New Zealand
Reports
Sweet As the South Island
Sweet As. It’s Kiwi slang, and I return to the South Island to find out what it means. Is it the wine, food, and dolphins in Marlborough? Or the extreme gonzo action of canyon swinging, bungy jumping and skydiving in Queenstown? From mansions to car eating parrots, join me on a road trip on the South Island, where we always aim for possums.
read reportThe Not-a-Week Off: Sydney to Auckland
It was supposed to be quiet week in the run-up to the Great Gonzo Blowout, so how did end up swimming butt-naked with belligerent blue bottles or jumping off the tallest tower in the southern hemisphere? It starts with a drinking binge at a beautiful wedding, travels through too many places with gongs, flies one thousand miles southeast to encounter enormous Maoris, and ends with an open challenge to death itself.
read reportThe Great Gonzo Blowout: Rotorua
Approaching the finish line, there was only one thing to shake up the fizz of my weary travels. Everything. Skydiving from 12,000ft, Swooping, Zorbing, Biking, Agrojetting, Rafting over the world’s highest commercially rafted waterfall, an 80-degree vertical drop at the wheel of a 4×4, Bodyflying, Blackwater caving, and getting the stiff on the Maori erection myth. In the end, there is nothing to fear but reality itself.
read reportPutting the NZ back in GoNZo
After last week’s excitement, I needed to take it easy on New Zealand’s Frodo-happy South Island. Pretty soon I’m in drag, surrounded by binbag-clad half-naked girls, ice-hiking in heavy rain inside an enormous glacier, piloting a catamaran into the sparkling Tasman Sea, slugging beers, tramping in the wilderness, pondering extinctions, and cursing Norway. For the record, I looked ravishing, and my tits were as hard as stone.
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