Water & wine

Queenstown is an adrenalin junkie's paradise, so I feel like I do have to try stuff that's a bit out of the norm.

My first activity was the paragliding. I'll admit I felt a little bit nauseous as we were making our way to the Skyline Gondola. Walking past Harry's Bar at 10am, I couldn't help but hear they were blasting out 'Knocking on Heaven's Door'. "I hope that's not a warning," I said to Shin.
At the top of the mountain, I meet Brady - my pilot. We trek even further up the mountain and arrive at the open top. It looks really, really high. Brady gets me suited up, sticks a crash helmet on me, then begins sorting out the parachute. He explains that when he tells me to, he wants me to start walking, then running. Apparently, I've to keep running until there's no ground under my feet.

"So, basically, Brady, you want me to just run off the side of this mountain?"
"That's it Lis. Easy as that."
"So, eh, just ... em... off... the eh...the em... mountain?" I'm gesturing and giving plenty of assertive head nods but I'm totally nervous.

Shin is bouncing about like a happy hobbit. "Ha ha, you look like a nut case in that gear Lis." "Shut it, so do you." Shin spots Glenda, a 75 year old going for it too. "Oh she's so cute," Shin exclaims, "Look at her wee shoes."

Glenda goes first. Gav and Brady basically throw Glenda and her pilot off the mountain. But it's all going well and I can hear Glenda making positive sounds up in the air.
"OK Lis, because you're 50 years younger, you don't get any help," says Brady.
"So I'm ...em ...with the ... the em ... running thing... right?"
"OK Lis, you're a legend babe. Start walking."
I do and I feel the pull of the chute behind me. I keep going.
"Run baby run!" Brady shouts excitedly.

I do. I keep running. I run right off the mountain. I keep running til Brady points out I'm running on fresh air and I can sit back and enjoy the ride. How cool is this. It's amazing. I feel fantastic. So smooth. The whole town opens up beneath me. Like way, way beneath me. I start speaking like Brady.
"This is awesome." I shout
"Dude." He says in agreement.

The next day is river surfing. At 9am we drive to the start of the route. Another day, another chance for me to put on a wetsuit and risk some more bruises. Shin, wisely, has decided to give it a miss and is snoozing in her bed as I jump 25 ft off some rocks into the freezing cold river. Bjorn and Thomas - the guides are pretty hands off and basically let us get on with it.

My experience with activities is that they are never as scary or full on as they seem. I take all that back now. Grade 4 rapids - totally terrifying! I get sucked down into whirlpools and crash over some surprisingly big waves. It's exhilarating stuff - especially when I manage to surf along one of the waves.

Annoyingly, a Spanish woman surfs over the top of me and traps me under water. I can't surface. I get sucked down further. In desperation, I let go of my board, turn into the Hulk and propel myself out of the water. I don't know if I roared out loud, but I definitely did on the inside. The Spanish woman says "Sorry" and, despite the fact that she just nearly killed me, I smile back and say "It's fine. Don't worry about it."

The river goes quiet again and I float for a bit. It's the same place they filmed Lord of the Rings where Frodo sails past the pillars of the Kings. Cool as anything.

Bjorn and Thomas take us out of the river to show us the next stage of our journey. "This is the Chinese Dogleg." I look down and see about a mile of furious rapids crashing over rocks and forming big waves and little whirlpools. They've got to be kidding. But apparently they're not. "OK guys - upstream and out, downstream onto the first wave, barrel-roll the second, duck-dive the third then stay left as the river splits and we don't want to lose anyone."

3 waves? I can see about 20. I'm so not going to get this right. We head out and my heart is pumping full on as I face down the first set of waves. Miraculously, I manage it. Bjorn decides I'm fine and goes off to the aid of one of the others. I'm kicking left like he told me. Kicking left, left, left.

Suddenly Thomas is roaring at me to go right. Apparently I've gone too far left. I turn and kick and kick but the river is far too strong and it's just carrying me where it wants.
"Right, right, right," Thomas is still roaring. "You're going to hit the rocks."
I can see I'm going to hit the rocks. They're right in front of me and I can't move.
"You'll hit the rocks Lisa."
"I know," I shout back at him.
"Are you kicking?"
No Thomas, I'm just lying here like it's a lilo not bothering about the impending doom I see before me ... "of course, I'm fu*king kicking!"
As I start to go over the first of the rocks his face crumples into a look that says 'I'm not sure I'll be able to recover all the parts of your body.' It all happens really quickly and the only thing I'm aware of is some kind of tearing on my right hand which is under the board.

I get through it and Thomas looks both amazed and relieved. He grabs me and pulls me into the middle of the river. We're not in the middle of some grade 3 rapids which feels like a holiday compared to the Chinese Dogleg. I make it to the end of the course before everyone else - so I guess my shortcut over the rocks helped. My fingers are missing quite a lot of skin and bleeding quite a lot, but I feel great.

Telling Shin about it later, she asks with a chuckle: "So, would you say you enjoyed it?"
"I know it sounds utterly perverse given what I've just told you, but yeah, I really did!" What a weirdo!

In the evening I realise that all my muscles are aching and my right ankle is really sore. I explain to Shin that I broke my left ankle when I fell off a hill in Skye and my right one now does all the work (though it's still carrying that injury from the coconut). It was clearly exhausted by the kicking in the flippers. After some harassment, Shin agrees to rotate it for me and make it crack. She has to put on her music so she won't hear it, but when it does crack she feels it and screams then refuses to do it again. "You need Jo, Lis. She'd love doing that. She'd peel all your skin off too!"

Today was the turn of the wine tour. I wake up early and discover it's pouring down outside. Glad I've got the wine tour booked, getting merry on pinot noir sounds like an excellent way to spend a rainy day. "Oh, there will be plenty of old men with grey hair, beards and moobs so you'll enjoy that," Shin says as I'm leaving.

I get picked up by Wendy and meet my fellow quaffers Brett and Anne from Ontario. We're joined by 2 girls from Cork and Honeymooners Bill and Nicole from Chicago. We head to the Peregrine winery where we sample 2 rieslings (which are bone dry and all the better for it in my opinion), a pinot gris (which smells and tastes of pineapple) and 2 pinot noirs. Everyone seems nice, but quiet and subdued.

By the second winery, it's all change. Raucous! We get to try a sweet riesling, an oaked Chardonnay and an unoaked one and 2 more pinot noir. We sit down for lunch (breads, salami, chorizo, houmous, sun-dried tomato pesto, cherry chutney - delicious). I have a glass of the 2004 reserve pinot noir and Anne and I find we like the same kind of wines. "Bigger the better," I say. "In fact, I like them so big you need a note from your mum to drink them." Anne thinks this is hilarious and writes it down. "I'm going to use that," She tells Brett. I tell her I'm available on a retainer basis.

I'm feeling all warm and bendy so have gone into 'holding court' mode and am telling stories and laughing at my own jokes. I'm glad Sinead isn't here - she'd be mortified and probably slap me.
At the Rockburn winery, we're treated to an impromptu tour of the production site by Malcolm the winemaker. He's really down to earth and is able to answer my question about compensating for the air in screw caps versus corks. Cool. Their 2006 Pinot Noir is a knock-out, but unfortunately they don't yet have a distributor in the UK.

Finally, we stop at the Farm and try their bubbles and 4 other wines of our choosing. I opt for the 2004 & 2005 Pinot Gris and the Viper & the Tiger pinot noirs - though to be honest I'm finding it more and more difficult to discern the differences! Hee hee hee.

I ask Wendy to stop off at a road-side fruit seller so I can buy some of their big juicy cherries. Amazing. You get about 200 in a bag and they only cost about 1.50 GBP. Last time I bought cherries M&S charged me seven quid!!

Did some shopping in Untouched World and resisted buying a cool pair of red shoes. About to join the Shinbob for a drink and a bit of the Australian Open.