Queenstown, New Zealand, Dec 2022

Routeburn, Days 2 & 3

My friend Nina and I had no plans for the free day between two walks apart from going to an afternoon briefing at the Ultimate Hikes center. Nina suggested to try the luge. We paid for 5 rides and

took a gondola up to the top of the hill, then a chairlift to the luge tracks.

The right track was slow, for the first ride of the day after we passed a driving test. We had to demonstrate that we could control the luge. The left track was steeper, with sharper turns, bumps and a short tunnel.

Nina flew downhill. I, being afraid of speed, took a more cautious approach but enjoyed this new experience too.

On the slope next to the luge, paragliders took off.

Nina watched them enviously while we waited in line for our luge rides. She said that she always wanted to do paragliding but could not find someone to go with her. I let her remarks pass without my comments since I regarded the people who fly paragliders as being suicidal and certainly had no intention to keep Nina company in such a crazy enterprise.

We finished our 5 luge rides and had nothing else to do until the briefing. All of the sudden, I heard myself saying: “Let’s go and check the cost of paragliding here.” Nina looked at me in disbelief.

“We don’t have time for that before the briefing. Besides, it should be booked in advance,” she said.

“Well, we will just go and ask. No harm in that. If they are fully booked or it is too expensive, we won’t do it,” I kept pressing her. Was it really happening? And why was it me and not Nina who dreamed about paragliding who was talking us into doing this?

The price was 299 NZD (about 200 USD) and, lo and behold, they had slots available for us in 15 minutes. The weather was perfect for paragliding. I thought that if I’d ever do it, I should better do it right there before I got cold feet.

The rest was like in a slow-motion picture that was not about us. Two pilots drove us to the top, they spread the paragliders on the ground, put harnesses on us and clipped us to themselves. Without much ado, my pilot Dominick told me to take 3 steps and we were in the air!

The current lifted us and for a while we simply hang well above the ground. The harness was like a comfortable and secure chair, never mind that we were flying. I looked curiously down and felt no fear. Dominick suggested to go higher, I had no objection to that. He pulled the lines that controlled the paraglider and we went up.

“A little higher perhaps?” he asked. Sure, why not. We climbed a bit more and flew over the hill slope.

“Let’s do a couple of turns,” Dominick said and span the paraglider around twice. My stomach immediately was queasy. “A couple was enough,” I said carefully and he understood. We glided for about 15 minutes more, then easily landed. Nina with her pilot was already on the ground.

Queenstown calls itself ‘the adrenaline capital of the world’. If anyone wants to break the neck, they will help you to do this in style. You can do almost anything in Queenstown: bungee jumping, kayaking, whitewater rafting, mountain biking, skydiving, skiing and snowboarding in winter, and more. I have no idea what made me to try paragliding but I am glad that I did that.