just jump

Not surprisingly, we didn’t make it up in time to get out on the road to see the sunrise! Also, we miscalculated on the distance from the campsite to Queenstown, and had a white-knuckle drive over. I was speeding along at 110-120km/h much of the way, which is quite slow in US terms but ridiculously fast over here. We got stuck in 25km/h roadwork areas a couple times, then had some big hills that Lola the Corolla (Ann’s christened her) didn’t really like, and then right at the very end when we were driving around Lake Whakatipu we were going crazy because you can see Queenstown right on the other side, but you have to drive about 3x farther than as the crow flies to get there because the lake coast is so sinuous. We ended up calling the bungy place because we knew we’d be late – in the end, we were 25 minutes late and if we’d been 5 minutes later we would have missed the bus to the jump and forfeited our non-refundable tickets!

We had a loooong bus ride up to the bungy gondola – apparently it was only 45 minutes but it was forever to me, as I spent the whole time imagining the dive off the ledge and wondering if I’d be the one in our group who’d back down from the challenge. When we got up there, we were weighed and fitted in harnesses, then shipped out to the platform pod by a little cable-car type thing, which was high-adventure in itself. Jumpers went from heaviest to lightest, and I was near the end…great, had to watch everyone else go! Ann went, and came back alive, so that was a relief. But then the girl ahead of me got out onto the platform, started shaking and saying she couldn’t do it, and came back. Then they coaxed her back out, and the same thing happened. Apparently only one in 250 people back out once they’re that far along, and I didn’t want to screw up the statistics, so I knew I had to jump. I kept reminding myself it’d be over really fast, I’d be really proud of it once I did it, and I’d done ultimately-scarier things in the past 12 months, such as quitting a comfortable job and moving halfway across the country, and eventually I somehow found myself standing on the edge and hearing the crew members count ONE…TWO…THREE…JUMP! And I did. I just did – for a split second, I thought about it, then just went. And…I was actually kind of disappointed, because for all I’d worked myself up, it wasn’t as terrifying as I’d imagined it could be.

The 134m freefall was followed by a bounce that’s higher than most bungy jumps themselves, and the scariest part of the whole thing was at the top of that bounce when you’re changing direction from up to down and suddenly your harness feels like it’s come off because there’s no pressure on the ropes, and that’s when I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into, but then just a second or two later I was at the bottom of that bounce, and then it was time to concentrate on pulling the strap between my ankles to turn myself upside down. Most of the people before me hadn’t done it, so I wasn’t entirely convinced it was a safe thing to do, but we’d been told many times to do it by the crew, and since I hadn’t died on any of the other parts I decided to trust them. It worked, and I was right-side up again, and had a fun ride back up to the bungy, looking down at the river and feeling pretty proud that I’d actually gone through with it! Back at the top, Ann and I celebrated but found out we were both feeling a bit cheated since neither of us was feeling the buzz we’d heard everyone saying the felt for hours afterward.

We hung around Queenstown only long enough to see the waterfront, pick up our pictures and my DVD, and get some groceries for our next few nights of camping, then started the long drive on SH6 toward the coast and up the coast toward Hokitika.

We stopped at the Blue Pools along the way, one of my favorite places in NZ. It was my third time here and I still can’t get over how blue and clear the water is. We saw some trout resting in the deeper pools – guess they know fishing’s not allowed there!

The drive seemed ridiculously long, and it was late when we arrived in Hokitika – we were too tired to even go say hi to Lex and Ann (at whose flat we had our Christmas/New Year’s celebrations), who’d driven over from Nelson for the festival and were in our same campsite. We’d kind of expected to find the sites all marked off and organized, but it was just one big area with tents smashed in it, and six showers for around 1,000 people – wonderful planning! They had 24-hour security all sorted out, though – we had to produce all our proof-of-purchase papers just to make it past the gate.