Kiwis love anything a bit wacky. Aside from the regular menu of adventure exploits, we've got a few weird and wonderful ones to entertain you with too.
As a young island nation in the remote southern hemisphere, the need for self reliance inspired a culture of innovation. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention. However our ingenuity isn’t confined to farm equipment and sailing vessels.
Over the years, our inventive nature has led to increasingly bizarre options for recreation and sport. These adventures trick your mind into an extreme state of fright, but they’re generally completely safe.
From rolling down a hillside inside an inflated plastic sphere to taking the plunge attached only by a rope, it’s all just miscellaneous madness. The resulting adrenalin rush causes perfectly normal people to yell "woooo hooo" at full volume, while their friends take amusing pictures to show them later.
One of New Zealand’s truly mad activities is the Shotover Canyon Swing. This is not your average swing. At 109 metres above the magnificent Shotover Gorge, near Queenstown, customers ‘enjoy’ 60 metres of freefall just metres from the vertical cliff face, reaching speeds of up to 150 kilometres per hour and swinging 200 metres across the river.
Whether it's the Canyon Swing or some other mad exploit, there has to be room for an experience that goes beyond the realms of sanity somewhere in your itinerary. It’s time to redefine the meaning of fun.