Climbing & Canyoning

Waking up way too early after celebrating arriving in Queenstown, I went on a hike up the mountainside to clear my head in the chill morning air. It has been suprisingly cold and rainy down here in the south, which was a little bit disappointing since we seemed to spend so many sunshine hours on the bus and now that I finally have 3 days in a town its pouring down...

But up I went on my own passing on the temptation to ride the gondola up for the 456 height meters. 

Ran into some funny sculptures along the way and they also had an interesting zip line tour going down through the forrest so occasionally you would hear screams of terror overhead as you walked along the path. 

Its been a while since I last saw "The Fellowship of the Ring", but this forrest somehow gave you a feeling of being chased by Uruk-Hais 

Finally making it to the top after 45 mins I was rewarded for my efforts with this

If you look close you can see another bungy platform covered in a light green tent. 

Returning to the hostel I needed to get ready for my Canyoning activity. Canyoning is a very cold but exciting activity where you progress down through a canyon filled with rushing water, through the use of rapelling, zip lines, climbing, jumping off cliffs and sliding down small waterfalls. This experience gave me a good insight into how a certain miss Croft must have felt like raiding through all those tombs...

Unfortunately I wasnt allowed to bring my own camera, something I have experienced more and more down here. It is really frustrating that you have to pay around 50 nz$ for some photos and videos, that you didn't even get to decide when and where to take... So no pictures this time but this was something I would definitely like to try again as it felt quite cool doing 6m jumps of cliffs into whirlpools of freezing mountain water or zip lining out over the middle of a canyon, then rappelling down until you realise the damn instructors cut the rope short so you have to take the plunge from up high!