Take the plunge

Couch potato TONI GILLAN discovers there's more to Queenstown than shopping and wine tasting.

Come winter school holidays, my partner would load our three kids and their assorted friends, skis, boots, poles and a mountain of paraphernalia into our ancient Range Rover and drive to Queenstown for a week's skiing.

I would stay home, alone, protesting minor ailments which my children accepted with fake disappointment. They all looked forward to their time together. I'd order in a few bottles of medicinal, and bath, bubbles, dance with myself and read half the night. Everyone was happy.

I'm not a winter person; rather Queenstown for me has always been about spring, summer and autumn, fair-weather soft activities: staying in tasteful accommodation, wine tasting, enjoying creative cuisine, visiting art galleries, shopping and checking out the night life.

Outdoor adventure activities are for younger people and tourists. Not me I like passive niceness.

However, I went to Queenstown for a weekend with a difference, facing physical challenges completely outside my comfort zone. In the interests of investigative writing I'm game to give what's thrown at me a try.

Flying over spectacular scenery, straight off a late plane, we drive in no time to the main town pier where our larger-than-life bright yellow jet boat awaits, as does the rest of the group kitted out in sweltering-hot, head-to-toe wet-weather gear and life jackets.

For more than 50 years, Kawarau Jet has been operating on Lake Wakatipu, taking thrillseekers 43 kilometres on to the shallow channels of the Shotover River to daringly go where heaps of people have been before, which is a comforting thought. Yet each jet-boating experience remains unique, depending on the river flow and the driver's navigational skills, which, we are told, "are always challenged".

At 85kmh, and then with maybe 10 seconds warning, the boat turns 360 degrees in water often less than 10 centimetres deep and there it is fear-factor, stomach-churning, daredevil fun, which I would never have tried without encouragement. As a group we're now bonded, with more outdoor pursuits less fearlessly anticipated.

After a tummy-settling lunch we are on the lake again, this time with Rippled Earth Kayaking Company, paddling around Glenorchy's Pig, Pigeon and Tree islands.

I am a good swimmer except I fear going belly up in the kayak, overturning, not managing to free myself from the waterproof rubber skirt that holds you in and potentially under. So I'm pleased to meet owner-operator Sam de Reeper who, it transpires, has family connections in Blenheim.

Offering me a top place upfront in his kayak, he explains the simple skirt release. This is a happenstance world, I reckon, as our kayak aquaplanes back across the lake. Keen to share his appreciation of the environment with anyone interested, Sam is a young man with considerable local geographical knowledge and a never-ending cache of early-European settler identities and their stories, and of Maori culture, history and legends.

Queenstown offers many ingenious ways to launch a body into the air. From AJ Hackett New Zealand's high-adventure playground, Queenstown sales manager Haydn Fitzpatrick, also from Blenheim, suggests we go through the kit-up and safety preparation in case we change our minds when on the launch platform, and it looks good in the photographs.

I didn't intend to jump. Rather, as a support group, we watch as one intrepid member takes the leap of faith. As our representative braveheart just a metre from me dives into space, plunging some 134 metres towards the river, I sense my own adrenalin rush.

Owner of AJ Hackett Bungy NZ is not AJ, but his original partner, Henry Van Asch, who also owns another new tourism experience, The Winehouse and Kitchen. The Winehouse is a restored homestead and now a tasting room exhibiting his Central Otago wines, his Rockferry Wines from Marlborough and Freefall wines of New Zealand.

Over lunch Henry explains his interpretations of the differences in a jumper's personal experiences from Kawarau Bridge and the longer bungy jump, The Nevis. At Kawarau one is retrieved by boat at the bottom, "from", he explained, "the womb waters of the Earth; it's a contemplative process and there is time to adjust, to be your own hero, as you walk back up. At Nevis you are brought straight back up to the launch platform.

"Your adrenalin-junkie friends [like us] are waiting to support you. It has a massive impact all round. There and then you are an instant hero; it's emotional right through," he says.

He's right. For the record, I'd photographed our hero's journey some 80 times.

Originally called The Rung Way, Climbing Queenstown offers an inspirational climbing experience constructed of rungs, ladders and wire ropes across and up sheer cliff faces and routes. Based on the Via Ferrata climbing system, it challenges you mentally and physically and is so rewarding. You need to remember to push with your legs, which are stronger, not pull up with your arms.

The sense of keeping it all together is well worth the muscle paralysis I experienced in my buttocks the next day, which in turn kept me from shopping. As I left town I managed to make a few minor purchases under the excellent retail-therapy tutelage of mine host at Queenstown Park Boutique Hotel, Donna Falloon, who offers guests her own extensive personal shopper list. She and her partner, John Etheridge, as well as offering mouth-watering canapes more importantly served restorative cocktails while my weary body sat quietly revitalising.

Queenstown promotes its many award-winning attributes as pure inspiration. For me, the Via Ferrata climbing experience was inspirational. I managed to do it the right way (as opposed to the rung way). You had to be there.

OUT AND ABOUT

Destination Queenstown: www.queenstown-nz.co.nz

Queenstown Park Boutique Hotel: www.queenstown park.co.nz

Kawarau Jet: www.kjet.co.nz

Rippled Earth Kayaking: www.rippledearth.co.nz AJ

Hackett Bungy: www.bungy.co.nz

Remarkable Experience: www.remarkableexperience.com

Botswana Butchery: www.goodbars.co.nz

Climbing Queenstown: www.climbingqueenstown.com

- The Marlborough Express