This was the day that, almost on impulse, I decided to pack in as much high-octane activity as I could. So it was "sod the money, this is the day of my life and I'm going to make the most of it".
My day started at 8:15 with a 15,000 feet free-fall sky dive. After we'd driven to the airstrip and had the pre-jump briefing, we boarded the plane and slowly rose to 15,000 feet. When it came to jumping, I thought I’d be nervous as hell, but I don’t think my heart beat went up at all and I found I was totally calm when it came to the point of no return. I think the fact that I was first to jump may have helped.
The cloud base was at about 8,000 feet and we were way above that when it came to zero hour. We couldn't see the ground at all and maybe that helped, too. On the command from my co-jumper, I just leant forward and fell out of the plane. After a tap on my shoulders, I let go of the jump position and spread my arms out wide. Then we just flew! Wow! I was Superman flying way up in the sky.
After swinging around for about 40 seconds, we dropped right through the clouds and then suddenly were hit by the most magnificent view of Lake Wakatipu, way below us. The chute opened with a bit of a jerk and we started swinging around doing some aerobatics. I have to admit that for a while my ears were hurting and I felt a little queezy in the stomach, but the whole experience was almost orgasmic. After a couple of minutes drifting down, we landed safely back on the ground. What an experience! And I did buy the tee-shirt afterwards. As it turned out, I was very lucky to have been the first to jump as soon after that, the clouds closed in and they had to abandon jumping for the rest of the day.
After lunch, it was off for the Jet Boat ride on the Shotover River. We had to dress up with life jackets, but I don't think there was ever any real danger of our falling out of the boat, unless we crashed, which always did seem a realistic proposition.
I’d never seen a jet boat before, but they are pretty amazing. They are driven by water that is pumped out under pressure in two powerful jets at the back of the boat. I think the fact that the two jets are controlled separately gives the boat its tremendous manoeuvrability. The acceleration is fantastic and they very quickly reach 80km/hr, down narrow gorges, with vertical rocks and hangovers just inches from your head. Quite scary. Our pilot certainly knew how to drive. Apart from trying to scare us to death with his crazy slides into cliff faces, he also threw in a number of 360 degree turns. These were pretty impressive and you certainly had to hang on tight. Not really scary, especially after the first time, but great fun. I guess the whole ride lasted about twenty minutes and, without doubt, knocks the spots off any pleasure ground ride I've ever seen.
Finally, it was off to the white-water rafting, in Shotover Canyon. I had paid to go up by helicopter, but since there weren’t enough people willing to join me I had to take the bus instead. And I’m glad I did. The dirt road we had to take was incredible and not a little scary. They say it's the fifteenth most dangerous road in the world and I can well believe it. You know those emails that come round from time to time showing roads in South America that somehow just cling to the vertical surface of the cliff? Well that’s what this was like and on a dirt road, to boot. And we had a woman driver, sporting bright pink hair, tattoos and body piercing in places you couldn't even imagine! She reminded me of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, although she was on the large size, rather than totally emaciated. But, boy, she knew how to drive.
As for the rafting itself, it was truly awesome. We were a party of seven rafts, each with four, five or six paddlers, plus the leader. In addition, there was a crazy Brazilian in a Kayak who was there to help out, if anyone got into trouble. As it turned out, his main task seemed to be to splash water over the rafters and to try to pull some of them out of the rafts. At the end, though, he had his come uppance as two of the captains grabbed him and dumped him in the barrell of disinfectant that they use to clean down the wetsuits.
When we got going on the rafts, we shot down canyons with vertical cliffs, shot over rapids and down waterfalls and finally through a 150m tunnel, barely wide enough to take the boat and carved out by gold miners in the last century. We ended up with an almighty crash through some rapids where we were all completely soaked, but we ended up first to finish and not one of us fell out of the raft.
But then we were captained by a long-haired Maori, who went by the name of Chief! He seemed to like the way I was paddling and after I told him I used to row in an eight on the Thames, he seemed suitably impressed. I was all gung ho for overtaking the other boats and he started calling me "Peter the Skiffer" and "the mad Englishman". I did suggest we went on a war party with him to raid one of the other boats, but the Aussie woman who sat next to me didn't seem to like the idea!
We ended with hot showers and coffee and, all in all, I think the trip must have lasted about four hours and for me ended up being the highlight of a fantastic day.
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