Featured Image: Arms wide for New Zealand’s jaw-dropping natural landscapes / Photo credit: Amanda Burgess

How the ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’ Pushed Me Out of My Comfort Zone

By Amanda Burgess, Editor, JourneyWoman

I’m hyperventilating on the Gondola, the steepest cable car lift in the Southern Hemisphere at 450 metres. We’re talking a near-vertical 240-metre climb above Queenstown, New Zealand –the adventure capital of the world. And the luge track that I’m about to downhill race on is another feet-dangling chairlift above it. But sometimes, you need to breathe through fear to get to some of life’s bigger thrills.

Just weeks earlier, in January 2020:

My wobbly finger sits hovering over the ‘submit payment’ button on a 12-day adrenaline junkie tour of New Zealand’s South Island, as my wobbly heart beats a staccato tattoo against my ribcage. Since my husband Gabe died of cancer in 2018, the prospect of going through life solo fills me with dread. But I know I need to be alone. So, I take a deep breath, tell my overactive mind to stop questioning the location my heart keeps whispering, and hit that button.

New Zealand is but one leg of my two-month journey. I have friends to lean on in my other planned destinations – Bali and Australia – but I yearn to strike out on my own and do something swashbuckling and daring. I keep telling myself: I’ll see where the wind blows me. Only issue with that? It will likely blow me straight back into my comfort zone, with people I know, and I’m craving anonymity.

“Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, hear the pine trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves.” – JRR Tolkien

The evening I leave Sydney for Christchurch, I’m ready. Something Tookish lies within me, waiting to leap against my ribcage and roar to life at the slightest provocation. Yet the low buzz I feel emanating from every pore is excitement, not anxiety.

Extensive research led me to Haka Tours – I feel a synergy with the company’s philosophy that small groups lead to more immersive experiences, the flexibility they offer in customizing your tour to fit your needs, and the fact that 70% of participants are solo travellers like me.

I arrive at the Haka Lodge hostel in Christchurch in the wee hours of the morning and feel my way to the dorms in the dark so as not to disturb anyone’s slumber. Weeks of criss-crossing time zones and anticipation for the adventure ahead have me lying awake in the dark, wondering who all these sleeping people around me are and if we’ll connect on any level.

In the morning, I meet the group over a breakfast briefing, and breathe a sigh of relief. The age spread is wide, but these are my people – open-minded, open-hearted, adventurous travellers who are up for almost anything.

Day 1 – Christchurch to Mackenzie Country

First up on the day’s itinerary is a walk around cold and windy Christchurch – a town rocked by earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. Nine years later, the extensive damage of 2011’s magnitude 6.3 earthquake – one that killed 185 people – is still visible, despite halting efforts to rebuild. It looks for all appearances like a scene from a dystopian novel or post-apocalyptic movie – boarded-up half-razed buildings, empty lots taken over by hipster-chic shipping container eateries. It’s a poignant reminder that living amongst so much natural beauty sometimes comes at a devastating price.

I stand in front of a lot staring out at 185 Empty Chairs – a temporary art exhibit artist Pete Majendie erected as an act of remembrance for 185 lives lost – for some long, bone-chilling minutes. The wind is blowing through the spaces between the chairs, and I glance down at a white infant car seat. This one grabs me, a mother of two, by the throat.

By unspoken agreement, our entire group converges at Riverside Market for lunch. This indoor farmer’s market stands on the grounds of what once was the Re:Start Container Mall, a post-quake innovation that brought life back to the central business district. It supports local growers and small businesses selling produce, meat, seafood, baked goods, coffee, and more – alongside Riverside Lanes, a collective of boutique shops and upscale eateries.

I wander the bustling market packed with travellers and locals alike for a good half hour before deciding what I want to eat. My nose leads me to Noodle Monk, purveyor of soulful and flavoursome Thai street food. The fragrant and spicy green curry I order transports me to the bustling alleyways of Bangkok in a single bite.

Bellies full, we load onto our small tour bus to make the long drive to Lake Tekapo (derived from the te reo Māori words taka, meaning sleeping mat and po, meaning night) in Mackenzie Country, where we will be spending our first night. I needed this. The anonymity. The relative solitude. No one to answer to but myself. A promising group of strangers. A land brimming with legends and lore. Majestic nature as far as the eye can see. I’m feeling New Zealand’s unique pull.

I plan a sunset hike to the peak of Mount John for a night of stargazing with four new friends, Brits Lucie, Jitesh and Hugh, and Aussie Faraaz. The area is an IDA International Dark Sky Reserve – a designation given to a protected land possessing an exceptional or distinguished quality of starry nights and nocturnal environment. In 2012, the 4,300-kilometre area around Lake Tekapo that is our home for the evening was declared the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, with light pollution strictly controlled in the area. It is the only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere, and one of only eight in the world. From this unique vantage point, stargazers can see constellations only visible in this hemisphere, including the Southern Cross, the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way.

We start out at dusk, bottles of beer and wine nestled in our packs, for the hour climb to the summit of Mount John. The five of us are completely in sync, developing the jokey shorthand way of communicating that is peculiar to lifelong friends or travellers on life-altering journeys. By the time we reach the peak, the rapidly disappearing light takes on the otherworldly quality of day surrendering to night.

With high winds threatening to blow us off the mountain, we take cover in the soft grass blanketing the mountainside facing Lake Tekapo. Here we sit for hours, drinking, talking, dissolving into fits of laughter at everything and nothing — essentially noise polluting this little slice of God’s Country.

As the night sky shrouds us in darkness, the ever-cheeky moon shines brighter than I have ever seen it. We sit for as long as we can stand with the cold night air slicing through to our bones, then begin our descent. With talk turning to horror films in the black of the night forest, we make quick work of it, stopping at a zipline park built for children to enjoy a few midnight runs before collapsing in our bunks at YHA Lake Tekapo — quite possibly the most glam and well-equipped hostel I have ever seen.

Day 1 in New Zealand delivers one giant check off the ever-expanding Burgess Bucket List.

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” – JRR Tolkien

Peace fingers for the spectaular sight of Lake Pukaki

We continue to snake our way through Mackenzie Country en route to Queenstown – the adventure capital of New Zealand – a drive that runs from serenely scenic to spectacular showstopper. Eventually, we stop at Kawaru Gorge, the World Home of Bungy, where two of our crew are about to scream their way through its widely yawning mouth..

This is the one activity I have given a definitive pass on. One must drum up the guts to do a running jump off a woefully narrow platform for a short-lived thrill, and then wait like a fish on a line to be reeled back up at a snail’s pace. Not my idea of a good time. I watch both Ellie and Jitesh brave the bungy with admiration and a healthy dose of are-you-out-of-your-mind-people trepidation.

After getting our room assignments at the YHA Queenstown, the lot of us head to race the mountaintop luge track. Sometimes, you have to breathe through fear to get to some of life’s bigger thrills. I confess: I have a deep-seated fear of cable cars. Perhaps I met my end on one in a previous life, or it could simply be tied to my enduring fear of heights. Whatever it is, being on one gives me sweaty palms, a racing heart, and a strong desire to curl into the fetal position on the floor of the pod. The risk-reward ratio simply isn’t high enough.

To be fair to my fear-gripped self, the Queenstown Gondola is no joke — it’s the steepest cable car lift in the Southern Hemisphere at 450 metres. We’re talking a near-vertical climb. And the luge track is another feet-dangling chairlift above it. I feel a buzz of fear and anxiety build to crescendo in me, making my breath shallow and my heart pound. Since I flat out refuse to give fear unchecked power over me, I close my eyes and connect to my breath. Have to do the same all over again on the chairlift to the luge track.

On the other side of my fears lie 800 metres of serpentine mountainside track with steep gradients, banked corners, dippers and cuttings offering some of the most spectacular mountain and glacier lake vistas you’ll ever see. We all jump into specialized luge carts (essentially a sled on wheels with steering and breaking mechanism), competitive streaks emerging in our five-run race to the bottom.

With adrenaline and thrill coursing through my veins, all vestiges of fear dissipates and my eyes stay wide open on the chairlift and cable car, drinking in the panoramic views. There are times that we should heed the evolutionary advice we come equipped with in our hippocampus — and times to push through fear to do more and be more. As the slogan for AJ Hackett Bungy says: Fear less. Live More.

New Zealand is already proving to be the place to just that, and I’m only getting started.

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