Gravity Canyon

The ski season has officially kicked off although it is slow going and not a lot of snow at the moment – only 61cm. However, because this is the busy time of year for Ohakune we are getting plenty of special offers and freebies through work. One of the freebies was a bridge swing at Gravity Canyon. I went along with the staff at Kings but James stayed at home (chicken…). Gravity Canyon is about an hour away from Ohakune and they do a bridge swing, a bungy jump and a flying fox off an 80m high bridge over the Rangitikei River. The scenery is amazing it’s such a nice place – that you can appreciate after you have done your activity, not before!
The bridge swing is something that can be done either solo or tandem, but seen as there were 7 of us in our group I volunteered to go solo and I went first! You start by walking out along the bridge to a little gated platform and you put on your harness, the staff (Mel) then hooks you up to the line and opens the gate and suspends you over the edge whilst they take photos like the one above. In my case though the photographer then had to run around to the viewing platform to take some more photos leaving me hanging for a couple of minutes. When all photos were taken Mel asked me how I wanted to do it and when I said ‘I don’t know’ she said ok you’re going NOW and pulled the cord that dropped me. You fall 80m before swinging out to the other side. I only just got a short scream out before I lost all my breath (although face still poised as if screaming!) but when it got to the swing bit it was incredible! The whole thing only lasts around 30seconds and then they hoist you back up to the bridge. It was very scary, I thought about backing out, it was great fun in the end and…it was free!

Check out their website http://www.gravitycanyon.co.nz/activities/swing/videos where you can watch videos of other people doing what I did!

Rugby Head

James has just finished the first round of the rugby season and his team (Ruapehu) has come top of the table! They only lost 1 game in the first round and now have a $500 bar tab as a reward. James scored his first try of the season on Saturday which is great because now he doesn't need to do a naked dance as a penalty for not scoring.
After the Saturday's game there was the usual roast dinner at the rugby club and then a competition... There were 3 in each team, the first person had to eat a raw egg whole (shell and everything), the second person had to drink a handle of beer through a straw and the third person had to sheer a sheep! Quickest time won, James team didn't win and he was the poor person who had to eat an egg. Luckily though he wasn't sick, but a poor little boy was – bucket on hand. It was exciting at first because we have never seen sheep shearing before and it’s huge out here but after a while the club began to smell and there were a lot of sheep - clearly a farmer didn't want to pass up on the free labour!
Its Queens Birthday today and we have some people coming back from a river trip. Ski season kicks off on the 25th June with Mardi Gras but at the moment there is no snow up the mountain and doesn't look like there will be anytime soon. We need lots and soon so we can get back on our snowboards - it’s the best thing about winter!

Middle of May

More of the same here in Ohakune recently...

Rugby has been going well, although last weekend we lost our first game 16-13 to Ratana, who treated us to a haka in the clubrooms after the game! Check out the club website.

Robyn has started volunteering one day a week at Ohakune Primary School, and is going up to Matamata next week to have a week with Tracie at Matamata primary.

We have one more canoe trip booked for next week I think, the NZ Navy are coming to do some teambuilding/training, then that's it for the summer. The weather has taken a definite autumnal turn, and at the moment it's not too pleasant to be on the river! Although tomorrow Robyn and Simon are taking two fellas from Bare Kiwi on a day trip so they can shoot a promotional video for us which will appear in I-Sites (tourist information centres) in our district, tour buses and their website which is a pretty cool one. The videos are well worth a watch, and we're all looking forward to seeing ours! Check out their video for Escape Rentals, the campervan we rented is parked in the garage! Unfortunately I can't be a part of ours, as I'm sitting a course for a passenger endorsement for my NZ drivers licence! Hopefully I might be able to get in the background of the intro or something...


P.S. Pic is Robyn and her new besty Flint, they are in lurrrrrv!