April 16th-17th
Sitting at $3 lunch with some friends one Wednesday, Stephanie mentioned that she was going canyoning in a few weeks and that they had two spots open in their car. Amanda and I looked at each other and immediately volunteered to fill those positions, pending details of cost and time of departure. So, what is canyoning, you may be wondering? I was kind of wondering this too, so I did a little further investigating. They were heading to Queenstown, of course, the adrenaline capital of New Zealand. The route would be through 12 Mile Canyon, though we wouldn’t actually be traversing the whole 12 miles. We would be abseiling (rappelling), jumping off waterfalls, and making our way down the river in the bottom of the canyon. Sounded like fun to me!
Amanda wanted to bungy jump so we set out before the rest of the group so that we could make a stop at the Kawarau Bridge. When I had gone with my friend Amanda, we’d had to wait in line on the bridge for awhile before we got strapped in and made the leap. This time, however, I’d barely gotten out onto the viewing platform to take pictures when I realized that she was already walking out and went right up to the platform to get strapped in! She looked just a wee bit nervous as she scooted out onto the platform, waved to the camera, and jumped! Apparently the worker had told her that Americans are good at swan dives so she was under a bit of pressure to represent the entire nation. Now, I’m no Olympic diving judge, but I’d say she did pretty well J
We’d noticed on the way in that there was a restaurant and winery just across the parking lot from the bungy centre. After her jump, Amanda definitely needed a drink so we headed over for our first wine tasting experience. It was interesting for us to learn about the different flavours and which type of foods they should each accompany. Neither of us are huge fans of red wine, which was confirmed by this tasting, but there were some very good whites and roses that were different from what we’d tried before. All of the bottles were out of our price range (shocking, right?) so we paid for the tasting and went the rest of the way into town to check into our hostel. The good part about the hostel was that it was right in the centre of the main street. The bad part was that our room smelled like wet socks mixed with sweat, which judging by the hiking packs that belonged to our roommates, was probably the case.
Gelato seemed like a fitting reward for being brave enough to jump off a bridge so we walked across the street to Patagonia chocolates for some of the best gelato that I’ve had since actually being in Italy. I can’t remember the name of the flavour that I ended up trying, but it involved caramel, chocolate, and some sort of fancy vanilla. It was amazing. For dinner we’d gotten a coupon for a large pizza, bowl of side salad, and bottle of house wine from one of the local bars. The salad left a bit to be desired, as it consisted of a cereal bowl with a few slivers of onion, tomato, ans sad looking lettuce. The size of the salad, however, was more than made up for by the pizza. When they said large they weren’t kidding. This thing was enormous! We almost managed to finish half of our spinach, sundried tomato, ham, feta, pineapple, and red capsicum (pepper) pizza and our cereal bowl-sized salad. This led to us looking rather ridiculous walking back to the hostel with a box about twice as wide as we were and then try to fit it into the fridge in the hostel’s communal kitchen. We also got to carry it around the next day, earning us some confused and some envious looks from passers- by on the sidewalks. The next morning we met up with the other three from our group for breakfast at “The Bakery” that my parents and I had found that had discounted day-old date scones. After this gourmet breakfast (it actually was quite good) we walked over to the headquarters of the canyoning company to meet the rest of our companions for the day and get driven out to the river. We were greeted by (already wet) wetsuits, boots, and helmets, each with its own nickname on the front. Getting into the wetsuit was somewhat of a struggle, which ended with me sitting on the tarp making various faces and grunts of frustration while finally managing to get all my limbs in their proper places. My helmet bore the name of “Lucky” which I figured boded well for me, though I was a little jealous of the woman who got to be Frodo.
It was a short walk to our first zip-line over the top of the canyon, but if you have ever walked in a wetsuit you know that walking is actually more like waddling, and raising your leg to climb up a hill is made exponentially more difficult by the wet rubber attempting to pull it back down. When we had all managed to haul ourselves to the top, we were given brief safety instructions and a demo and then, one by one, were clipped to the line and sent off across the canyon! I’ve only been zip-lining once before, and I must say it was more exciting (and higher) in Ecuador, but it was still fun to be sailing over the tops of the trees, with the occasional Tarzan yell thrown in for good measure J There were only four short zip-lines, and then it was time for our first abseil, which would take us down into the river where the real adventure would begin! We were once again hooked up to a rope and instructed to lean back over the edge of the cliff and walk our way down to the river at the bottom. This was one of my favourite parts of the experience, possibly aided by the fact that I was not yet wet and freezing. It was a bit tricky at the bottom manoeuvring over to the guide, but I managed to hop my way horizontally over the side of the cliff, get unhooked, and take my first plunge into the icy water.
Yikes! The river completely took my breath away, it was so icy cold! They had told us that it was around 5 degrees Celsius, but neither the warning nor the wetsuit quite prepared me for its icy embrace. Paddling my way as quickly as I could over to the rock where everyone had gathered to wait for the rest of the group, I tried to keep my hands above the water so that they might retain a little warmth. This made me look rather ridiculous and swimming somewhat less that efficient, but what can I say? I like being able to feel my fingers! These efforts turned out to be in vain, however, as my hands were soon numb and we didn’t have long to wait before we were ordered back in the water to weave our way through the shallow rocks to our first big test: the waterfall jump.
We came up to the waterfall, but couldn’t see over the edge to the bottom because it was down in a rock pool and we couldn’t get close enough until we were actually about to jump. One of the guides did a demonstration, which involved her front flipping into what, for all we knew, could have been an endless abyss. A splash was heard, which signified her arrival at the bottom and a very brave member of our group volunteered to go first. I was towards the middle of the line and tried to psych myself up for the jump ahead. I hadn’t expected to be so scared, but I knew that I was here and was going to do it, no matter how terrified I was. The woman two places in front of me was having a bit of trouble with the 7m drop and decided to wait a couple more people before she took the plunge. This did not do much to calm my nerves, but Nicole, another member of our group, made the leap and then it was my turn! I made my way cautiously up to the edge and peered over...21+ feet looks farther than it sounds when you’re being instructed to jump towards (but not into) the base of a waterfall and avoid the rocks that appear (but in reality are probably not) to be right in your way. I’m not sure what was going through my head as I got the countdown, but it was something between “oh my gosh why am I doing this...absdoigjerogih” and “you have to do this, you’ll be so disappointed if you don’t!!!” while I tunnel-visioned in on the spot that seemed to give me the most space between the rocks and falling water. Somewhere between my racing thoughts I heard the guide yell “3!” and I managed to hurl myself off the ledge, letting out an embarrassingly loud “aaahhhHHH!!!” which rose in volume and pitch about midway to the water.
Not surprisingly, to my more brave and reasonable side, I popped up out of the water just fine and remembered to tap the top of my helmet, signalling to everyone that I was OK. My very chicken-like self, however, was greatly relieved that I had come out alive and was able to swim my way over to the side and scramble up onto the rocks for a bit of a breather before our next trick. The half of the group which had already made the jump, myself included, were then led up the bank to another zip-line, this one which went out over the pool into which we had just jumped. The guide told us that we would be zip-lining out to the middle of the pool, and then have to partially unclip ourselves from the line above and lower ourselves into the pool on another line, from which we would fall back into the water when we chose to let go. Needless to say, we were a little sceptical about this plan since it sounded like we could potentially drop from the top all the way down to the pool if we weren’t quick enough to catch ourselves. We were assured, however, that the rope would catch us when we first got unhooked and our friend Michael volunteered to go first. Without a hitch, he flew out over the pool, unclipped his first line, and lowered himself down the second, dangling over the pool like a spider on its web. We heard a splash after the guide at the bottom told him to let go and the next in line stepped up. I was the last of our group to go, so I got to be the demonstrator for the second half of the group, which by this time had made their way up the hill behind us. 
For some reason I was much more comfortable with gliding out over the pool, unhooking my harness, and lowering myself down before dropping than I was with jumping from the same height. I think it had something to do with the fact that I couldn’t really see how far below the water was when I was told to let go and the lack of aim required to avoid any rocks. The next big test came only about a minute later...they don’t give you much time to recover (might be a good thing). Two at a time, we climbed up more ropes which were strung along the cliff face opposite the waterfall to a very small ledge where another of the guides (there were 2 plus the photographer) was waiting to instruct us on the proper cliff jumping technique. In a nutshell: perch precariously on the edge of the rock and jump. Oh boy. This is the part which was the worst for me. It was an 8m jump this time and, though I was fine scaling the rock face, standing and looking down towards the water gave me quite the fright. However, I’d already come all that way (and paid a significant amount) and there was no way I was going to let myself back down. With the exact same terrified scream, I leapt out from the rocks and once again landed in the freezing water! Phew! It was quite the rush, between the jump and the water, and I was glad to sit back on the rock for awhile, trying to warm my hands and watching the rest of the group drop either from the abseil line or the cliff.Before we moved on down the final stretch of the river, one of our guides who was from Oklahoma taught us a handy trick to regain the feeling in our fingers. He called it the penguin and showed us how to shrug our shoulders up and down with our hands flexed outward, looking like rather ridiculous penguins waddling downstream. I could actually feel the blood being pumped back into my hands with each shrug of my shoulders. This was a slightly alarming sensation, but a good one as well since I knew that at least some blood was making its way to my poor purple hands!
Our last bit of excitement was a smaller waterfall jump, which was only about a meter but ended in a shallow pool, which necessitated a belly flop style jump, instead of a cannonball. One of our friends went for the Superman pose, with one hand in a fist out in front as he jumped and managed to get a really awesome picture out of it! I was slightly less coordinated than this, but I managed to get a face full of water and came out sputtering and laughing with the rest. Finally, we were lowered into the last wee bit of river before the chute to the end. I was lowered down the cliff and told to pose for a picture with the guide while hanging right above the water...then he flipped me! I once again landed face-first in the water, this time without warning. He, of course, thought this was very clever. I was not quite as amused, but it was pretty funny after watching a couple other people receive the same fate J 
After a few “We Survived!” group pictures back where we’d started our journey, we squirmed our way out of the wetsuits with varying degrees of difficulty and shimmied into our dry clothes, very grateful for the extra layers which we’d brought and that it wasn’t too cold of a day! On the drive back into town, we all decided that some Patagonia hot chocolate was definitely necessary to warm up and as a reward for our bravery. After watching our picture slideshow a large group of us headed over for some hot drinks and then made our way to a burger joint to which we’d received coupons for free chips with any burger purchased. It was fun talking to some of the others with whom we’d shared the experience. Two of the boys were also on exchange at Otago and had done almost the full gamut of adrenaline adventures in one weekend: all three bungy jumps, river surfing (lay on a boogie board as you make your way down the river through rapids), and now canyoning! The other couple that came to eat with us were from England and travelling around the world on holiday. They’d already been to Australia, a couple places in Asia, and were heading off to the U.S. soon after New Zealand. One of my favourite parts of travelling is meeting all of the other people who are doing the same and hearing all of their stories. Plus, it’s not too bad having the opportunity to create some new stories of my own J 
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