We are spending New Years and the few days after in Queenstown, which is in the South Island. We flew into an itty-bitty airport and were ready for another cute little village. The deceivingly small town is apparently one of the extreme sports capitals. As we drove through town, scoping it out for ice cream places and shops, we found groups of schoolies (kids who just graduated high school) setting up their tents in the parks and preparing to party. Of course Audrey and I were like, "okay, bye. We can go and see the town on our own." We took the tamer approach and spent a quiet New Years watching the fire works across the lake (19 hours before our Chicagoan counterparts).
This is the view from our apartment:
To our surprise the schoolies and locals were out and about today . We made our way over to a beautiful mountain, and took a gondola up. We planned on having a picnic on the top of a mountain to follow through with the Schield tradition of doing nothing but eating on our vacations. When we finished our lunch we saw a little sign that said, " Paragliding!" As always, Audrey and I begged our parents to please just let us have one little ride, and to our surprise they allowed us to go on the ride of our lives. We hiked the steep hill
to a point where we, strapped to our guides, ran off the cliff and were soon flying over the mountains, lake, and town. I was prepared to be out of my mind in fear, but it was actually just exhilarating. We had a little photo shoot in the air and enjoyed twisting and swirling while performing tricks in the air, catching the next thermal (what they call the winds). We stayed up for about 20 minutes and gracefully floated back to the ground. It was amazing, and we definitely got our extreme sporting out of the bungee jumping capital.
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