The night before we entered Queenstown we stayed just outside of town as we knew there were strict rules on free camping in Queenstown. We stayed on Lake Wakatipu, the second largest lake of NZ. The next morning we were up early syching ourselves up for our doom, a 134m bungy, the Nevis Highwire. This is NZ's highest bungy above the rugged Nevis river and the world's first Gondola jump, where you have to take a cable car over the valley to the jump pod. Anyway we got into Queenstown and it lived up to expectations, it was similar to what we had imagined… a typical ski resort town, with lots of café's, boutiques, adventure centres and many young adrenalin seeking bodies. Due to its natural surroundings, it is the adventure capital of NZ with mountains, Lakes, canyons, gorges, bungy, skydiving, and rafting, it seems to have it all. Anyway we had a look around and headed for the AJ Hackett Bungy Centre to check in and see what we were letting ourselves in for… it was here that we realized what we were getting ourselves in for. The centre was well equipped with tv's showing the people throwing themselves off the bungy's - with a seating area around which is where all the jumpers wait to be called for the bus, bungy cords on display to show what they are made of and plenty of workers jumping around gearing everyone up for their jump. The ride to the bungy area was bad enough.. the minibus went up the steepest, narrowest windey hill ever.. and played songs all relating to 'jumping', or 'falling' and even 'death'.. well and truly scaring us. One geared up and ready to go, we headed out onto the rickety cable car - which is clearly designed to maximize the fear factor. This, along with the glass bottomed cable car so you can see the reactions of the other jumpers before you!! Chris was called out to jump first, I stood at the edge to see him get geared up - he looked quite nervous, but kept his cool. On the pod the guides said 1, 2 , 3 and he was off.. screaming like you wouldn't believe!! I though, oh good!! It made me even more nervous. I was practically last, which I think was worse as you see people go through the ordeal of getting geared up, walking (or should I say hopping) out onto the pod and seeing their petrified reactions.. one girl nearly crying and chickening out!! Anyway, my turn comes.. my heart in my mouth! A guy talking me through what to do - I could barely concentrate as I was so scared. I smiled nervously for the camera and stood on the edge of the jump pod and looked down… It was ridiculously high. NO safety measures reassured me of it, I was petrified. The guy called 1,2,3 and .. after one hesitant moment I dived out. I can honestly say it was so so much fun. However at the bottom of the bungy to have to pull a cors at the bottom of your ankles so you get flung up in seating position to be pulled back up to the pod. However my cord wouldn't pull - so I got pulled up all the way to the pod upside down!! Needless to say I had a huge headache when I got back into the cable car!! I wanted to do it again. We both did, so we decided it would be rude not to try 'Nevis Arc' - the Worlds Highest Swing with a 300m Arc. One of the guys said that sometimes they combine the price if you do a tandum one, so Chris and I decided to do it together. We walked across the 70m suspension bridge to the launch pad, got geared up and they hoisted out off the pod with me on Chris's lap. After telling us "We're mad", "its dangerous" etc to excellarate the fear factor - they counted 5,4 and by 3 they pulled the cord. The initial drop of the arc was a bungy - but in a different position (it felt like Chris was falling on top of me!), and then the cord swung us out as if we were hurtling towards the rock. It was really scary - but then the wind picked up and slowed us down. At the end of this one it gave us a lot more time dangling and taking in the scenery which was good. But as it pulled you back in to the pod it was quite slow and scared me even more, and I saw how deep the canyon was that I was dangling from!! After getting our free souvenirs and DVDs, we headed back with huge migraines from all the adrenalin to chill out and take in what madness we had just accomplished.

The next day we decided to take a walk up to the goldola to get a good view of Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown before heading out to Glenarchy. The walk up was really hard, a lot harder than I initially imagined it to be. However once at the top we were rewarded with magnificent views. Here, we took in the scenray, had a coffee and cake, and amused ourselves by watching the kids and adults bombing around on the Luge (Go Karts) - which looked awesome fun, and such a good place to have one! On the top was also room for Skydives, Paragliding and another A J Hackett bungy! The adrenalin stuff never stops in Queenstown. After taking a walk around Queenstown, the gardens, fish and chips and watching locals play icehockey we headed off to The Lord of The Rings setting of Glenarchy.

The drive from Queenstown to Glenorchy (a small village at the head of Wakatipu), was a scenic and beautiful drive along the whole lake. We drove straight through Glenorchy, out to a place called Paradise, in Mt Aspiring National Park. The road headed onto an unsealed track, which always sucks and to make matters worse we had to cross a number of fords, some of which we started to get a little worried about as the campervan was taking a bit of a hammering. The reason for coming out here was to see a number of setting from Lord of the Rings. The road ran parrallel with the Dart River which was used in the film when Liv Tyler (I can't remember her characters name haha) is being chased on her horse and she has to cross the river to get to safety, its one of the more dramatic scenes. I remember being upright in my chair wandering if she was going to make it when i was watching the film lol. The Dart river itself was really beautiful with the woods either side of it. It was exactly like the film, not to deep, very wide and was a very patchy river (like a number of different large streams coming of in different directions) leaving patches of debris and stone etc. We also drove through some forest, which from the leaflets we had picked up seemed to be 'The forest of Lothloriane' in the movie, which also looked very familiar from the film. It would have been a great help if we had bought the LOR book telling you exactly where everything is, but thats a little sad and we are to tight to pay out for it haha, so we stuck with what info the leaflets gave us. Its annoying as there is no signs to show you where the film was set as they don't want to let tourists know so then we have to pay out for a tour. Anyway it was amazing just to be surrounded by the beautiful scenery that was used in the making of the film and you could see why, it was incredible! As the clouds had started to roll in and the fords were getting a little deeper as we went on, we decided not to go all the way, missing out scenery from the Misty Mountains, however you could see all the mountain range in the distance and as there was a big rain cloud rolling in, it looked very dark and eerie like in the movie. It was weird how similar some of it really was. As we had travelled down alot of unsealed road and it was late afternoon we had had enough of driving and decided to camp up in the park for the night, in the middle of knowhere, we were right of the beaten track. During the night the weather was herendous, with huge clashes of thunder and lightning. It was a little spooky seeing as we were out here all on our own. One clash of thunder woke us up at about 4am and we honestly thought it had hit the car, actually shaking it! I wont say what was said next!! but as you can imagine it took us a while to get back to sleep after that, well it did me. Kate was out like a light!! Typical. i was also worried that we might not be able to get back across the fords as we struggled getting across them before and due to the rain all night I was a little concerned, so I had Kate up and ready for 7am to get our ass's out of there haha. It was quite exciting but glad we got through the fords with the camper in one piece, minus the odd scratch. I don't thinnk getting stuck in a ford on an unsealed road is on our insurance lol. It would have been great to do some tramping here as it where the Routeburn track begins, one of NZ's great walks, but unfortunately the weather didn't allow us. The cloud ws far to low and it rained all night and day so we moved onto Wanaka, another adventure mecca but alot quieter that Queenstown.