Around the world with 80 gadgets - Around the world with 80 gadgets

I was very excited about going to New Zealand. Not sure why, maybe because it's the furthest away from home I've ever been (12 hour time difference), or because of all the Lord of the Rings movie sites ...

It was a bit cold at first, almost like Tasmania, but as soon as the sun came out it was really nice. I started with a 3 day paragliding course, I had been thinking about it for a long time and finally got the chance to do it. You haven't really lived until your paragliding instructor throws you off a cliff after a few hours of running up and down a hill!

Beach in Sumner

The course was just east of Christchurch, in Sumner, a beautiful little suburb with a long beach and green hills. It didn't start very well as the instructor hit a little dog as we were driving to the raining field. The owner was almost in shock and we drove her to her car so she could go to the vet, but we didn't think there was much hope for the poor little fella, unfortunately.

This is what paragliding for 6 hours will do to your arms!

I thought the instructor was joking when he said I was going to run up and down a hill for the next couple of hours, but it turned out he wasn't. I'm not exactly in good shape and was stumbling up the little hill extremely slowly, breathing heavily as the instructor told me a 70 year old guy was able to do this... After 2 hours the torture was finally over and my arms and legs were really hurting.

Wohoooo!

We got up to a bigger hill, I got a bit nervous and didn't feel quite ready, but the instructor just buckled me up and threw me into takeoff ... The flight was amazing and wind conditions perfect, I wasn't really scared at all after the takeoff and landed without too many cuts and bruises. The next couple of days I flew off that hill many times and improved my landings a lot (even got applauded by some teenagers hanging around on the parking lot near the landing spot). Hope to continue paragliding when I get home!

View from time ball museum, Lyttleton

I also went to the harbour town of Lyttleton south of Christchurch, amazing sea views and an interesting time ball museum. What on earth is a time ball, you might ask (and so did I). A huge ball is mounted high on the hill for all ships in the harbour to see and dropped at a certain time of the day so the captains could set their watches (in the 1800s you had to know the exact time to be able to navigate correctly).

For the rest of my time in Christchurch I wandered around the city, did some shopping and checked out the museum and botanical gardens. I was a little disappointed not finding little kiwis running around everywhere, turns out these iconic flightless birds are rarely spotted and some even endangered.

Comments

Add New

Write comment

Name: Email:  do not notifynotify Website: Title: UBBCode:         -color-aquablackbluefuchsiagraygreenlimemaroonnavyolivepurpleredsilvertealwhiteyellow -size-tinysmallmediumlargehuge     Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 4.0 beta1

!joomlacomment 4.0 Copyright (C) 2009 Compojoom.com . All rights reserved."