Mortality

Queenstown, NZ is a place where people from all over the world come to flirt with death. Bungee jumping, sky diving, super fast jet boats through canyons... they're all perfectly safe, but carefully constructed to make the participant feel like he or she is going to die. "Thrill therapy," the Kiwis call it.

I opted for what seemed like a slightly less terrifying option. Rather than chucking myself off a bridge, I decided to board under it. Riverboarding is like whitewater rafting, only instead of a big raft, you're on a small boogie board. And instead of paddles, you have flippers. If you get good, like our guides, you can actually "surf" the constant waves of the river. It looks super cool.

Cruising down the beautiful, swiftly moving river was very peaceful and fun. Here's Natalie looking much more competent than I ever did.



When we hit the small rapids, it became more exciting and scary. Then came the Class IV rapids, which I'd describe as violent and chokey. Then I moved on to full-fledged panicy and drowny as the guides had to rescue me from flailing off down the river. I'm the frightened looking one on the right in the white helmet.




It was more embarrassing than anything else, but I certainly got my healthy dose of Thrill Therapy.

Another perfectly safe, yet slightly terrifying activity was flying in a tiny plane over Fjordland National Park. The propeller started up and I thought to myself: "Hmmm, hope we don't crash and die."



Then the plane flew over mountain tops and glaciers, so close I felt like I could reach out and touch them, and I thought: "Even if we do crash and die, this is totally worth it."




And as we cruised over Milford and Doubtful Sound, I watched the jagged coastline below the majestic mountain ranges and thought that maybe I already had died, because I didn't think anything this beautiful existed on earth.