Saturday January 18, 2014

The day started cold (4.9 degrees), but not windy, the sun was out and we anticipated it to get warmer as the day progressed – it didn’t!

We had travelled by bus from Cromwell to Queenstown and knew the road was hilly and in parts narrow.  We also knew that there were going to be areas where we would want to stop and take photos and possibly do a bungy jump at the original site of bungy at Kawarau gorge.  We were late starting 9:15 and started by walking up a 1:15 incline out of Queenstown.  We were soon on the bikes and going, the wind such as it was, was behind us. The hills that I remembered on the bus trip were now mostly in our favour and it seemed as if the whole day was downhill with only a few smaller climbs.  I only went into my granny gear once.  The area around Queenstown has alot of small vineyards, it is a lovely area.

The Kawarau gorge where the bungy is beautiful, even without the added excitement of the bungy site.

At the bungy site, Ralf took photos and decided he was going to do it.  I decided not to, I am not sure why – I wasn’t afraid, just not really interested in doing it.  Ralf on the other hand was really excited about doing it.

Over to Ralf: Up until the time I stepped onto the platform, everything seemed perfectly normal then they ask you to put your toes over the edge, you have a few seconds to look down into the fast flowing river, when you are told “give us a big jump 3, 2, 1 jump” it is at that moment when you can feel a spike in your heart-rate.  Then of course you jump – flying through the air at the 32 feet per second feels absolutely awesome.  But 43 metres is a short distance and it is over relatively quickly and you are left with nothing but a huge grin and an adrenaline rush. \”Fear inducing. Gravity defying, awesome\”.

The best swan dive of the day.

If you want to check out the video of Ralf’s bungy jump email me and I will give you the website and access code.  It is stunning.

We met up with Bernard the Welshman, we had first met him in Geraldine and again in Lake Tekapo – when Ralf told him he had bungied, he said \”How old are you man? you are crazy\”

We stopped at the site of an old gold mining area.  You could pan for gold, or just buy jewellery in the shop.

Amazing rock formations in this area.

This week-end in Cromwell is a Classic Car event, which just happened to be next to the camp site we stayed at.  It was a very busy camp site.  After we had made our very simple meal of fusili and plain sauce we watched a group of Italians (who were working in the area as fruit pickers) making homemade Gnocchi.