Our Wounded Knees
Today’s journey will have your adrenaline pumping as we take a leap of faith directly over the Kawarau River!
You would think this story would be about Native Americans with their descriptive names. No this is not about the Wounded Knees tribe, but about our painful bloody knees.
We were in NZ in 2000 to watch the America’s Cup in Auckland. The final was between Team New Zealand – The Blacks -- and Italia’s Luna Rossa’s Prada. Not really a contest as the Blacks under Russell Coutts just knew the waters and winds too well and had a terrific sailing team. Being on the spectator boat for four days was pure joy …New Zealanders are the real blokes – hospitable, sense of humor and fiercely behind their sportsmen.
The Blacks were victorious at the America’s Cup in 2000.
Next, we made our way down via Rotorua to Queenstown, also aptly known as the World Home of Adventure. There we discovered that…New Zealanders are in fact fearless if not having a death wish. No wonder they sail as well as they do – they expect to drown …In Queenstown, the real fun is to be locked up inside a ball that they then push from the mountaintop.
All this became clear to us when we arrived at Queenstown’s gateway bridge over the Kawarau River. In fact, bungy jumping was invented there by this fellow AJ Hackett. No surprise, but my wife wanted to take the leap. “Hey, I survived breast cancer, so I can survive this too!” And there she went, off the bridge, missing the three-foot-deep river by a meter or so and bouncing up and down till they rescued her in the dingy. Crazy is - crazy does.
The AJ Hackett Bridge in New Zealand
Someone taking the leap from the AJ Hackett Bridge
Next day, now being below at the same shallow river (think Colorado river with the rocky sides), we boarded a jet engine powered boat. Helmets on; all eight of us and a “driver.” The idea was to go as fast as seventy miles an hour and then rotate the boat right before we’d be hitting the rocks. Like bumper cars at the annual town fair but then for real. When we recovered and later told the folks at the hotel, they mentioned the previous week’s accident with the two Japanese tourists having lost their lives as they had flung overboard.
The apotheosis was the Franz Josef Glacier on the West Coast of NZ’ South Island. You take a helicopter up from the coastal tropical forest straight up for about 1500 meters/over 5,000 feet onto the glacier. They gave us spiked shoes; but our shorts were still for the tropics – with open knees. We navigated the crevasses and seracs, which are basically ice blocks ready to collapse, walking along 5-inch ridges with fifty feet-deep ice ravines - oh my, this was New Zealand bliss. No surprise that after two hours our knees were bleeding from the sharp encounters; and we had our fill of this NZ death cult, telling our guide:
“We have never been so happy boarding a helicopter, and when we are down, can you please tell us where the nearest bar is?!”
The Franz Josef Glacier
I hope you enjoyed that, it's truly an honor to share our stories with you. See you next week for the third episode week’s story which will be about Jean Jacques the Air France Pilot and post 9/11 French Exceptionalism. It will make you laugh out loud; I promise you.
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