Exploring the adrenaline-charged side of New Zealand on the ultimate road trip
Motorcycling odyssey takes in sky-diving, bungee-jumping and zip-lining
NEW ZEALAND is truly breathtaking at ground level. At 15,000ft it is, simply, sickeningly beautiful.
I know this because I jumped out of a plane from that height ... and threw up all over it.
I threw up all over my beard, my tandem jumper, all over Queenstown and, presumably, a few unlucky sheep.
Bouncing around in the sardine-can of an aeroplane had unsettled my feeble stomach. And falling to earth at 118mph probably didn't help, either.
By the time we were "under canopy", dangling over an endless horizon of lakes and snow-capped mountains, I simply couldn't keep it down.
The friendly chap I was strapped to was surprisingly nice about it.
Apparently a tourist chucks up on him every few weeks.
For my part, I had discovered a little too late that he always jumps with a sick bag on him. Skydiving was the first extreme sport I tried on my adrenalineabuse tour of New Zealand. I started off gently with a very pleasant flight with Singapore Airlines via Singapore.
It will never be a smile a minute when you travel so far for so long, but the service onboard was excellent and the airline, which has been flying from Heathrow for 45 years, knows how to make the experience as painless as possible. That is where the gentle stuff ended.
New Zealand is known as the adventure capital of the world, so I decided to travel all 1,566 bottom-aching miles from Christchurch to Auckland on an adventure motorbike, Triumph's incredible Tiger 800 XCA.
It was a five-hour ride from Christchurch to Queenstown — but it didn't take long to realise New Zealand's twisty roads are made for travelling on two wheels. The views are so perfect you would probably have fun on a unicycle.
I hadn't seen any traffic all day until I nearly crashed into the back of a sheep jam. My only warning was a handpainted sign saying "Stock". As I don't speak bumpkin, that went way over my head.
"Warning! There's a s**t-load of sheep around the bend!" might have been better.
Sheep farming is gradually going out of fashion in New Zea-land but there are still six woolly dimwits for every person.
After throwing up on the friendly folk at Queenstown's NZONE skydiving, I headed for Milford Sound, a spectacular "fiord" on the west coast and one of New Zealand's greatest natural wonders.
The west coast is a temperate rainforest that makes Wales look like the Sahara and with annual rainfall of 6.5 metres a year, Milford Sound is one of the wettest places on earth.
It was raining so hard I thought I would drown in my helmet. But all that water meant the mountain pass I rode through was flanked by breathtaking waterfalls.
Out on the water, I was nearly blown off the ferry deck. The wind was blowing so hard, waterfalls started flowing upwards.
Even in the wet, it was awesome, as we passed seals and bottlenose dolphins playing in the water beneath the milehigh cliffs.
Over the next few days I rode north, away from the rain into the sunny Abel Tasman National Park, at the northwest tip of New Zealand's South Island.
There I was booked to go canyoning with Abel Tasman Canyons.
Before it began, there was a boat ride around the granite cliffs of the park's forested coastline.
I passed a pod of orca in the shallows, landed on a pristine sandy beach and walked through woodland offering clear views of glittering jade bays.
Eventually we arrived at the kind of river I thought existed only in the Jungle Book or childhood dreams. Mother Nature has kindly designed the magical woodland river as a water park. Slide down polished chutes and off waterfalls, zip-line into rivers and cliffjump into clear pools.
The mix of secluded natural beauty and a splash of adrenaline makes canyoning the most fun you can have in nature. Finally, I caught the ferry to the North Island and rode north to Lake Taupo, where I was booked on white-water rafting trip from nearby Turangi.
Except I overslept. In a hurry not to miss the boat, I broke the golden rule of motorcycling and leapt on the bike in just shorts and a T-shirt, really putting the Tiger to the test.
I had my pegs scraping the Tarmac but sadly so did my iPhone, which flew from my pocket and exploded into a million pieces on the road.
After my ride, the white-water rafting was a breeze. There were four boats but one dinghy of large US tourists seemed to have angered the river gods, wrapping themselves around three boulders.
I spent most of the day sunbathing while they struggled to rescue their boat.
After my long day in the cold water, it was time for my final heartstopping sport — extreme hot-tubbing. The area around Lake Taupo bubbles with volcanic activity.
One of the best-kept secrets of Taupo town is a warm geothermal stream hidden at the bottom of a public park.
OK, I admit there is nothing extreme about wallowing in a river.
But New Zealand had assaulted my adrenal gland, churned up my gut and abused my phone.
Don't judge me. By that point I deserved a nice warm bath.
GO: NEW ZEALAND
GETTING/STAYING THERE: Singapore Airlines flies four times daily from Heathrow and daily from Manchester to Singapore with excellent onward connections to New Zealand. It flies daily to Auckland and Christchurch and starts flights to Wellington in September. Fares from London are from £1,045 per person. See .
We booked all our digs on the move via the app.
Its smartest hostels have prices ranging from £24 to £32 per night for dorms to rooms with en suites. See .
MORE INFO: See .