Queenstown and the Big Rubber Band

We made our way to Queenstown by way of some beautiful lookouts at Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea. And then it came - Dermot Lavelle's Amazing World of Illusionism! Just the treat we'd been looking for ever since seeing his passport photo! And I'm glad to say it didn't fail to impress.

After having pushed the falling clock-tower back up, our next challenge was to get our make our way around a maze, reaching the four corners (which down to Helen's foresight was actually not so very difficult). But then there was the whole deal of getting out without hopping fences like some of our German compatriots! Our determination paid off...actually sending us back exactly the way we'd come from and more than doubling our time in the maze but hey we felt proud!

Inside Dermot showed the truly awesome extent of his powers by using nothing more than the power of his mind to change the direction of a cue ball on a pool table! Mindblowing!

As if that wasn't enough intoxicating action for one day, next stop was the world's very first bungee jump from a bridge about 50m above the river below. After umm-ing and arr-ing I eventually just prayed that my retinas wouldn't detach from my eyes and threw myself into oblivion. Well actually I walked to eight inches from the edge, thought it was a long way down, then at four inches suddenly realised just how far down it was and said/whimpered "Jesus Holy F**king Christ" (apologies now for the blasphemy). The jumpmaster counted down - 3, 2, 1 at which point I bent my legs and was about to go but kind of didn't! Something in my body was telling me it was a stupid idea. Next time through though he only got as far as 2 and I was flying out and away.

The first half-second is blind panic, but after that you quickly change to thinking wow how totally cool is this! And then less than a couple of seconds later the river starts rushing up on you and you think - hmm - how much water did I ask for? As it happened I'd asked for "quite a bit" and got rather more. Totally cool though to be completely dunked in the water and then whipped-out back from it! On the way up I tried to get a good look at how far away the bridge was but seemed to succeed less in getting my bearings and more in sending myself in a crazy spin. That felt crazy though so I kinda kept on doing it!

By the time the boat drew near I was totally disorientated, shaking from adrenaline and dizzy from the spinning. Trying to figure out where in three dimensional space the pole I was supposed to grab was actually located was one hell of a challenge! When I tried to get out of the boat it was just like after the swim on triathlon - my legs were like jelly and my hands were shaking - crazy! Unfortunately the effect didn't last too long though...but it did put us in a great mood for a night of dancing on the tables before we'd even had more than a pint each! Jegerbombs probably weren't necessary because the way we were going we'd have danced the night away whatever, even when the bouncers turned up for duty and told us to stop dancing on the tables and chairs we'd been dancing on for the past two hours!

Chad, Henrik, John and I had signed ourselves up for riversurfing for the next afternoon. It made for an awesome challenge trying to control where you were going whilst the raging river just wanted to send you into every available rock and then dump you by the wayside! Catching the squirts is amazing though...you're basically looking for two currents of water, one running over the top of the other. Push your board down and down you go to 2 or three metres and get sucked along by the current! My longest squirt must have been eight or so seconds. I dropped down and really got torn along up to speed...after sitting down there for a while I started thinking that the opposite (rocky) bank of the river was only a matter of a few seconds away! At that point I pulled-up to find that I was indeed all of a couple of metres from the bank!

Other great activities there included river surfing - basically surfing the standing waves in the river...so you actually stay stationary as the water passes by, and getting yourself sucked into whirlpools where you really do get span around just like you're in a washing machine! And then there are some particularly challenging sections of rapids where you seem to have no control and just smash your way through the waves or they'll smash through you! All good fun. Oh and a little cliff-jumping! A quality little afternoon all-in-all.

Next stop was the luge - gravity-kart racing at top of a mountain with awesome views over the countryside. No photos were taken of the actual driving due to the intensely competitive nature of it and our need to send each other over the side of the track!

That evening, following a Fergburger (not so big as they'd like to make out) and tactful avoidance of the girls' idea of going speedating, we finally settles on a tea-party of sorts in World Bar. The coctail of choice was "Illusion", but forunately Dermot's skills weren't up to scratch so there was really something there to drink! Another good night of dancing and just generally looking cool drinking from teapots!