Thursday 10 February 2005

This morning was the morning of ... the Jetboat, and the Bungy Jump! M34tb4LL and Guru G were up super early for their Milford Sound trip, Lumpy, Decay, Grumbler and Droidy were up a little later in order to get to the Shotover Jet place ... only to find that when we got there, technical difficulties had meant that the first few trips for the day were cancelled. Because the Bungy jump was already booked to check in at 1pm, we weren't able to take the first rescheduled time of 1pm for the shotover jet... so we made our way back to the centre of town, to see what the Kawarau Jet had to offer...

11am was booked for this one hour trip, so Decay and Droidy shared a fruit scone, and Lumpy got half a club sandwich for the princely sum of $4.50 .. w00t? Grumbler went off to do some finding of the Post Office to send off the postcards that people had been scribbling away ... Kawarau Jet left from the lake in the centre (?) of Queenstown, and it was fun enough - screaming girlies in the back, the jet boat equivalent of doughnuts on the lake and in the deeper parts of the Kawarau River, and a small opening on the side of the boat that Decay was sitting on meant that although we did get sprayed by water, we didn't get soaked... Decay's side got wet only because of that opening on the side of the boat he was on ... Overall, meh, it wasn't scaring the shit out of anyone, the screaming girlies probably helped, and there were cameras on board that kept getting put down every time the jet boat dude twirled his hand in the universal "We're about to do a doughnut!" move.

Because the Jetboat ride fininshed at 12 pm, we didn't really have that much time to get back to the hotel and pick up cameras, have a shower, and such before needing to be around to check in for the Bungy trip - parking was rather ... difficult in the morning, and we weren't about to try and find more parking later... Grumbler ate lunch while the rest of us didn't ... the thought of bungying on a full stomach wasn't one we were wanting to contemplate... Anyways, we checked in at the AJ Hackett centre not long before 1pm, waited around while others checked in, and left on the 40 minute drive to Nevis.

The trip there was fine, feelings were mixed in the minivan - two of the group had jumped before, one person was really freaking out, Grumbler was the only spectator, and the rest of us were quietly excited and perhaps a bit unsure what to think. There was a bit of napping, and windy roads on the way there, including some roadworks to slow us down and build up some anticipation. We had tried to organise something so that maybe I could keep my glasses on, but the straps weren't holding firm enough for us to trust holding onto the only pair of glasses I brought along. We got our harnesses, went in for our re-weighing, and were given a small safety talk and jumping techniques allowed at this jump location. Because of the location of the jump pod in relation to the surroundings, we were only really allowed to do diving jumps to get a swinging pendulum effect. Other jumps, or even stepping off the jump platform weren't advisable because of the proximity to the walls - any gust of wind on a slightly off-kilter jump would be kind of unfun.

Lumpy was up first for the jump. The way we were strapped in to the harness and leg straps meant that we'd be upside down while the bounces were happening, and we had the option of righting ourselves for the winch back up after the bounces. He was pretty relaxed, he just sort of ... jumped when he got the go-ahead. Although he'd been told about the possibility of doing a jump since the trip has been in discussion, he didn't actually give it all that much thought until about a day or so beforehand? Decay was second to jump - he actually started his launch-off before the dudes counted down from 5 - the arms were already swinging to go at 2. None of this fear stuff for Decay, there was a jump and he was jumping it. Next up were 7 other people, one of whom was really quite freaked out about the whole having to jump thing - she was kind of OK about just walking off the platform but this was one of those jumps that you couldn't really do that. The tears calmed down and she did jump, and she was so glad she did, even if she didn't want to do that ever again! While they were moving down the weight divisions, they lowered the jump pod. It was really quite kewl to watch the operators move about, checking each others work, switch music, and generally have a bunch of fun getting people to jump from 134 metres. Last up to jump was the lightest of the bunch - there were two of us who were called pineapples by the dudes, because we fell into the super-light weight range. By this time, the music had been changed to a spanish version of "Brick in the Wall Pt 2 " and then some other stuff. I took my glasses off to jump, so the whole seeing thing and being able to focus on anything was out the window. I know we were told to head towards a few tress on the hilly thing across from the jump platform, but distinguishing that from the other blurs of green was not really possible, so I just jumped. I did scream, with a huge grin on my face (: The freefall was so much fun, the bounce at the bottom wasn't quite as much fun because I hadn't actually swung down to point downwards from the jump yet. Just the sensation of being in the middle of nothing was pretty kewl. I got winched back to the platform and wanted to do that again!

Post Bungy (there is DVD evidence that we jumped), we were driven back into town, and then we drove the Warthog back to our rooms to change and then go to the Shotover river location at 6pm for our rescheduled Shotover jet. Grumbler asked the people here if they were going to scare the shit out of him in the jet ... This jet boat went at about the same top speed as the Kawarau-Jet people but they had prime real estate here - being the only people licenced to use this section of the Shotover River and gorge area, the boats were fast, and they did doughnuts, and they went through really quite shallow water, veered past the walls of the canyon, and generally kept the hair out of people's eyes. This is what we thought the jetboat was going to be like - this morning's ride was very tame compared to the Shotover jet. 45 minutes later, we were back on deck, and ready to pick up stuff and head back to the hotel to wait for M34tb4LL and Guru G to get back from their trip to Milford Sound. .

Dinner was at the Speights Ale House, because that was one of the places where the majority of the mains were under 20.00. We were initially outside, but were moved inside once a talbe that could fit six became available. Three Blue and Gold (Speights Gold beer battered Blue Cod), a Bangers and Mash, a Drunniken steak, and some lamb shanks later and we were all full of hot food. Grumbler finished one fillet of blue cod and the entire plate of lamb shanks, vegies and mash. That was quite a feat. The waitress there told G that in the 2.5 years she'd worked there she'd only had 1 person ever order entree, main, and dessert and finish the lot. I'm not sure I'm meant to be surprised to learn that the dude was American.

Post dinner, we viewed some pictures, with commentary by G and M34tb4LL of their trip to Milford Sound, and then ventually we all went and had much sleep. Lumpy and Grumbler watched Stargate via Decay's laptop plugged into the TV, The rest of us probably had a bunch of sleep after a long day.