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Home :: South of the South Island: Wanaka and Queenstown. :: The skydive that wasn't
The skydive that wasn't
Posted Tuesday, 19 June 2007
Wanaka and Queenstown are both adventure towns that explode with tourism in the summer and winter, but we were there just before that happened. It was really cold in Wanaka at around 6 degrees but sadly not quite ski season, so although beautiful it was practically deserted.

We wandered into the information centre one morning toying with the idea of booking a skydive for when we arrived in Queenstown, but the woman behind the desk asked if we’d consider doing it in Wanaka and if so there was space in half an hour, and should she go ahead and put our names down? We weren’t prepared for this barrage of hard sell so we all meekly put down the deposit and drove to the airfield. We arrived, watched a ‘safety’ dvd of people hurling themselves out of planes, all needed the loo immediately, signed a piece of paper that said they couldn’t be sued if we died, and were strapped into jumpsuits and harnesses. Our tandem jumper men floated out of the sky attached to the last set of fools and led us towards the plane like lambs to the slaughter. There was only enough room inside it for the six of us to sit on the floor while we zoomed 1000-feet up... then we zoomed 1000-feet back down because the wind had suddenly become too strong to jump. We landed, were unstrapped from our harnessed and jumpsuits, handed our refund and shown the door.

It was a draining day.
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