Queenstown, the Capital of Action

You don’t really wake up in Queenstown. You leap up, tingling from a combination of excitement, fear, adrenaline and a little more fear. When you get up in this town, a beautiful, mountain- and lake-lined city on New Zealand’s South Island, chances are you’re about to do something you’ve never done before or ever thought you’d do. There’s even a chance you’ll do something you never knew existed.

Queenstown, recently voted by readers of Conde Nast Traveler magazine as the friendliest foreign city, offers 75 adventure sports ranging from hiking to skydiving and every nerve-racking, knee-shaking activity in between. What about tandem skydiving? Or parapenting? It’s leaping off a hill or mountain with another person on your back tied to a fixed-wing parapente, something resembling a rectangular parachute. It offers a great view, if you can handle opening your eyes. How about River Bugs? They are one-person sleds the size of a small chair, perfect for going white-water rafting--alone.

Certainly you’ve heard of bungee jumping. Its current popularity got its jump-start a decade ago in Queenstown. But have you heard of bungee jumping from 336 feet up over a shallow riverbed? If you get up early you can do three of these adventures in one day, but don’t try it. Nerves can be frayed only so far.

“We say it’s an outdoor paradise,” said Andrew Patterson, the city’s international marketing manager. “Maybe the U.S. equivalent would be one giant natural Disneyland.” Patterson claims he’s tried nearly all 75 activities, including one that no longer exists: bungee jumping from a helicopter.

My thrill of choice during a visit last February was white-water rafting down the Shotover River, north of the city, considered among the most dangerous rivers in the world. However, the trip to the launch site made white-water rafting seem like sitting in a Jacuzzi for two hours.

The Shotover is about a 45-minute drive from Queenstown up a beautiful deep ravine called Skippers Canyon. That’s 45 minutes by car. A pigeon with a bad wing could make it in about 10. We traveled over a pass built to help transport gold in the 19th century, and the road, er, path, hasn’t improved much since. It’s about 10% pavement and 90% gravel.

We were in a large van hauling a trailer with six huge rafts. I kept getting visions of some overloaded bus careening down the ravine. I peeked out the window and could not see the bottom. But the view was truly spectacular. The blue-green Shotover River snaked through a deep brown canyon with brilliant sunshine sparkling off the whitecapped water.

The Shotover is not tame. Four people died on the river in recent years, before Queenstown officials took steps to ensure safer rafting. At one time, five rafting companies fiercely competed for clients on the Shotover River. If one company felt the water was too high, with an increased danger of drownings, and decided not to offer trips, another company would often pick up the business. The results could be tragic.

After a tourist died in 1995, the rafting companies declared a truce and, among other things, set strict standards by which they agreed not to raft if the water went over a certain level. It worked. I’ve rafted all over the world (I live in Colorado), and the Shotover raft trip had the highest safety standards I’ve experienced. That’s why I smiled when Peter, our guide from Queenstown Rafting, started our trip by joking, “Some guides rely on practice. I rely mostly on luck.”

The two-hour river trip wasn’t quite as wild as some on the Colorado River, but it was much more scenic. We floated lazily past waterfalls and huge, craggy cliffs, occasionally passing century-old skeletons of mining machinery. Only one of our eight boats flipped over. It happened during a rapid called “Toilet,” named because everything drops through two huge rocks and is flushed out. We seemed engulfed until we were suddenly shot out of the rocks like a skipping stone.

When one boat ejected six of its eight passengers, the rescue operation was impressive. Before the boats went through the rapids, some guides stood on nearby rocks with ropes, ready for any potential rescue. After the one boat crashed, a guide jumped off a rock to get onto the boat so the two passengers left on board wouldn’t have to paddle. Another guide threw him a rope tow, and the boats off to the side pulled in the others. (The only damage in our boat was when a man sitting behind me smashed his glasses against my helmet.)

Actually, white-water rafting has been much more risky than Queenstown’s trademark sport: bungee jumping. Most everyone has seen a video of this coma-inducing activity. A person stands on a bridge, ledge or tower with his feet tied together by elastic cords attached to the platform. The person dives off--or flips backward--and the cords catch him just before his skull hits a river, canyon floor or pavement. It’s usually accompanied by a scream out of a Hitchcock movie, followed by a few gasps from the next jumpers in line. The Bungy tribe in New Guinea are said to be the true originators.

A Queenstown resident named A.J. Hackett became inspired by the Bungy tribe’s sport, an odd inspiration considering 25% to 50% of the Bungys jumping from trees were said to have suffered broken legs. Hackett launched himself into exhaustive research before trying bungee jumping in public. Then, in 1988, he took it to a major stage: the Eiffel Tower in Paris. After wowing a disbelieving crowd, he returned to spend two more years researching the risks at the University of Auckland.

Today Queenstown has several bungee jumping spots, with the infamous Pipeline the highest at 336 feet. If you thought bungee jumping was only for those needing intense counseling, the adrenaline running through Queenstown may change your mind. Film clips of bungee jumps are shown in bars, restaurants and hotel lobbies. You’re inundated with views of people from all over the world throwing themselves off bridges.

After a while, it began to look easy. Then I met a young, husky Australian in one of Queenstown’s rocking nightclubs, and he told me about his bungee jump last year.

“Going again?” I asked above the din.

“Nope,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Scared the [bleep] out of me.”

Still, bungee horror stories are few in New Zealand. The most common malady is a sore back when bungee jumpers don’t tell operators they’ve had back problems. Bungee jumping has suffered horrid image problems, including in the United States, where a woman fell to her death while rehearsing a bungee-jumping routine before the 1997 Super Bowl in New Orleans. New Zealand has had one reported bungee fatality.

Most, however, describe their bungee experience as something between finding heaven and finding manhood. Jeremy Northcutt owns New Zealand Shred, one of the many adventure companies lining the main drag of Shotover Street. He says fewer than one in 10 jumpers change their mind on the platform.

“I tell them they’re doing something for themselves, not to boast about it. Maybe they’re overcoming something. Obviously, jumping off a bridge isn’t normal.” Still, Northcutt concedes that if they chicken out and “you have to untie them, it really ruins our day.”

I passed on bungee jumping, though. For one thing, I have a bad back (honest).

Besides rafting, I did try mountain biking for the first time during my trip to New Zealand. I went down the New Zealand national mountain bike team’s training circuit, a three-mile trail that dropped 1,600 feet and took an hour to cover. I did want to try para-gliding, but the trips were canceled because of rain.

So how does one town of 13,000 people support 75 activities and attract 850,000 tourists a year? That’s the question looming for officials as Queenstown has grown from a quiet novelty to an international mecca for daredevils. And in the last two years, the city’s visitor accommodations have grown 40%.

“Like all good things, nothing stays too quiet very long,” Patterson said. “But it’s not rampant growth. It’s managed growth.”

What’s clear is that in a nation of adventurers, Queenstown has become the capital. And if some people don’t like the frenzied search here for the latest adrenaline high, well, I have some advice for them.

Jump off a bridge.

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GUIDEBOOK

Kiwi Nerve Center

Getting there: Air New Zealand and Qantas fly nonstop from Los Angeles to Auckland (a 12 1/2-hour flight). Air New Zealand and Ansett fly from Auckland to Queenstown. Round trips start at $1,093.

Where to stay: Lodgings can be arranged by the Queenstown Travel and Visitor Centre, P.O. Box 253, Queenstown, NZ, telephone 011-64-3-442-4100, Internet: https://nz.com/Queenstown/VisitorCentre.

Adventure outings:

* White-water rafting. Trips down the Shotover and Kawarau rivers. Cost $47-$78. Queenstown Rafting, tel. 011-64-3-442-9792; Extreme Green Rafting, tel. 011-64-3-442-8510.

* Bungee jumping. Queenstown’s home-grown adventure rush. Plunge off a bridge with only a rubber band attached to your legs. Cost $46-$68. A.J. Hackett Bungy, tel. 011-64-3-442-7122.

* Luge go-carting. Race down a twisting 800-yard track in your own luge go-cart. Cost $12. Skyline Enterprises, tel. 011-64-3-442-7860.

* Jet-boating. Speed through river canyons at 45 mph. Cost $26-$63. Dart River Jet Safari, tel. 011-64-3-442-9992; Shotover Jet, tel. 011-64-3-442-7087.

* River surfing. Take on the rapids with a board and flippers. Prices from $47. Mad Dog River Boarding, tel. 011-64-3-442-4117.

* Canyoning. Scramble and jump down a series of waterfalls in a narrow canyon surrounded by native beech forest. Cost $75. Visitor Information Network, tel. 011-64-3-442-8907.

For more information: New Zealand Tourism Board, 501 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 300, Santa Monica, CA 90401; tel. (800) 388-5494.