Queenstown, the capital of bungy, was supposed to be great fun for me and a little bit of a nightmare for Richard. This was a bit of a test for us. There were things I wanted to do and Richard wouldn't bring himself to do because all of them had one thing in common - a great height. Nature in Queenstown, with its lakes, high cliffs, rivers and mountains provides a perfect playground for all sorts of different sports and activities. The town is pretty but I couldn't help thinking how commercial and touristy it also is. Most of the buildings you see around are hotels and luxury villas for rent and because it did become such a big tourist attraction the rent is pretty expensive. In fact, during our travels, we met some people who used to live in Queenstown but moved because of the high cost of living. So how is it to live in a place, which has only about 9,000 inhabitants but in season can have up to ten times that in visitors?

I don't know how I'd look at this. Obviously, thanks to the tourists, locals can have a better infrastructure that they can use to their advantage, more of the night life, have far more choices of nice cafes and restaurants or sports and activities. Do they like the world coming to them or do they treat visitors more as an intrusion to their normal life? Actually can you have a normal life in a place where everybody comes to throw themselves off of all sort of things. Now, when you are in Queenstown, it's really difficult to avoid taking part in some of the typical tourist activities. Whilst I happily took part in a typical Queenstown entertainment of throwing yourself from the bridges and other constructions, Richard happily avoided it. Actually just seeing me doing it, caused him enough distress. He really doesn't like heights even if he stays on the ground.

I assume that all the " jumping from anything you can" craze started here from the first AJ Hackett bungy jump at Kawarau bridge and you can read more about it in the travomation section. According to the information we got the Kawarau Bridge bungy opened in 1988 and became the World's first full time Bungy Bridge. One of the initiators, AJ Hackett, had jumped a year earlier from the Eifel Tower where he had secretly hidden one night, set up his rubber latex cords and then, when the day, broke in made his jump. Immediately afterwards he was arrested but it only lasted a few minutes. This was however great publicity for the whole bungy idea, from which AJ and his partner Henry van Asch created the whole businesses later on. AJ and Henry, though they developed safe bungy cords and made it into commercial success, are not the creators of the idea so we will write about that when we visit Vanuatu because this is where it all started.

We would love to talk to Henry van Asch, who is still here in New Zealand, about how it all happened, how on earth (or quite a bit above it) did they think that it could become a business, or did they. I admire the fact that here there were two guys who enjoyed something which probably most of the people would call completely mad, believed in it, had an idea and went for it. How often do we go and study something, which doesn't really agree with us because it ensures a good job. Here is other way of looking at it - think what agrees with you and then if it's not there - make it up. So how was it. You don't just sit in a seat like in a rollercoaster but have to do step or throw yourself down, noone will do it for you. You have to challenge yourself to do something which is basically against nature and a rational mind. As one of the Canyon swing guys, Crispy, said it's probably the shortest time in which a person gets from terrified to completely relaxed and, believe it or not, it feels great.

Once I was back on the ground I was packed into the car by Richard (he didn't know what was waiting for him next) and driven by the happy driver to Franz Josef, a pretty little town, where, again, the major occupation was based around what nature provided and what has become a tourist attraction. Just a few kilometers out of town there is the Franz Josef Glacier, a long stretch of ice. We went for a guided walk there and Richard, who successfully avoided high bridges and cliffs in Queenstown, discovered that he would have to walk right next to the big crevasses and on the slippery ground. I tried to tell him that if he was afraid of falling then bungy is great for him because you are actually supposed to fall and, as you are attached to something by a latex cord - you will come back one way or the other. You are however not supposed to fall down the crevasse so here he had far more grounds for his fear. Well actually far less ground but that was the problem.

During our walk we talked a lot to our guide and we were fascinated to discover how much the glacier changes and how quickly. It was weird to hear from a 20 year old how much things have changed in her lifetime but apparently the Glacier has progressed a lot. There were bits that we saw from the bus driving to the spot from which we started the walk that were not visible at all from the valley when she was 10. I also discovered that I was being a bit stupid when I asked the marketing manager, who offered us a choice of full day, 3/4 and half day walk, on which of the walks the photos displayed on their website were taken.

It's actually immaterial because the glacier doesn't remain the same. The ice is constantly moving and changing. What one day can be a safe passage, the next day day can collapse under a single person. The steps carefully carved in the ice by some guy can become flat ground the next day. I have to say that during our 5 hour walk we saw rather a lot of conservation work going on at the site. The land here in New Zealand is active and constantly changing with its volcanoes, hot springs, earthquakes and glaciers. I wrote already about it but the same question again comes to mind here. Does this make people more aware of the land and nature, more respectful towards it? To live on the land where at any moment the powerful forces of nature can wipe out the whole city, where mother earth can decide to destroy everything in one moment.

New Zealand is an incredible piece of land and as it was the last settled and westernized quite recently, it still wears a lot of natural history, a lot of traces of times passed long ago. The next day we were invited to make a quad bike tour. We were taken to a place where mountains grew straight out of the flat, sea level land and where lines on the vegetation on the hills showed how far the glacier reached 10 and 18 000 years ago. So when someone says New Zealand doesn't have much of history, they are right if they think of the history of the human kind. But New Zealand has a lot of its own pre-human history, and the land like a face of an old woman wears traces of time and you can read the past from it if you know how. It's a great place to begin.

That's why we did

This second week in New Zealand saw us leave the East Coast of the South Island and head across the bottom of the country. Our first stop was in Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world so they say. This is adrenaline country. So, my young, friend, who likes her adrenaline to flow quickly, will tell you more about this. For me, the excitement, the amazement, the sheer incredulity of nature, came a little later. Don't get me wrong. I liked Queenstown although I thought it had a bit of an identity crisis. I had expected a town filled with young backpackers all eager to fling themselves of this and that or the other and all wandering around the town in plaster casts having done so.

Now of course, if you think about it, bungy isn't very dangerous at all. Would anyone really be allowed to let the paying public nearly kill themselves? The answer is maybe but not by bungy jumping. I am told that the most dangerous activity in Queenstown that you pay for is the luge run at the top of the gondola ride. They have more injuries each year than all the bungy jumps combined. It seems that the challenge of bungy jumping is a personal one. To force yourself to jump off a platform and drop down anything between 40 and 140 metres, tied to a piece of rope and knowing that it is perfectly safe. I have an incredible fear of heights. I cannot stand next to a cliff top or, actually, even a second floor window. So for me the worst part of the bungy would be getting on the actual platform and so I didn't. But lots of people do and they all say it is a great thrill. I, however, had two goes on the luge.

But just to pop back to my identity crisis, or to be more precise, Queenstown's. If you go into the town and look at all the new buildings I can assure you that the average backpacker could not afford the tourist accommodation being built. Unless Bill Gates goes backpacking (sounds like the title of road movie doesn't it) these places will remain empty of backpackers. I think the reason for it is that Queenstown actually has dual seasonality, a new word I've just invented. In other words it is popular in summer and winter. It is a beautiful area with the lakes in the summer and ski fields nearby in the winter. So it caters, or tries to cater, for both types of people. The average traveller on a budget, who can go budget, sorry bungy jumping or the wealthier user of the piste. So that's the choice; take the jump or take the piste. Oh, and one other thing. Apparently it was actually built in the wrong place on the wrong side of the lake. In the afternoon the setting sun disappears very early in Queenstown because of the mountains to the west but continues to shine on the other side of the lake.

From Queenstown we headed first north to Wanaka, smaller, less touristy and maybe better for that, and then west over the mountains until we reached the West Coast. Sensibly, at this point, we turned north again, our eventual destination being the little town of Franz Josef. With the Southern Alps mountain range so close, the coastline here is far different from that we had seen last week around Christchurch and Dunedin. No longer the Pacific Ocean, we were now running alongside the Tasman Sea. To me, it was more dramatic, wilder and the farms and communities we came across were more remote. New Zealand is a pretty big country, size-wise, in which to fit its 4 million people, so remote is very much a relative word. What is more when you consider that the South Island, roughly the same size as the north, only has about 1 million of those people, there are many places where you see no sign of human habitation at all. On the drive north we passed River Creek , a minute community with the most isolated school in New Zealand. A little later we stopped briefly to talk to a sheep and cattle farmer and asked him, among other things, where did he do his shopping. He had the choice of a 2-hour trip north to Greymouth or a 5-hour drive over the Alps to Christchurch. Neither seemed to worry him. Think about it. Imagine living in London and shopping in Newcastle and you can adjust this for your own country.

Anyhow we reached Franz Josef, population 350, and that is when I got my adrenaline rush. Franz Josef is famous for its glacier. Now you can read a bit more about glaciers, if you want, by going to our blog written for schools. Don't worry there's no test and you don't have to sit up straight. Click here if you want to check it out. This is a place where nature is king and people live under his control. Where I come from in England, most changes to my landscape, my environment, were planned and man-made. Here there is nothing of the sort. The changes are made by nature, there are no plans and man, however hard he may try, has very little control. The glacier has been moving for million of years. But people can actually see changes in their own lifetime and not just little changes, big ones. Between 1965 and now the glacier has retreated about 1 kilometre and then advance again back to where it was. Amazingly, for me anyway, millions of years ago the terminal face, the end of the glacier was actually in the Tasman Sea. That's right, the terminal face, the end, of the Franz Josef glacier was about 10kms out into the Tasman Sea.

The town of Franz Josef is there because of the glacier. Most people who live there work in tourism. It is not the sort of place you would normally stop in unless you know what is there. The glacier sits, at the moment, just outside the town. In simple terms it is a moving wedge of ice that, if it wants, can push everything before it. A wedge that has formed the land, reformed the land and continues to do so. I find it incredible just to think about living here. Even more so to be able to walk on the glacier each day as the guides do. Needless to say we took a walk, actually about a 12-kilometre walk but who cares. From a distance you just seem to be heading toward the snow covered base of a mountain across a dried up stone covered riverbed. Then you listen to your guide who tells you how we can escape if there is a sudden surge and the river should flood. Then, having survived that, when you get there, when you are on it, everything is so different.

The glacier is a mass of crevasses, deep holes into which, if you fall, getting you out would be pretty difficult. We had to wear crampons on the soles of our shoes so we didn't slip. Crampons, for the uninitiated, are like football boot studs only stronger and far more necessary. Slip on the football field and you might look stupid, slip here and you might never look stupid again. We were guided across the glacier, sometimes climbing up steps, sometimes climbing down, crossing narrow ledges and just generally in awe of the scenery. There were twelve who set out on our tour and twelve who came back. A good guide being a little like a good pilot. The definition of a good pilot being one who has the same number of take-offs as landings; a good guide takes out the same number of people as they bring back. I had thought we might all be roped together but we weren't. Why would everyone want to fall if I did? Nevertheless if the front person climbing or the rear person descending, slipped down, the domino effect would mean we all joined in. It was sort of group disaster.

But what really brought it all home to me was when we kept coming across other guides, not guiding that day, but cutting new steps into the glacier face. Why? Because tomorrow, or the next day, things will change, the path we took may not be there. The glacier will have moved. The steps cut out last week won't be there. Sometimes, as our guide had told us, there will be a surge and the glacier will disgorge some of its ice into the river, which will then become a fast running river. We were told that the reason so many of the bridges over these rivers were only single lane was because they kept being destroyed in floods. Replacing a single lane is quicker and cheaper. Look, if you think bungy jumping is a thrill, try this. Walk on a piece of nature, look down deep crevasses (I didn't) know that the path you walk may not be there tomorrow or even when you come back, and realise that it is moving under you. That's what I call a thrill, even allowing for the heights.

The following day we went out on a quad bike. We rode down the same riverbed as we had walked on to the glacier and then turned off and found ourselves in a rain forest. Life cannot get much better than this. Within a few minutes you have the sea, a mountain, a glacier, a river and a rain forest. Where else in the world can you get this. Hopefully I will find out but for now I am happy here except I am suffering from a bout of envy. People live around Franz Josef. That does not seem fair. It should only be taken in small doses. Too much of a good thing must be bad for you. Although, in that case, why are they all so happy. Perhaps I should stay for a bit longer. But in this job, that's something I can't do.