You don't have to go very far or pay very much to get some adventure in New Zealand. If it's possible to jump off it, swing from it or climb it, then the Kiwis find a way to do it. Any tall building, bridge, ravine or volcano will do.
You can climb the harbour bridge that connects northshore suburbs to Auckland City, day or night. You can take a flying leap (bungy) off Sky Tower, Auckland's revolving restaurant-topped needle. In Auckland alone, it would be easy to build adventure into daily life. For a $100 usd or less per item, you could go dolphin/whale watching (my pics) and swim with them, kayak to the Rangitoto volcano for a hike one evening after work, hang glide at Mission Bay or race in one of Team New Zealand's old America's Cup yachts one Saturday afternoon.
Just three hours from Auckland, I rafted the highest commercially rafted waterfall (7 metres) and level 4-5 rapids on the Kaituna River (pics) between breakfast and lunch, and then had time to go for a swing into the sky above Rotorua on a swing with a 50-metre line (pics) and luge down the mountain, twice, before driving back to Auckland (the left-side driving is a whole other adventure).
Really, the Kiwis take New Zealand's title as the adventure capital to heart. This article by Mike Haney, Unlimited's previous Medill resident, should give you a good taste.
I'm convinced they sit around thinking of ways to frighten tourists. Most vulnerable are the ones who, though gripped with fear, can't resist. Next weekend, I'm heading to Queenstown, where they have the world's first gondola jump. I can just imagine what brought that about. "Hey, this is a freaking deep gorge. Let's build a gondola that crosses it." "Yeah! and let's halt the gondola half way across and make people jump into the 440-foot abyss." According to Lonely Planet, the Nevis Highwire bungy is an engineering feat, a contraption that established 30 international patents.
So many fears to overcome. So little time.
