one side of the bus to see a sheer drop to the river. Most people in the bus were trying not to look down as it was quite nerving to drive along the single-track road. Apparently you can mountain bike down the road as well which I thought would be an excellent adventure for a later date.

The rafting was quite good fun. Initially we had a few lessons and mainly what to do if we fell off the side of the raft. There were eight people to a raft and around five rafts going down the course all at the same time. It only took about 90 minutes to complete the Shotover river. There were around eight different rapids along the course ranging from three to four+ difficulty levels.

I almost fell out at one point when we went into the cliff edge when I didn’t expect it, but fortunately managed to stay in the raft. In the poor quality picture you can see me (or my teeth) looking directly at the camera. I saw the man filming us as we went past him and into the rapid so decided to not duck down and instead stay up to smile at the camera. I have quite good video footage of me going past the camera with a big smile on my face while everyone else around me is ducking down and getting submerged. You can just make out the top of Steve’s helmet to the left of my face.

We were drenched quite a few times along the river and that just made the ride even more fun for me. The water was quite cold at only 4 degrees but seeing as we were paddling as well, it helped keep us warm.

Thursday 19th

We headed down to Milford Sound for today and tomorrow. Unfortunately the weather was very wet and blowing a gale on the way down there. As can be seen from the photo it was very cloudy and there was very heavy rain as well. Milford Sound was quite impressive though the sheer scale of the place was breathtaking in itself.

The population of Milford Sound is only quoted at around 170 odd, so there wasn’t much happening in the place.

We stayed at the Milford Lodge, which I can only describe as basic YHA accommodation. It’s the last time I share bathroom facilities if I have a choice! The rooms were basic wooden huts that did make quite a noise in the strong winds. We jokingly said it was like a concentration camp because you could hear every footstep of people walking along the front of our room.

Fortunately for us the weather turned for the better the following morning as we were out sea kayaking. The weather couldn’t have been better as it was sunny with occasional clouds. We had a good time in the kayaks on the sound. The trip lasted around four hours and some of the close up views of the sides of the fiord were brilliant.



The above waterfall is apparently the fourth highest waterfall in the world at 150ft tall.

This final picture is of us returning home after a long mornings kayaking. The kayaks were two man kayaks and quite stable, however due to the sitting position in the kayak, the base of my spine hurt all the way through the trip. I’m thoroughly expecting it to hurt quite a bit tomorrow morning!