New Zealand has been nicknamed the adventure capital of the world and when you come here you really see why. You can find activities for all travellers of all levels and all extremes.
The two most obvious and most extreme are skydiving and bungee jumping. There are lots of jump/dive sites throughout the country, not surprising given New Zealand invented bungee jumping. Oh and just to let you know, bungee jumping is scarier than skydiving (we're told). With bungee, you get ground rush (seeing the ground come closer to you) whereas with skydiving the parachute is released to high for this to happen.
Popular bungee jump sites include the first jump site in the world, The Kawarau Bridge Bungy and a jump site with a freefall of 8.5 seconds, The Nevis Highwire Bungy.
New Zealand also boasts the cheapest skydive in the world, from a town on the North Island called Taupo. There are different skydive packages which vary in heights and extras (like a T-shirt or DVD of your skydive). Our traveller friend skydived in a town on the South Island called Fox Glacier (close to Franz Josef) and he said it was amazing being able to look over the Southern Alps and the glaciers from 12,000ft.
Wherever you skydive from, you will enjoy it. A couple of tips we heard was that it doesn’t matter where and how high you jump from because you are too hyped up to really take in the scenery or feel the extra couple seconds of freefall. It is always over too quickly.
There are lots of other adventure activities to do in New Zealand ranging from Zorbing, luging, black water rafting, high wire courses and glacier hiking.
Below is a list of some of the activities we did and what we thought of it.
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Zorbing - Rotorua
A fun activity which can be done strapped in and dry, or free-standing and wet. We enjoyed the strapped-in zorbing as it’s more disorientating and more thrilling than the wet ride.
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Luging - Rotorua
Its very fun and surprisingly fast considering you are just going downhill on a cart. The race tracks were well designed and we enjoyed the ski-lift chair back to the top again. There is another luge track in Queenstown.
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Black Water Rafting - Waitomo
This is basically floating through underground rivers on big inner-tubes. Throw in some tight squeezes, a couple of small waterfalls and some glowworms and you have black water rafting.
We really enjoyed this. The caving section wasn’t too challenging but the underground stream added a new element to it.
The company we went with is called Caveworld. Another popular company is The Legendary Black Water Rafting Co.
Waitomo is located about 2 hours away from Taupo and Rotorua. -
High Wire Course – Taupo
Rock'n Ropes has a series of obstacles to traverse while being 13m high.
We really enjoyed this, it’s a lot scarier than it looks.
The High Log was one of the most difficult obstacles we tried…but not the scariest.
That accolade goes to the Giant Swing! -
Glacier Hiking – Franz Josef
There was a half day and a full day hike. We did the full day hike.
There was also a “Heli Hike” where you get flown up the glacier in a helicopter and get the chance to walk around with a guide.
The full day hike was very tiring but worth it. The hike takes you up past the dirty ice onto parts of the glacier where there are small ice caves and blue ice. We stopped for lunch on the glacier before making our way back down. This break gave us lots of time to take some spectacular photos. -
Kayaking – Franz Josef
This was really relaxing. Using the rudder to steer proved tricky sometimes but it was very enjoyable. The company we used had both single and double kayaks. The lake was very serene, it was surrounded by snow-capped mountains and forests.
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Horse-Riding – Lake Tekapo
There are lots of opportunities to go horse-riding throughout New Zealand. We chose to do this in Lake Tekapo because of the scenery. Horse-riding in this environment reminded me of the Lord of the Rings films.
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Observatory – Lake Tekapo
This was an amazing experience.
We were picked up at 11pm and taken to a local observatory. We were then shown constellations by a scientist (and his super powerful laser) before being taken inside to look through the big telescope. They also had free hot chocolate to warm you up.
I have never seen so many stars in all my life! -
Mount Maunganui
The town is looked over by a mountain of the same name. The mountain is an extinct volcano and there are a few walking paths which take you to the top. It’s not a hard climb up and once up there, there are some good photos to be taken. We were rushing to the top because dusk was setting in, but we made the climb in about 45 minutes and the descent in about 20 minutes.