We left Wanaka early and stopped off Puzzle World. It's a really cool place that basically has a load of exhibitions that are designed to mess with your mind. One room was full of concave heads that looked convex and followed you around the room. Another room was at an angle and had a pool table that the ball could roll up! It also had a water fountain that ran upwards! There was another room that made one person look huge and the other look tiny using angles of the ceiling, it's the same technique used to film dwarfs in The Lord of the Rings. There was also a huge maze that we all enjoyed getting lost in. All in all a really interesting place.
We then continued our trip Queenstown and stopped at AJ Hackett Headquarters, which was the first commercial bungee company. It was really cool, we saw a few people do a small 50m bungee off a bridge and got to book on all our activities for the day.
Me and Rachel decided to book on to the 'easier' activity of the Nevis Swing which is the worlds larges swing. We got on our bus and went to the location of our swing, which is the same location as the world famous Nevis Bungee, which is 134m fall hundreds of meters above the valley floor. We decided to go over to the jumping pad to watch a few people jump. - Bad Decision!
We went across to the jump pad on a ridiculously rickety glass bottom cage. It was so high above the valley floor. We got to the pad and watched people jumping! We couldn't see them at the bottom of their jump, it was that high! What made it worse was one girl didn't jump, she was in pieces. All this happened with our swing point in view.
We spoke to one of the staff and said we decided to do the soft activity just to do something. They then said "I think you've got the wrong thing booked, I think this is worse than the bungee". Uh-oh! Rachel looked at me and I felt so bad because this was my idea. I tried to back myself up by saying, "its not that bad because you just swing you don't drop like you do on a Canyon Swing" and she replied "Ow no, you drop!" It's a 50 meter drop into the valley! At this point we were absolutely s***ting it! We went back to the centre and walked across to our launch pad. We were so nervous. The lads at the pad kitted us up and put some tunes on to pump us up. I got called forward to be clipped in. The ledge was so close and so high. I couldn't do anything but look at the horizon. Thinking, don't look down! I was awfully rude to the staff, I just didn't want to talk. My plan was to just focus on doing it. We were strapped in and told to sit back in the harness. It took our weight and we held on to each other. We were winched out over the ledge, eyes solid on the horizon. We were asked to turn around for a photo but couldn't make ourselves move! I have never been so petrified in my life. The button was pressed and we plummeted to the valley! After a few seconds free fall the swing caught us and we were launched towards the mountain side! Great thrill but in all honesty not worth the scare! Glad I did something that day though, and it's something I can tick off the list!
We got our bus to Queenstown and met up with the gang. Really nice place as always with New Zealand and again brilliant weather, except it was freezing! I invested in a jumper and caught back up with Josh which was really cool!
We went for an all you can eat pizza sesh with the whole bus and drank beer out of a goblet, was interesting. After pizza we went out on the town and spent way to much money in the bars. Had a really good night with the team! Some awesome people, and can't wait to catch up back at home.