Greetings from New Zealand!

The flight over to New Zealand is a long one, a little over twelve hours to be specific. Whoever said time travel isn't possible has apparently never flown across the International Date Line. I left Los Angeles the evening of February 19th and landed in Auckland the morning of the 21st. The 20th just vanished. It's even better on the way home when I will land at LAX before I take off from Sydney. But this is all a topic for another day.

I flew over on Air New Zealand, and I couldn't have been happier with the experience. There was good seatroom, friendly service, and they've got these great entertainment systems at each seat that provide passenger independent on-demand movies, tv, and video games. It made the 12 hour flight seem more like 4 hours. This might only be on long haul flights, but if you ever get a chance, Air New Zealand is worth your consideration.

I landed in Auckland around 6:30 am. The first order of business was to find the hotel where I had to catch a tour bus at noon. I got there by 8:30, dropped my bags, and ventured off to explore the city. Another tip, when in a time crunch, most big cities have these hop on hop off buses that give you a decent overview of a city's main attractions. I had heard from a few people that Auckland isn't really a place in New Zealand to spend much time, so I was happy to find Auckland had one of these buses. I hopped on, listened to the guided tour and snapped a few photos.

While on the bus, I was particularly intrigued by a brochure for something called the Sky Jump. It claimed to be New Zealand's highest jump at a tower in the middle of town.

SkyTower in Auckland

For those familiar, it is very reminiscent of the CN Tower in Toronto. Once my bus ride wrapped up, I walked over to the tower, and to my delight, found the Sky Jump people setting up camp and doing their safety tests. I went inside for the particulars, and the jump works out to be 192m (600+ feet) at speeds of 90 kmh (55+ mph). This isn't quite the speed of a freefall, the smiling girl behind the counter explained, but she insisted it was thrilling nonetheless. It's a wire assisted base jump, and it's the wire the keeps the jumper from total freefall. I had a walk outside to get a second look, and decided that this would be a suitable warmup for a trio of bungy jumps in about 10 days.

600+ feet looks much higher from the top looking down than from the bottom looking up. I could feel the knots tightening in my stomach as we rode up the elevator, with its lovely glass bottom floor nicely placed to accentuate the increasing height. Once we got to the top, I volunteered to be the first jumper in a group of three. I'd like to think it's because I was the bravest of the bunch, but I was also mindful of the fact that my tour bus was leaving in less than an hour and I was in a jumpsuit and harness at the top of the tower.

Once at the edge it really takes something to jump off the platform, especially when you look down, but once the countdown from 3 was completed I found myself leaping into the air.

SkyJump from the Auckland SkyTower

The rest was a little anti-climatic. They stop you about 20 feet down to snap a photo (still suspended 600 feet above the ground) and then send you on your way down. It's not quite the same gut wrenching feeling you get from the freefall in a bungy jump, but still a formidable adreline rush. It had been a few years since my last bungy jump, so I felt satisfied after this Sky Jump that I'll be ready for the infamous bungy trio in Queenstown.

Once I got unsuited and bought the overpriced photos, I hightailed it over to the hotel just in time to catch my bus. We had a 4+ hour ride up the coast, made a quick stop in the rainforest, and then made it to our final destination near the northern tip of New Zealand, a town called Paihia.

It's a picturesque place where one can easily spend more than the two days alotted on this tour and still feel like there is much more

Greetings from New Zealand!

Auckland, New Zealand