Okay, on further reflection, it's a psychoanalytical stretch to blame all of this on a straight-up desire to die. But I still think that Death plays a big part in things. New Zealand is an absolutely gorgeous country. It has to be. Because one might argue that anybody would be crazy to live there otherwise.
The Grim Reaper lurks around every corner. The country sits on a meeting point between the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates, on the southwestern edge of the Pacific Ring of Fire. The entire North Island might as well be a gigantic volcano. Then there are the earthquakes – like the seven-point-niner that shook the Fiordlands last year and the constant rumbling of the ground around Wellington. Offshore earthquakes bring tsunami risks. And then there's the fact that, with that giant bloody hole in the ozone layer overhead, everybody's getting skin cancer.
(Also, the sandflies on the South Island might not actually kill you, but you might wish you were dead with all the itching.)
With such a savage spectre hovering over both the islands, it's little wonder that so many New Zealanders pioneer and/or regularly engage in high-risk, heart-pumping, and death-defying shenanigans. I supposed the thinking is: if you're going to go, then go in the most awesome way possible.
While I would hardly classify myself as a thrill-seeking adrenaline junkie, I understand where this attitude comes from. While I was in university, a large group of us were sitting in the dining hall, engaged in the type of thought experiment for which wannabe-intellectual liberal arts majors are famous. The question was, "A huge meteor is heading towards the city. You have ten minutes to live. What do you do?" We had to answer with the first thing that came to mind.
The purpose of the person who initiated this was to prove that people are nothing more than primal, animalistic sex-fiends. Considering we were a bunch of seventeen-, eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, this was hardly a stretch. Even the Christian fundamentalist of the group answered, "Have sex.", though he qualified this afterwards by saying that he'd grab a girl, dash into a church, get married and then have sex.
My answer was somewhat different. I said that I'd figure out a way to spectacularly kill myself. I'd jump off the top tallest building in the city -- which, in Toronto, is the not insignificant 533m CN Tower. I'd steal a Ferrari, get it up to top speed and crash it into something. Something along those lines, anyway. My reasoning for this was simple: if you know that death is soon and inevitable, why not go out and do something that you would never, ever get to do if you expected to walk away afterwards?
I suppose that's all intrepid Kiwis are doing, though with not quite as much guaranteed death. The benefits of dialling back on the assured fatality are threefold. Firstly, you don't die. Secondly, you get to go back and experience the excitement again and again and again. Thirdly, you get to commercialise all this insanity and make lots of money by letting tourists get (safely) their thrills on.
Hurtling Down a Sand Dune (Thanks to Pete for this pic.)
Remember the picture of that giant sand dune in the Far North? What might be hard to see is that we were carrying boogie-boards up that hill in order to hurl ourselves down the slope. I did this multiple times.
The Rotorua Luge Track (courtesy of JohnnyJet.com)
My first afternoon in Rotorua was spent speeding down Mount Ngongotaha on luge carts. This may seem tame as far as extreme activities go, but the thrills are entirely dependant on your use of the brake. Or, given that there were about ten of us racing each other down the mountain, the thrills are dependant on not using the brake. Helmets are supplied for a reason (at least one person has died on these luge tracks). Wearing that helmet saved one of us from a nasty concussion.
I'd luged before. Some ski resorts in Canada have imported the activity to make money during the skiing off-season. But none of my previous experiences quite matched this one. Maybe it was because of the competitive juices stoked by racing everybody down the hill. But I'm going to say that it was because the Advanced Run actually had a drop in the track, one where air time was possible if you were going fast enough.
Tutea Falls
Close to Rotorua lie a couple of Grade V rivers. Naturally, there are outfits that provide white-water rafting trips through these stretches of water. The Kaituna River is classified as a Grade V river (the second most dangerous river grading) and includes Tutea Falls, the tallest commercially rafted waterfall in the world.
The rafting companies also provide sledging along the many of the same rapids. Don't know what sledging is? It's white-water rafting without the raft.
(A Non-Novice Sledger) Sledging Down Tutea Fulls
(Facebook readers: click on the thumbnail to view a large version of the pic above, or visit the blog directly to use the built-in Panorama slider.)
We mere novices didn't get to make the 7m drop over Tutea Falls. Kaitiaki Adventures used to bring sledging groups over the Falls as recently as a few years ago -- this was used as a challenge on The Amazing Race -- but the risk and accident rate led to a revision of the route to avoid the hazard. Our journey started in the pool just below Tutea.
Negotiating the Rapids
Without that initial drop, our run of the Kaituna contained mostly Class III, with one or two Class IV rapids. But, even with the lesser hazards, manoeuvring through the whitewater was plenty exhilarating, more so given that our only protection from errant rocks were those pre-river lessons on using our hydroboards as shields.
No, the Irony That My Helmet Read "Raft It!" Didn't Escape Me
For things that arose out of people thumbing their noses at Death, these activities sure were a Hell of a way to live.
And another great thing about New Zealand? That there was plenty more craziness to come.
Related Entries:
1. The Bit at the Top of the North
2. From Auckland to Rotorua
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