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A waterfall in Milford Sound |
Remember that I said that life is
less stressful in New Zealand?
Well, it is – but moderation in all
things – even moderation. I think Kiwis
have reduced the stress too much in
their lives. In order to compensate for
the lack of stress they jump off of things.
Here in Queenstown there is no shortage of places to jump off of extreme
heights. Bungee jumping was invented
here. However, you can also skydive,
parasail, kite-surf, base-jump, canyon swing, and anything else that you can
think of to pump out that adrenaline. In
our evolution as tree-dwelling primates we developed a very sensible fear of
falling. It was important for us to
believe that if we fell out of our tree we would become part of the food chain
either as prey or as carrion.
So the Kiwis have invented ways to
allow us to laugh in the face of death and sneer at good judgment. They get us to leap off of great heights to
our certain death – then catch us at the last minute. When we do this, and survive, we feel
great. Kind of like when we take our
hands out of the fire – it feels so
good when it stops. The Kiwis are smart
and make people pay for this experience.
Imagine that – paying huge amounts of money to give yourself a
near-death experience and a trip to the laundromat. I have read that the greatest fear people
have is public speaking. Why not just have a stage and an audience and get
people to pay to get up and make a speech?
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No, this is NOT me. I wonder how much he paid to do this.
Bungee jumping was invented in
Queenstown. We actually saw the site
where it was first done. They have since
increased the options available to someone with an excess of bravery, cash and
a shortage of intelligence. It all comes
down to how long you want to be in free-fall.
The higher the platform the longer you fall before the bungee cord
starts to slow you down. It costs about $200.00 for a jump that leaves you in
free-fall for about 2 seconds. You are plummeting at $100.00 per second. This
fact is even more chilling than dropping to what your brain believes is a
certain and painful death; dropping to a certain and painful bankruptcy. To make it even more exciting you can do the
jump while wearing a garbage can over your head or by leaning back in a chair
until you fall off the platform. That
sounds too much like real life to me.
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At my age there is a good reason for
me to not bungee jump other than poverty and wisdom. I reckon that when I get to the end of my
rope all my flesh would slough off like an over-cooked chicken leg and just my
bones would be left hanging and clicking in the breeze while an oily glob drifted
down the river below.
This is not an experience I am willing
to pay for.
Queenstown advertises itself as the
adrenalin capital of the world. You can
roar up narrow canyons on a jet boat barely missing the canyon walls if you
wish. When the jet boats get back to the
jetty they come in at ludicrous speed and suddenly turn. Since they have no keel they simply start
spinning and skipping across the surface of the water. A lot of people scream at this point. I know I did - and I wasn’t even in the
boat. They can attach you to a parachute
and drag you behind a boat such that you are essentially hanging in the air and
trusting your survival to 20 square meters of Asian-made artificial fabric and
a half-crazed immature Kiwi drunk on adrenalin.
You can take a gondola up to the top of the nearest mountain and they will
attach you to half a parachute and let you leap off. You can take a lift up a hill where they will
place you inside an inflated rubber ball and roll you back down. An exercise in futility, if you ask me. All of these things and more are available to
you here in Queenstown if you have the cash and not a lick of common
sense. When you are done here you will
have no cash and, hopefully, somewhat more common sense.
Us?
We went to Milford Sound.
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| Does this look like something from Lord of the Rings? |
Milford Sound is in Fjordland
National Park on the west coast of New Zealand.
It is mis-named in a few ways. It
is, in fact a fjord. A “sound” is an
inlet carved out by a river and then backfilled with ocean as the sea
rises. A “fjord” is an inlet carved out
by a glacier and backfilled with ocean as the ice melts and the sea levels
rise. One is created by gradual erosion
by the river and the other is created by brute force as the ice smashes its way
through the rock. Sort of like poetry
vs. prose or Canada vs. the US.
Negotiation vs. War… that sort
of thing.
The other way it is miss-named is
calling it Milford. That is like
renaming Gandalf the Wizard to Miles the Magician. New Zealand does tend to do that – they have
some of the most lackluster names for their cities: Hamilton, Wellington, Nelson.
Along the way to Milford Sound we
stopped at some of the areas where the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit were
filmed. There is no evidence of there
ever being a film crew there but the bus driver was still muttering under his
breath about all the delays they caused.
It makes me want to watch the movies again to see if I can identify some
of the sites. In Queenstown our
accommodation was almost at the base of the Mountains
of Mordor. Telen thought she
heard a gravelly voice muttering about something “precious” during the
night. It gave her a bit of fright but I
explained to her that I was just trying to murmur sweet endearments to
her. Ok, so I have a cold… but that was
no excuse for trying to stab me with an enchanted Swiss Army Knife. Actually
the mountain range is called the “Remarkables” but it doubled as Mordor for the
movie.
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| The Mountains of Mordor aka "the Remarkables" |
Milford Sound is nothing short of
spectacular.
A fjord, generally, is a body of
water (NOT a poorly make Norwegian automobile!) that has mountains that
go almost straight up on either side.
Milford does that. In spades! Although the mountains are nowhere near as
high as the mountains in BC they are breathtaking. They are essentially enormous cliffs that
drop straight down into the gorge of Milford Sound. Since it rains 2 days out of 3 on this
particular part of the coast (they get 3 meters of rain a year) there are
myriad waterfalls tumbling down those cliffs.
The trees of this area have figured out how to hang on to those cliffs
so they are covered in vegetation. One
can go on and on trying to explain how awe-inspiring Milford Sound is without
being able to get it across. Photos
cannot do it justice. When I look at the
photos I took of Milford Sound I am blown away by how they have been completely
unable to capture it. There is no way to
convey the grandeur of Milford Sound using words or pictures.
You just gotta go there!
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| A waterfall into Milford Sound. Notice the ship at the base of the cliffs? |
We cruised out to the Tasman Sea
through Milford Sound. I got a terrible
crick in my neck from looking up at the mountains. Some of them, literally, leaned out over the
water. Since this area has a penchant
for landslides this made me distinctly nervous.
I was reassured that the mountains were solid granite and if they fell
on me I would not feel a thing.
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| The weather coming into Milford Sound from the Tasman Sea |
I was hoping to see wildlife in
Milford Sound. The brochures talked
about seals, dolphins and weird exotic birds.
We saw some gulls and a few seals. We can see those at home any day of
the week. Apparently the Sound is so
deep that there is nothing to eat there so the birds and dolphins only come in
for a visit once in a while and apparently they were not feeling sociable that
day. How mercenary can you get? They won’t come to visit unless it’s for
dinner.
Makes you wonder how genuine their
friendship is…
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| It was a bit breezy that day... |
