The 6th of March dawned rainy and cold, making our trip less unpleasant than it would have been otherwise without the air conditioning that we had paid for in our campervan. The low clouds made the brown hills of Otago look dark and forbidding. Pegah was sure that the rain had made the twisty roads extra hazardous as well, so she reminded me repeatedly to drive extra cautiously (read "SLOWLY") on our way to Queenstown. Along the way we frequently saw orchards covered with this fine mesh netting. I thought they were to keep the honeybees inside, pollinating only the crops desired by the farmers, but Pegah thought they were to keep the birds from eating the crops. She's probably right. She usually is.
	Speaking of honeybees, we stopped for a midmorning snack and rest break at this charming and inviting honey and produce market. I was surprised by the number of shoppers already in the store that time of the morning. They might have been tourists, like us, or they may have been locals who appreciated a good thing. The fruits and vegetables looked extra fresh, possibly picked that very morning. We were also assured that they were grown under the most favorable of conditions, pollinated by only local bees. I had some ice cream and a soft drink while Pegah bought some fruits and vegetables for the delicious meals she subsequently prepared when we "dined in" at our holiday parks.
	Here I am examining a glass-enclosed honey comb surrounded by every kind of bee product you can imagine, including honey, beeswax, and bee creams and lotions. The enclosure has a tube connected to the outside to allow the hard working bees to come and go. I didn't see any bees, hard working or otherwise, but I was informed that the queen had been removed because of the weather. Pegah wanted to buy some bee products, but the store personnel were reluctant to sell us any because they were pretty sure that they would be confiscated by customs when we tried to reenter Australia. We left the bees behind us as we pushed on to the Kawarau River and the AJ Hackett Bungy Jump.
	This popular Queensland sport was commercially established here at the Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge by A. J. Hackett, who made his first jump from Auckland's Greenhithe Bridge in 1986. The first modern bungy jumps were made on April Fools' Day 1979 by members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club. Since then, Mr. Hackett has popularized the sport, and has established commercial facilities for it in several countries. The bridge site here is now mostly used by the AJ Hackett company, which also runs the adjacent museum, souvenir shop, snack bar and observation lounge, but the bridge still forms part of the Queenstown Trail which allows walkers/runners and bikers to pass over the river.
	If jumping off a bridge tied to an elastic cord isn't enough to saturate one's blood adrenaline, he or she can enjoy an adjoining zipride. The ride zings down a cable at sixty miles per hour in a basket containing up to half a dozen thrill seekers, or dangles the rider from a parachute harness individually. These activities made me realize that I had done similar things in my wild and misspent youth at Fort Benning, Georgia. There we prospective paratroopers practiced aircraft exit procedures on similar apparatus, combining bungy jumping and zipriding into one unforgettable experience! Then we had to practice over and over again under the scrutiny of instructor sergeants until we perfected our technique.
	The towers we jumped from at Fort Benning were only about one fouth as high as the Kawarau Gorge bridge, but we didn't get dunked in water, so it probably all balances out. Here Pegah is reacting to her observation that the jumper does not necessarily avoid being dunked in the river below. Bungy jumping safety procedures and equipment have evolved so that accidents due to system malfunction are virtually unknown. However, even young healthy people have been known to experience retinal hemorrhage, whiplash, carotid artery dissection, and spinal cord separation. Unfortunately (!), my overseas accident insurance specifically excluded "extreme sports." 'Nuff said!
	Some people don't think that jumping off a bridge into cold water is crazy enough, so they do it naked! In the waiting queue, they are provided blue bathrobes with the AJ Hackett Bungy logo, but when they get to the edge of the platform, the robe comes off. This stalwart soul assured me that he was committed to "doing it" no matter what, but he never did explain why! Just as he was about to jump, the PA system informed the crowd that the next jumper would be naked, so anybody who didn't want to see could turn away. (I offered ten dollars to anyone who wanted to turn away, but had no takers!) There was an attractive young woman wearing a blue AJ Hackett robe waiting in line, but Pegah wouldn't let me stay.
	The Kawarau Gorge is also the site of the Argonath, the Pillars of the Kings, in The Fellowship of the Ring. This is a monument comprising two enormous statues carved in the likenesses of Isildur and Anarion, standing upon either side of the River Anduin at the northern approach to Nen Hithoel the lake beside which the Fellowship was broken. It marked the northern border of Gondor. The statues were digitally rendered in the film, but the gate is a real place. I hope Pegah doesn't hate me for this, because we climbed all over the green draped bridge in the backgrounds above trying to get a shot of where I thought the site was, but I believe this is the actual site, now covered by greenery at this time of year.
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