Australasia > New Zealand > South Island > Queenstown > Articles > New Zealand Thrills

New Zealand, once thought of as a somnolent English suburb in the South Seas, has reinvented itself as the adrenaline capital of the Southern Hemisphere. For those visitors interested in more than cannoning down ski slopes, the South Island in particular specialises in alternative winter (and summer) thrills. "Off the mountain" and "off the Richter" activities vary from region to region; a sampling, and where to find them, follows:

Jet Boating. On the banks of the Shotover River, Queenstown - or the Rakaia River, near Methven, or a dozen other waterways - you pile into a shallow draught jet boat. Within seconds it's racing towards rocks and annihilation, only to veer away at the last second, missing the cliff seemingly by centimetres. From this near-death experience you return to a near-life state and realize that the only thing shallower than the boat's draught is your own common sense for having stepped on board. Your headstone's epitaph flashes before you: "Overshot the Shotover." Nevertheless, having more than survived the following half-hour, next day you want to do it again.

Tandem sulky racing. You, the visitor, sit behind a full-sized thoroughbred harness racing horse as it tears around a track at 50 kilometres per hour. This is "Tondeleyo Bloodstock" Stud Farm, at Ashburton, 90 kilometres south of Christchurch, where professional trainer Lyndsay Kerslake has patented a true "first", tandem sulky racing. Perched behind this thundering beast on something like a stretch rickshaw (bicycle wheels at the end of a pair of chopsticks), you have an illusion of control - at least, you're holding a set of reins - but the professional driver beside you is doing the real work. The barrier railings flicker by at a dizzying rate, the horse's massive hindquarters work furiously, its tail is going crazy, cinders fly... in a chauffeur-driven, turbo rickshaw.

Bungy jumping. New Zealand's most dubious contribution to world culture, bungy jumping, is a form of both pseudo-suicide and re-birthing. Leaping 42 metres off the infamous Kawarau Gorge Bridge, near Queenstown, with a rubber umbilical cord attached to one's ankles has become the adrenaline junkie's equivalent of a dip at Lourdes or a trip to Mecca. If you're not satisfied by this "dead already/born again" blast, then try the "1000 ft Heli-bungy": you leap from a helicopter, screaming, or at least praying that the bungy cord isn't 1001 feet long. It usually isn't.

Tandem skydiving. Deliver yourself to gravity at 10,000 ft, not with a parachute on your back but a parachutist. The light plane carrying you aloft spirals up above Queenstown; the parachute master buckles himself to your back; you manoeuvre yourselves as elegantly as an octopus out onto the wing. "From the sublime to the vertiginous" describes your brief view of the Remarkable Mountains, Lake Wakatipu and the farmlands far below. Suddenly, those farms come rushing up to meet you at 200 km per hour. The jumpmaster pulls the ripcord, there's a violent deceleration - and everything begins to float. As you waft gently earthwards beneath the nylon petals of the parachute, the vertiginous again becomes sublime.

Hot Air Ballooning. On the Canterbury Plains, south of Christchurch, you rise, literally, with the sun, courtesy of "Aoraki Balloons", for ballooning (once described as "astral travel with your eyes open") takes place in the windless conditions around dawn. As your wicker gondola ascends you revel in the vision of long shadows falling across the morning plains. A quilt of Canterbury farms and creeks unfolds below you in a grand design, with the spell broken only by the roar of the balloon's gas burners and the hoots of your fellow "balloonatics".

Queenstown (South Island) is Thrill City. If bungy jumping, tandem parachuting and jet-boating aren't enough, there are numerous other hyper-activities: river surfing (riding a "standing wave" in the rapids on a surfboard or boogey board), tandem paragliding, whitewater rafting on the Kawarau River and Tiger Moth aerobatics. Bite the bullet and purchase an "Extreme Package" covering eight of Queenstown's wildest "adrenaline OD" activities.

Methven (South Island, about 90 minutes drive south of Christchurch) is the accommodation base for Mt. Hutt ski field. The district's non-skiing activities include horse trekking, whitewater rafting (grade five rapids on the Rangitata River), kayaking, ballooning, bungy jumps, tandem sky dives, jet boats, and trout and salmon fishing. In fact, there's so much to exhaust you here that you might never "Get your butt on Mt Hutt" (as the ads exhort). It sounds extraordinary but, if you work your transport connections just right, at five hours travelling time, Mount Hutt can be the "closest" ski resort to Sydney.

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