Take a swing!

Even the comforting words 'take a seat' inspire shivers when the seat sits on a cliff edge belonging to the Shotover Canyon in New Zealand's South Island. The canyon is the pairing up of the snake-like Shotover river and the jagged, tall cliffs that arise from the river's sides.

And this seat — an arrangement of two plastic chairs with back rests — is the vehicle meant for a speedy exploration of the canyon.

Of the five members in our group, three prefer to dash along the river on a jet boating ride, choosing the Shotover Jet activity. Not us. We choose Shotover Canyon Swing and Canyon Fox.

So, for us the journey begins at the company's Shop in the centre of Queenstown. The staffers mark our weight and height, and one of them skteches a flower on the back of my hand. “What's that for?” I ask. “Oh, just some fun,” he says, moving on to draw a Pac-Man on my colleague's hand. Some sort of artistic metric system of the adventureland, we learn.

After a 15-minute car ride from the Shop and an inclined walk along a gravel path, we reach the site enabling the highest cliff jump in the world, Shotover Canyon Swing, from a height of 109 metres.

Tricksters ahead...

Here, in a small shop that sells merchandises and is stacked with a television that telecasts the jumps in real time, I meet Cameron Brocklebank and Morgan Ridall-Jones, the lively staffers who lead me to the platform where the chair sits, and over a chit-chat about IPL and Bengaluru, make sure the ropes and harness are in their places, and that I'm one with the chair.

Their actorly grace catches me off guard and they let me go off the cliff when I least expect it, making it more exciting. The backward free-fall lasts for 60 metres and then the chair begins to swing along the valley for 200 metres. It's the biggest, most scenic swing trajectory I've been a part of. I'm then suspended over the river for a couple of minutes. The mammoth quietness of the canyon and the distant buzz of the river below compel admiration from me.

The slow pull out of the canyon is nothing short of a kinetic zen.

'The Chair' is just one way in which a person can launch off the cliff. There are over 70 jump styles (including some tandem options) to land in the crisp air that makes up the canyon expanse above the rapids of the river. This adrenaline-pumping activity was parented by two adventurers of New Zealand, Hamish Emerson and Chris Russel, and started on December 2, 2002.

Become a foxer

Just 50 metres above the Swing platform juts out another one from where the distance between two cliff faces facing each other is covered by a two-part rope journey called the Shotover Canyon Fox. I choose the least scary jump style, the sideways simmy. From a launch railing, I yet again free-fall, after which my harness sends me whizzing along a sagging rope till I reach the transfer point. Here begins the second part of the journey.

It's made interesting by introducing a race to reach a lower altitude on the same cliff face where the journey started. So my colleague and I hang on to the handle and wait for the voice of the staffer to start our race. My colleague gets a headstart, and I, no longer keen to compete with him, curl up into a ball to slow down the journey and take in many views of the canyon and the blue-grey river. The 445-metre-long journey ends when the suspension rope hits an orange orb fixed on the longer line of the rope, an effective braking system.

There are four other jumping styles as well, with 'Giant Strides' getting the 'most scary jump' title. Here, a person runs along the ramp in big steps and leaps into the canyon for a free-fall.

And to relive the adventures, I will have to look no beyond than my memories or the sequenced photos and videos of both the activities that the company has readied for me in a pen drive.

The Shotover Canyon Fox has joined the band of adventure activities only in 2016. This attempt by its ideator Hamish Emerson and his team, to take it to greater heights, has been successful because of his persistence and a healthy collaboration with a Kiwi engineer, Glyn Lewers.

Sure, I have fallen off the cliff twice, but what I've fallen for is the Kiwi spirit of adventure.