# Let’s do a bungy,
# Throw myself off a ledge,
# Plummet down a valley!

Yep. After several hours of mild panic and a moment of “I can’t do this” whilst just walking onto the bungy bridge, I got the courage and finally went for it…

There was definitely something almost numbing about standing with the front of my feet over the edge of the tiny little ledge on the bridge, legs tied together at their base, staring at the water 43 metres below and knowing that I was about to lean forward and throw myself towards the river, accelerating at 9.8 metres per second.

I even managed a wave to the crowd and a nervous thumbs up to the camera:

(There’ll be better versions of these photos available shortly, as the AJ Hackett Bungy folk put them online within 48 hours but I couldn’t wait that long, hence the crap photo-of-a-photo jobby you’ve got here)

Straight after that, the dude who had secured my bungy chord counted down “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” – and by the “3” I was already ducking over the edge.

Wasn’t the world’s most gracious of jumps, but I tell you what – it felt UTTERLY AMAZING:

The feeling of acceleration was like nothing else, and watching the river flying towards me was the most mental thing ever – I *just* remembered to get my arms ahead of me in a diving position before my “head and shoulder dunk” in the water… which was actually more akin to “everything except my shoes dunk”.

After flying out of the river again (which was SO refreshing) I was sprung up to well over half the height of the bridge – and for a moment I thought I was going to come crashing onto some rocks (I suspect my head was facing some crazy direction but it was hard to tell) so a little bit of flailing arms occurred, before I safely zoomed back down to just above the river.

From then it was just a few bobs before I grabbed onto the post-bungy-untying dinghy’s support pole thing and fell into the dinghy, completely elated and completely exhausted.

Probably the most intense feeling, even beating Sky Diving probably because of the ground rush and crazy feeling of being tugged around by the rope. In other words, Sky Dive was a case of “Oh shit…oh shit… WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH” whereas Bungy was more “Oh shit… oh shit… here goes… HOLY CRAP, WOOOAAAHHHH JEEZ, YEAAAARHRRRRGH, WOOOOOOOOOH, BLOOOODY HEEELLLLL, WOOAAAH”. Hopefully that clears things up.

Anyway, woot, that was amazing. I’m SO scared of heights but I’d do it again.

I just might have a rest first.

And a few beers. It is my birthday after all :-)

Toodles peeps!

Pat

Hi peeps. Just a quick one to let you know that I’m still actually here and haven’t forgotten about you. Squage is currently half way through a huuuuge blog entry, which’ll bring things up to date, but that might not get finished until Thursday so you’ll have to wait until then!

In the mean time, here’s a quick overview of things:

• I’ve been doing all sorts of stuff since Squage last blogged:
  • Horse Riding (frustrating)
  • Glacier Exploring (amazing)
  • Fancy Dressing (hilarious)
  • Film Watching (also hilarious)
  • Hill Trekking (great fun)
  • Eating (mmm)
  • Drinking (too much)
  • Sitting on coaches (far too much)
• I’ve been generally in great spirits, with only a day feeling rubbish through a lack of sleep
• I’m going to have to get rich and buy a place in Wanaka
• Small hostels are lovely
• Local pubs and bars in tiny towns have really friendly people in them
• Kiwi beer is gooood
• Being a Veggie in New Zealand’s surprisingly easy
• Duct tape is amazing…
• …and can be used to force a camera lens cap open
• Karaoke is hilarious
• The Poo Pub is cool
• The South Island is quite cold
• This country is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Apart from Tilbury.

Tomorrow is my 27th Birthday and I’m feeling very old. I keep thinking about the fact that I’m nearly going to be 28 when I return to England and that I really ought to be getting on with something… just what, I’m still not 100% sure of yet. Still, it’s early days, I’ve only been travelling a month!

To be honest, I don’t know why I’m worrying – I probably won’t last until tomorrow night anyway as, for some reason, I’ve signed up to do a Bungy Jump off the Kawarau Suspension Bridge tomorrow. It’s going to be amazing, but I’m not exactly looking forward to it :-)

Right, I’m off to get some lunch (it’s 3pm already and Squage has kept me here since about 12pm with his bleedin’ blogging) – do check out my photos as I’ve just uploaded about 200 of them. Hooray for having a working camera again!

I hope things are good back in the UK / Ireland (Paul n Em) / USA (Stu B) – I look forward to catch up with y’all as soon as I can!

Toodles,

Pat

Righty, in a VERY busy net place in a hostel in Frans Josef. Still a week behind on the blogging… here’s just one day’s worth cos there’s too many people waiting to do more than that.

Hopefully in the next few day’s we’ll get a proper chance to bring things up to date. But let’s just say this week has been awesome. We’re in the middle west of the South Island at the mo, having done such things as Horse Trekking and lots of hiking… oh and lots of drinking.

Anyway, just got time to do one entry, so here’s what happened a week ago:

Saturday 25th November
Today we woke up to the odd knowledge that we were only one month away til Pat’s first ever Christmas in the middle of summer.

For the first time, there’ll none of the dread of the 4 weeks of commercialised mess that is the UK in the build up to the once-meaningful event (ooh check my bitterness). I mean, we’ll be exposed to terrible Christm-sorry, Xmas advertising, but it’ll be Kiwi and Aussie advertising and thus a little more amusing.

Anyway, after falling out of bed, doing the three S’es and finally getting onto the coach, Pat enjoyed the views of Lake Taupo as Flea took our coach around the whole east coast… before we made our way into the roads enterting the Tongario National Park.

It’s one of the 100 great listed special protected uber heritage (N.B. I may have forgotten the real name) locations in the world and you can see why – it’s beautiful. Home, no less, to mount Ngaruahoe – a.k.a. Mount Doom – which Pat decided was a great excuse to start listening to the Lord of the Rings: Two Towers soundtrack on his iRiver… really added to the experience, Pat said. I thought it was a tiny bit sad :-)

Mount Doom looked AWESOME – cloud covering the top of it, but still looking massively impressive poking into the clouds. Still can’t imagine it? Don’t worry, allow me to illustrate using my elite M$Paint Skillz:

Who needs a working camera, eh?

That’s correct. Pat does.

Anyway, we all stopped close to it for a 2 hour hike across to the Taranski Falls, which were very pretty – Pat decided to get a photo of both of us standing at the bottom of it, which was, uh, refreeshing due to the freezing cloud of water at the base of the falls… sadly that photo’s on Chris’ camera and I’ve not got it off yet (oh and this net cafe doesn’t allow USB devices anyway, hooray!).

Just imagine what it’d look like – I’m not doing another rubbish drawing :-)

After the nice walk we got back in the bus and trundled all the way to River Valley hostel, which was surrounded by a whole lot of AMAZING scenery – in the low sun, the rolling hills and breathtaking valleys almost looked unreal.

The hostel itself was lovely, and included such things as a hot spa pool (complete with seedy underwater red light), which Kate, Jersey, Jenny and Pat enjoyed monging out in (for about an hour longer than we were supposed to… but hey, when you’re enjoying yourself, staring up at the beautiful starry skies, whilst being hot why would you want to get out to stand soaking in the fuh-kin freezing night air? You wouldn’t, as it’s rubbish. Trust me, Pat did NOT look warm on returning to his room.

Well, I say “room”… it was more “large dorm”. Called an “orgy dorm”, it consisted of two huge bunks, each with 16 matresses per level. Very funny, reall, just a little hard to get to sleep with all the bloody giggling going on.

I think Pat’s getting old and boring :-)

Right, that’ll do for now… bigger session on its way!!!

Sweet as,

Squage