When In Rome – Shotover Canyon – Queenstown, New Zealand

We finally made it to Queenstown, one of the most popular cities in New Zealand, infamously known for its adventure tourism. Home to the first bungy jump, you can do just about any extreme sport here: sky diving, bungy jumping, paragliding, jet boating, mountain biking, and in the winter, skiing. For our adventure, we chose to swing off of the world’s highest cliff jump at 358 feet, with 196 feet of free fall. You can go solo or tandem and there are a variety of ways to jump, all given rankings on how likely you are to stain your underwear. We chose to jump together, and eagerly opted for a “5 stain” jump, the most terrifying type of jump that they offer. Our jump was called “Gimp Boy Goes To Hollywood”. This involved us first being suspended out over the canyon for some pictures, which in contrast to our smiling was absolutely terrifying.  As if that wasn’t enough, we were then inverted so our feet were pointing up into the sky and our faces were staring down into the canyon. We were at the mercy of the crew to release us, and they were in no hurry to do so.  “Alright, we’re going to give you a countdown”, one of them said.  Except halfway through the word “countdown”, the river below started racing towards our faces! We both screamed in terror, Kevin moreso than Christine. Then, as the free fall transitioned into a long swing out through the canyon and the adrenaline rush hit, our screams turned into laughter and joy. There are few words to describe this experience, all which seem to conflict each other. Terrifying,  amazing, and totally worth it seem to sum it up best. After much deliberation, Christine even mustered up the courage to do a second “5 stain” jump on her own, jumping backwards off of the platform!