New Zealand: TO THE EXTREME
Ready to Test Your Mettle? Tour the Country That Created and Redefined Adrenaline Sports
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Maybe you can blame it on Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealander who along with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first humans to summit Mount Everest in 1953. Ever since then, that other “Land Down Under” has become a petri dish and testing ground for new (and perhaps increasingly extreme) outdoor activities.
Adrenaline-pumping exploits run a broad gamut from high in the sky to deep underground, soaking wet to ice cold, upon manmade contraptions to activities that rely almost totally on what Mother Nature has already created.
The one thing they have in common besides their origin in New Zealand is the fact that you can test your mettle doing all of them during a week-long trip across Kiwiland.
Fly the Friendly Skies of Auckland
Inspired by the Indigenous land jumpers of Pentecostal Island in the South Pacific, 24-year-old Kiwi adventurer Allan “A.J.” Hackett wrapped a bungee (or “bungy” in locals-speak) cord to his ankle and jumped off several Auckland bridges and the Eiffel Tower in 1986.
People thought he was crazy when he started a bungee jumping company so that mere mortals could also attempt the aerial feat. But almost four decades later, bungee jumping is a global phenomenon and Hackett a recipient of a royal honor from the late Queen of England for his contributions to adventure sports.
There’s no better place to take your first jump than one of the spots where the sport was born – the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Hackett actually oversees the outfit that runs the bridge jump, so you’re in good hands.
The adventure starts with an orientation and getting suited up at Stokes Point before trekking narrow steel catwalks beneath the humongous span to a platform suspended around halfway across the bridge.
To the thumping beat of heavy metal music, you approach the outer edge of the platform and gaze at the water 130 feet below. Imagine what it’d be like jumping from the top of a 13-story building, because that’s what you’re about to do.
A classic swan dive is the recommended technique, but any old style will do. Because one way or another, you’re going to end up plunging headfirst — and actually touching the harbor water with your fingertips — before they reel you back up.
If that’s not enough of a buzz, consider the Auckland SkyWalk. No jumping required this time, just the nerve to attach yourself to a safety line and stroll along an open-air catwalk wrapped around the top of New Zealand’s highest building. Those with even more bravado can lean off the edge and release their grip on the safety line so that you’re dangling in midair, 629 feet above the streets of downtown Auckland.
Old Black Water, Keep on Rolling . . .
About a three-hour drive south of Auckland, the Waitomo Caverns offer one of the world’s most unusual subterranean adventures — blackwater rafting along an underground river through a large cave filled with glowworms.
If that sounds surreal, it is. Like something conjured in the mind of pioneering sci-fi author Jules Verne rather than anything of the real world.
While known to Indigenous Māori people for centuries, British surveyors also toured the caves in the 1880s when they explored the river with candles on a wooden raft. Nowadays, the guided journey is undertaken with an inflatable inner tube.
The rafting company supplies a wetsuit, water shoes, safety helmet and light. After a short hike through the woods, you slip through a rocky crack in the ground and make your way down a narrow passage in chest-high water. This is the most harrowing part of the entire experience, definitely not for anyone who experiences claustrophobia.
Emerging into a large underground space, you slide onto a tube and start a float trip beneath stalactites and past waterfalls into Ruakuri Cave with its millions of bioluminescent glowworms, a phenomenon that resembles gazing at a starry sky. The entire adventure takes around three hours.
From Waitomo, it’s around a two-hour drive to the western shore of big Lake Rotorua. Although primarily known for Mairo cultural encounters and geothermal features, the lake area is a hotbed for adventures that while not quite extreme are definitely buzzworthy.
Although invented by the Dangerous Sports Club at Oxford University in England, Rotorua is now the global epicenter of Zorbing. This involves rolling down a grassy hillside in a giant plastic ball filled with 10 gallons of water. Zorb Rotorua offers four rolling tracks, the longest and steepest stretching the length of three football fields.
Velocity Valley features more offbeat adventure activities like racing around an elevated track in Shweeb pedal-powered monorail pods, reaching an aerial 80 miles per hour in the Swoop giant sky swing, or catching big air on a BMX bike as you sail off a ramp onto a giant airbag.
A “Heli” of a Glacier Hike
Reaching the next Kiwi extreme adventure is a three-step process that starts with an Air New Zealand domestic flight from Rotorua to Christchurch on the South Island. Step two is catching a short flight or the scenic TranzAlpine train through the Southern Alps to Greymouth on the West Coast. Finally, cruise down the coast in a rental car intercity bus to Franz Josef/Waiau.
Why go through all that bother?
Because the little wilderness town is the gateway to exploring Franz Josef Glacier, a 7.5-mile tongue of ice that tumbles down from Westland Tai Poutini National Park. Get up close and personal with the frozen giant on a Glacier Heli-Hike.
Lifting off from a local helipad, the chopper makes its way up the narrow Waiho River Valley and over a debris field littered with giant boulders deposited by the glacier. Moments later you’re touching down on top of Franz Josef for the start of a 2.5-hour hike across the ice with crampons, a trekking stick, a safety helmet and waterproof jacket and boots provided by Franz Josef Glacier Guides.
The company also offers a day-long introduction to ice climbing and a two-night overnight experience sleeping in tents atop the glacier.
Via bus or rental car, you can continue to Queenstown and a final set of extreme adventures that could potentially include the fabled Kawarau Bridge bungee jump, tandem skydiving over Lake Wakatipu, flying high above a local canyon on the Nevis Canyon Swing or zipping up a raging river on the Māori-owned Shotover Jet boat.
- Joe Yogerst
