Wandering Scotsman

Fresh back from a 5000m freefall jump. You should be able to see my picture from Tuesday 10th at the Skydive Lake Wanaka website. Needless to say it was a bloody brilliant experience. The flight was uber scenic and I decided to do it here rather than the far cheaper Lake Taupo so that I could see the Wanaka area, and more importantly Mount Aspiring from the sky. I could see the ridge we climbed up, albeit from about 50km away. The views over Wanaka were breathtaking. I want to fly!

Oh yeh, the skydive was superb. An initial weightless type feeling as you accelerate to around 200km/h then taking it all in. The parachute popped open and then you could take in far more. Amazing. I’ve got a DVD as well. What the ‘eck eh!

Although I just checked my bank account…. Eeek!

Would love to do it again, but that won’t be happening this trip!

To be honest it was no big deal. I only booked it this morning so never really had time to think about it as I spent the rest of the day catching up on blogging and emailing. All of a sudden I was in the plane admiring the views, then out we popped, hurtling to the ground. Fantastic (although I wish I said stuff other than just repeating ‘excellent’ on the video!)

3 days, 50km++, climbing, scrambling, slabs, around 200 crevasse crossings, 1000 foot drops, the hardest forest walk I’ve done, abseiling, great timing for the weather, and two nights in the Colin Todd hut, but I’ve made it back from Mount Aspiring. What a fantastic trip of alpine mountaineering, but this being New Zealand means you can’t just go mountaineering – you have to get there and get back. We walked in from the Raspberry Flats car park, did a climb, returned from around 2400m, then walked out again. Apparently this is very unusual as most people will helicopter in and walk out. I’ll write a really detailed blog with pictures over the next few days.
Wanaka is a fantastic place. It’s really chilled, has a great vibe, far too good outdoors shops, and loads to do, so it will definitely be hard leaving here. Tom and Caroline leave tomorrow to head to Queenstown and I’ll reluctantly have to make some kind of plan for the rest of my time here. At the moment I’m in total go with the flow mode, and the last few days makes me feel more than justified if I don’t do any of the great walks etc and just sightsee with the odd trek etc.
As Tom and I descended yesterday, a day earlier than we thought, we had cravings for cold beer and a bit of a session at the camp site. Due to bizarre laws though, we entered the supermarket, fresh from the adventure, and couldn’t buy beer on Easter Friday.
It’s sunny outside, there’s a lake, and there’s beer sold today. I’m off…..