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“Caz lost the top and nearly the bottom of her costume practising her Cannon balls” |
Thursday 22nd February
After getting up and the seemingly ungodly hour of 0730 we both quickly realised; much to our dismay; that neither of us had a $2 coin…. Meaning we could not shower, we firstly asked a whole bunch of people if they had change – no joy. I then wondered down to the Camp office to change the money there, I arrived only to find it didn’t open until 0830, we were due to be picked up by Fly by wire transport at around 0850 from the town centre, so reluctantly we had a sink wash (no mean feat as; for me at least; there was about 6 sinks and 30 blokes all trying to use them) we got into town nice an early and managed to park the Van up in the free all day parking, which by 0815 was already rap[idly starting to fill up.
With pangs of hunger in my stomach and butterflies in Caz’s we headed to the first open shop, we just happened to be the Bakery and one Bacon Egg and Cheese roll later, my hunger was satisfied and Caz’s butterflies were fed.
The transport turned up and in true Queenstown Fashion, a highly decorated Black Minibus pulled up and the seven of us waiting, all jumped in.
Thirty minutes later we were at a hut in the middle of a valley getting a briefing about what we had each paid $135 to do.
Of the Seven of us only four would be pilots, Caz, myself a young lad named Alex and one half of a couple on a six week trip named Laas. The other three people in the minibus consisted of Alex’s Mother, Laas’s heavily pregnant spouse and their 1 yr old daughter.
AS we pulled in to the Centre, we were lucky enough to see too young Female Albino deer, a farmer in the area released a male and female Albino deer into the wild a few years ago and they have been breeding like wild fire, they are apparently extremely valuable, they soon ran off as we got closer.
After an initial briefing and walk around the contraption we would be flying, which I can only describe as a sledge with handlebars and a big fan on the back, we were given out ‘Flight suits’ and asked who wanted to go first… 10 seconds later with no hands in the air, they picked Laas.
You will get the idea from the pictures exactly hoe the Fly by wire works, but essentially you get on the roof of the building and are strapped in by two five point harnesses, then hoisted by a winch off the roof about 12 foot whilst being dragged backwards up the side of a valley, once the wheel stops turning you squeeze both ‘Brakes’ on the handle bar, one releasing the cable the other being your throttle, your then free to Fly yourself round at about 140kmh suspended by a cable held 100ft of the ground. It is the only one in the world.
Watching Laas fly was pretty surreal and the 5 minutes flying time you get, seems to go on for quite a while. After Laas’s impressive Flight we let Alex go next, though he seemed to be enjoying flying round in sort turns and more circular and the pendulum with hard turns you are supposed to do to get the speed up.
Next up I walked onto the roof and got strapped in, it is here they remind you what you have to do and also point out another little button in the ‘Dashboard’ marked ‘EXTRA FUN’ during you last 15 seconds of powered flight you get a warning siren, if you don’t want to stop, you press the button and for $39.99 you get an extra two minutes of flight time.. hmm, money maker or what?
Hoisted to the top I waited for the signal and released, I left my stomach some where near the top of the ridge and didn’t get it back until I had swooped all the way up the other side, done a hard turn and gone back up the side of the Valley.
The only way I can describe it is this, it is the closest I am ever going to get to low level flying in a jet…
After an exhilarating 5 minutes that felt like thirty seconds the engine cuts – it actually cut when I was at the highest point just about to turn, which sucked as I ended up coming down backwards. It takes about two minutes to stop swinging and let gravity do its thing.
Once back on the roof, you pose for dodgy photos and then move over for the next bloke, which just so happened to be Caz. - If I though she looked nervous at the though of Zorbing, she looked scared at the though of this.
As I walked off the roof, I heard her fire off a million questions to the operators,
“What if I come down backwards?”
“What if I don’t turn hard enough?”
What if I turn too hard?”
And so on, they laughed and told her not to worry and she was hoisted.
I really don’t know what she was worried about. She looked really good up there, and as she flew over head, you could occasionally her giggling to herself, and she will admit, they she very nearly pushed the extra fun button, though that could be more to do with the fact she spent the first minute flying on Half throttle and didn’t realise until the operators managed to signal it to her from the roof.
After we had finished we all went back into the office and the Operators called Matt and Dan put on a slide show of all the pictures they had taken, they were actually pretty good so for $40 we bought them and whilst caught up in the moment we both bought T-shirts at $30 blowing our already Blown budget further..
Back in thankfully air conditioned minibus on the way back, I turned on my camera to see the pictures we had manage to take- non of them really any good, I scrolled through them at least twice, until I realised that they were the only pictures it was showing me, my heart sank there was over 350 photos we had taken since the last time I had but any on disc on the top of the south island, every photo we had taken since Motueka had been lost… I was more than unhappy, we got back into town and I headed for the first internet café I could find, I told the girl at the desk what had happened and that I needed a card reader, she offered to look for me to save me paying for an hour I might not use, she looked, nothing only the 12 photos from the flyby wire had been saved- gutted I asked her to look at the properties option and it did dhow, that a fair size chunk of the 2gb card had data on it, which was not showing, The girl in the café suggested I try the camera shop around the corner, I took it in they almost immediately knew the problem, it would cost about $60 and an hour to run a recovery programme which 9 times out of ten works and to then burn the pictures to two discs (we keep one with us and send the other home)
I walked out of the shop slightly relived, and hopeful and hour and a subway sandwich later we returned and they had managed to find all of the photos.
In the internet café I was in yesterday I tried to look at the pictures, but there was so many that the slow ass computer had only shown me ten in about 30 mins so I removed the Memory card, in doing so the computer for some reason had deleted all the sequencing information that tells the memory card that it has photos on it, therefore the memory is used up by inaccessible information.
Lesson learnt as soon as we fill the 256 memory card that Caz is using in her Camera, we will burn what ever pics we have to disc (which I guess will be every two weeks or less as when we hit South America and we will be travelling round a lot more: more photos)
We jumped back into the Sabbath and headed off to meet Caz’s family (Bridget & Bruce) at Wannaka, a three hour drive from Queens town.
The first thing you notice about Wannaka is the lake, its huge and invitingly Swim-able so as soon as we donned trunks and costume and jumped in, though not as Cold as the Green Lake at Rotorua, it was certainly not warm and we swam and messed around for 30 minutes or so until was seemed like a tide? Though it could have been due to the wind got a bit choppy an we headed back into shore, not before Caz lost the top and nearly the bottom of her costume practising her Cannon balls of the floating pontoon about 30m off shore!
We got back to the Van to the freshly charge phone and noticed we had a voice mail- From Bridget, whom we were due to meet… unfortunately to do that we would have needed to fly to Perth Australia, as that was where she was heading… Bugger.
We drove round for a while and found a holiday park paid up for the night, went back into town to grab some food to eat, came back cooked it and then headed for the Free Spas they had at the camp, kept at a cool 40’ I managed about twenty minutes before I nearly passed out and then went for a 10 minute ice cold shower to cool down, after that? Another hot, Sand fly bitten night in the Sabbath
previous travel blog entry
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