Adventure Week Two!

Monday morning was rough seeing as the majority of my roomies had to be up at 5am for skydiving before the rest of our activities. I decided to hold out on adrenaline rush until Queenstown. I choose to do a day long hike and kayak around the Abel Tasman national park in Nelson. I had never been out on the ocean in a kayak before and taking the waves was an adventure for sure. We checked out the coast and got to paddle over to an island where a fur seal colony was sunning themselves and playing in the surf. The hike was beautiful and took about 3 hours to complete.

Tuesday was another travel day, it was roughly 8 hours again down to Franz Joseph. We arrived to free soup and adorable cabin-like rooms which were both pleasant suprises. On Wednesday we had a full day of glacier hiking on the Franz Joseph glacier. It was a really warm day so we were hiking in tank tops most of the day other than stopping for lunch. The veiws were amazing and being a geo nerd I thoroughly enjoyed all the info about the technicalities of the glacier. I also had a flashback to the Columbia Icefields when we got the chance to stop and taste some of the freshflowing water. Delicious!

Thursday was our final day of travel as we headed down to Queenstown. With only nine thousand residents during the winter months its hard to believe that its the adventure capital of the world! But I soon found out why. Our first stop was the AJ Hackett bungy centre the world home of bungy and the second largest in the world. The Nevis highwire is a 134m drop with an 8s freefall! And it was amazing! That's right I actually made it happen.

Friday morning my stomach was in knots, an earlt morning helped me calm down...for a while. The group activity for the day was the Shotover jet. Its a super fast jetboat that took us up and down a river doing spins at almost 85km/h. After that it was off to the bungy! The forty minute bus ride out there was torture but I was starting to feel more excited than anything. We got harnessed up and headed out to the 'pod'. The bungy platform is suspended above a river on a cable and is roughly bigger than a large gondola. When my turn came to get strapped up (I didn't go first mom), my heart was beating so fast! Walking out on the plank was surreal and it took me 2 tries before I jumped, the mind over matter aspect of jumping is so hard because it's so far to fall. I can barely jump off the 10m at Pan Am! But once you let go it's the most exhilirating thing in the world! It went by so fast that I almost went a sencond time. I think I'm addicted which is too bad because there's nothing to jump off in Manitoba! I'll upload the video of the jump as soon as I can!

The group departs Sunday and I'm stayin in Queenstown an extra week before I head over to Sydney on Valentines day. Queenstown is gorgeous and reminds me a lot of Whistler!