We left Wanaka at about 9am on Tuesday morning and headed over to an interesting place called Puzzling World. They had a big outdoor maze (which was a bit chilly!) and also lots of illusion rooms, such as rooms where the faces on the walls follow you, or when one end of the room you look miniature and the other end of the room you look like a giant! It was pretty funny really, and worth going to as they gave us bacon sarnies!!

When we were nearly at Queenstown, we headed to the AJ Hackett bridge which is where the first ever bungy jump was done! We had a free "secrets of bungy" tour, where they showed us various ropes and harnesses and told us about the history of bungy. Apparently they got the idea from an old African tradition where boys prove their manliness by jumping from different wooden tours. Unfortunately they often used to get the length of the rope wrong and on the video that they showed us we actually saw people hitting their heads on the ground and bouncing back off as they jumped off the tours, which wasn't really what I wanted to see, it wasn't the most pleasant! But this idea gave AJ Hackett and his friend inspiration to find a safer way of jumping from high objects. The bridge that we saw was 48m high (and looked pretty scary to me, though it is not nearly the highest that bungy jumping takes place from nowadays!). Anyway, after seeing this tour, I decided to book onto this thing that is similar to bungy jumping but goes into a swing at the bottom instead of bouncing back up, called Canyon Swing in Shotover Canyon near Queenstown. I had always been planning on doing it since I saw Sophy Howard (a girl from my high school)'s video of it that she put on facebook, but then after watching various other videos of it on the Kiwi Experience bus I chickened out. After this tour I thought that I didn't want to leave Queenstown regretting not doing it, so I payed for it there and then on the phone and arranged to do it 1 hour later!

We got into Queenstown and signed into our hostel, then four other guys on the trip and I went to the Canyon Swing office down the road and took their minibus out to the canyon. During the previous hour I had been trying to just not think about it, but by the time I got there I was a quivering wreck, an absolute ball of nerves! They hooked me up to the harness and as I got out to the platform I was actually shaking and told them I wouldn't be able to jump it myself and they would have to help me. Every time they tried to move me closer to the edge I just said "no no no no no no no no......" and I was clinging onto the jumpmaster's arm and refusing to let go! When he eventually got me to hold onto the rope instead of his arm he slowly leaned me back until I was almost at 45 degrees from the platform and I was saying "don't let me go, seriously I mean it, do not let me go", he was assuring me that he wouldn't, I thought he would just lean me back then pull me back in again to get a feel for it, but then he just let me go and I screamed all the way down but it was amazing! It was 60m of freefall (about 3 seconds long) at 150kmph towards the canyon floor river, then going into a 200m arc of the swing. It was absolutely fantastic and I loved it! After everyone else went (one of my friends going upside down, and another going with a dustbin over his head!), I got strapped back in and went for another go! This time I didn't look down but I just jumped off forwards by myself, which I was really proud of myself for doing! Definitely well worth getting over my fear for. The jumpmasters really enjoy messing you about aswell and making you really scared and teasing you that the safety rope isn't attached and all sorts. Luckily for me though on my first jump they saw that I was already panicking so much that they were quite nice to me! hahaha. They also all gave me a hug afterwards. Awwwwwww. They also gave us wristbands and said that if we are still wearing them and they have space on a trip up then they will take us up for free and let us do another jump for just $20NZ, which is pretty sweet! I'm heading back to Queenstown next week so I still have mine on and I will definitely be trying to go back up a couple of times! I might try upside down or doing some front flips or something. I bought the DVD and photos, so when I am somewhere where the internet isn't really slow then I will try to upload them along with my skydiving DVD! Absolutely buzzing adrenaline rush that is for sure! I never thought that I would do a bungy jump because it is so scary making yourself jump off, but after doing the canyon swing I may well be able to pluck up the courage sometime to do a bungy jump!

In the evening, as it was our last evening together as a bus group before people go their separate ways, we all went out for drinks together and at 11 o'clock they gave out 100 free drinks to the first 100 people who turned up with the password. It was a really fun night but very sad to say goodbye to all the cool people I'd met. Luckily, when we first arrived in Queenstown we had a group photo together with our driver infront of the lakeside by a professional photographer. I have really enjoyed this part of my Kiwi Experience trip, and really look forward to meeting the next group of people I'll be travelling with! I'm off to Dunedin now to stay with my friends the Rays (Rupert, Mario and Yolanda are all very cool!) so I'll be having fun with them for a week. I'll let you know what goes down next time!

Lots of love

Joelle

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