Canyoning = Awesome: Laka Wanaka, NZ

We booked all these trips and it occurred to us that a paragraph description doesn't really prepare you for what you're getting into. So we naturally weren't too apprehensive about our "canyoning" trip in Wanaka. You know that feeling when you're kind of laid-back about an activity and then all of a sudden you realize you're way over your head? That describes perfectly what happened to us two days ago. Canyoning, it turns out, is equal parts rock climbing, rappelling (abseiling), and waterfall jumping.. all inside a canyon with 300 foot walls on each side. Our guide, Dave, who owns the business picked us up at 9 and proceeded to outfit us in wetsuits, helmets, body harnesses and water hikers, which has now become a common occurrence. It occurred to me later that when the owner of the company is your guide, you're probably signed up for a pretty intense experience. So we hiked up the 40% incline next to a roaring waterfall. I say "hiked" in the liberal sense - we were mostly scrambling up a crumbling rock face, clipped into safety lines that prevent you from falling off the cliffs on insanity to your instant death. Fear of heights is not really an accurate term when you're suspended 100 meters above a canyon floor and dangling by a rope attached to a 6" bolt. We get to the top and Dave gives us what is now our 3rd lesson in abseiling (rappelling) and down we go, into the canyon. Full wetsuits and everything, approx 60 degree water. So after we signal we're ready, Dave immediately turns and flies off a 30 foot ledge into the river below. Whoa.... So we take the cue and fly off this boulder into the green oblivion below and Dave's description of "committed" comes fully to light. There is now no way to get out of this canyon except down. And down means straight down, on safety lines, rock climbing on soaking wet canyon walls, and reppelling through (not around, over, or under - THROUGH) raging waterfalls. That anyone would invent canyoning as a sport is legitimate proof that adrenalin junkies really are some of the coolest people in the world. So off we went, jumping off of waterfalls, rock climbing along ledges and rappelling through these raging rapids for 6 hours. And it was intense!!! Our rapelling lines were rigged so that once we got into a waterfall, we could zip down them and fall, twist or cannonball into the pools below. Sometimes we short-rigged the lines so we would rappel down and off the line, and plunge into the waterfall pool. It was a pretty insane thing to be perched above a 50 foot waterfall and see your repelling line dangling into a massive waterfall, knowing all the time that you were going exactly where that line disappeared - into a raging cascade of whitewater. And when you hit that waterfall (or, rather, when it hit YOU), it was like a thousand pounds of force hammering your helmet and down you went! Sometimes we had our feet on the wall, sometimes we were free-suspended over a ledge. There were also smooth, slow flowing passages, where we simply floated downstream, buoyed by our wetsuits, looking up into the canyon where 300 foot verdant green walls framed a sliver of sky and trees above. Little drops of water trickled off the cliffs and fell, highlighted by the sun, past fern gardens growing out of the canyon walls. The water was crystal clear. Then, just as you were settling into this moment of zen, Dave would yank you out of the water, clip your harness into a climbing line and show you some insane cliff he wanted you to jump off, or climb down. This was an adrenalin-soaked adventure. The last three rappels were the most intense. We were about 500 feet above the canyon floor, where a series of waterfalls streamed down a sheer rock wall. We were dangling off that wall the entire time, clipped into safetey lines and abseling ropes. We ended the adventure with a 15 meter jump (~46 feet) jump into the bottom pools, where we both kissed the ground, thanked Dave for the insanity we just experienced and promptly vowed to never fear death again!