A flight announcement paused the highlights reel playing from Crankworx 2015 on the little screen in front of me to announce that we were 15 minutes from arrival. Finally.

Mountain biking overlord Brandon Semenuk stopped on my screen mid-flight, refusing to drop, unlike the jaws of those around me as the north island of New Zealand finally appeared out the window to put an end to the beautiful blues of the South Pacific Ocean.

I had expected to feel like Tom Hanks in Castaway on arrival in the Southern Hemisphere after such a long time in the air; bearded, inexplicably topless and shouting ‘Wilson’ at the top of my voice to a pair of Emirates flight socks.

Instead, the volcanic islands, beautiful black sand beaches and endless forests flying under-wing eliminated all exhaustion and replaced it with all the appropriate fervour of a man who had just touched down on possibly the wildest island in the world.

New Zealand by Land: Mountain Biking

Jet lag exists not in the wild. Not when you’re getting picked up from the airport and heading directly to Skyline Bike Park in Rotorua for the main showcase of the Crankworx Rotorua spectacular – the coveted slopestyle contest.

“Feeling a bit tired?” I was asked on arrival, a reasonable question given that I’d just rammed through 13 time zones. But I was riding high; like a kid in a candy shop, like Kanye West in a room full of mirrors, like Lance Armstrong left alone with the bank during a game of Monopoly.

The riding in the area has boomed since the downhill mountain bike World Championships were held there in 2006, and even more so with the addition of Crankworx seven years later. The riding has always been there of course, it’s just that not much of the world actually knew about it before.

There are trails for everyone, and they all offer an appropriate challenge. The kids loops are casual and fun, the intermediate tracks offer progressive riding, with a mix of technical and flowy features, the more advanced tracks can get pretty scary and you’d need to be damn confident to roll into any of the black diamond runs.

Riding through the Eucalyptus trees and Spruces and Californian Redwoods it feels like you’re riding from country to country, or from season to season at very least, and you’ll glimpse great views of Lake Rotorua while you’re up there.

There’s over 150km of stunning trails in the Redwoods, featuring some of the best soil in the world – perfect for shaping. These trails bring mountain biking back to what it’s meant to be; damn good fun out in open aired wild.

We cap off our riding the following day with a more casual affair; the Timer Trail, a cross-country cycle route that offers outstanding scenic value. The 85km trail is best tackled in two days, with a camping spot in between.

The surf is brilliant, the views breathtaking and the line up isn’t all that packed, either. It’s a dream day on the water, and though we miss more waves than we catch, the sense of freedom neck high in the ocean is like nothing else. Never before have we been so happy to be beaten up for two hours by an inanimate object we’d paid to rent.

Our host for the week Shannon takes us to his hometown of Piha, another coastal town an hour from Auckland, for a longboarding session the following day beneath the astounding Lion Rock.

The giant rock patrols the beach just off the coast to the right, and the scenery is equally as encapsulating to the left. The waves are huge and I’m wiping out all over the place – with a smile on my face, albeit.

I exchange a glance with a local who’s getting smashed about by the big breaks as much as I am. Further afield the more experienced riders are tearing the waves to shreds and looking damn good doing it. We’re a while away from that just yet.

Of course, they say the thing about surfing is that you can get out on the water for two or three hours and only catch one wave, but that one wave you do catch will give you more than enough stoke to see the session through.

I’m having a great time getting beaten up for the second consecutive day, almost standing up several times only to become victim of an involuntary slapstick slip a few seconds later. After all, I live to entertain.

We’ve reached our time limit. One more wave. I predictably wipe out again.

One more one more wave.

This time I catch it. And I stand up. And I ride it the whole way back into the beach, staring down a spot on the horizon while I cruise comfortably in the shadow of some of the most impressive cliffs and greenery I’ve ever seen from the ocean. How the hell did that happen?

The day ends with high fives and beer. As any good adventure should.

Of course, the surf in New Zealand is world renowned, and though I may be in my early days on the board, the place is more than capable of challenging the best in the world as well. The Ultimate Waterman competition has been running throughout the week we’ve been there; challenging some of the best athletes to disciplines from SUP to longboarding, shortboarding, big wave surfing and more.

We have lunch with Laird Hamilton, arguably the greatest waterman of all time, and he hails the diversity of the country, the scenery and the waves on offer. It’s a high compliment given he’s surfed all over the world and isn’t exactly known for holding back his opinions.

It feels like you can’t come to New Zealand and not attempt some kind of AJ Hackett instalment. It’s like going to Scotland and not eating haggis or going to London and not almost getting mugged on the Tube. Consider that for a second; that one of the local delicacies of the relatively youthful country of New Zealand is effectively throwing yourself off buildings and bridges attached to a bungee cord. It says a lot about the nation as a whole.

“So what made you want to do this then?” asks the man in charge of making sure I don’t fall 630ft to my death in the next few minutes. As we head out to walk the plank – a five-metre-long metal pathway jutting out from the side of the Sky Tower – it’s clear that the view alone is enough to justify taking on the jump.

I’m left hanging on to two metal bars on the edge of the platform, staring out over Auckland while the AJ Hackett crew joke about photographs and discuss the weather. They’re in no hurry, and for reasons completely unrelated to the jump – okay, maybe they were a little bit related – neither am I.

The day is a clear one, the temperature a perfect 23 degrees and the view stretches out over Auckland Bridge, over volcanic islands and tantalisingly tropical oceans that never seems to end.

If I was gutted to be leaving the forests and hills of Rotorua to be travelling to the highly-populated city before, I was struggling to remember why looking out from above the city. There’s no possible way you can slap Auckland with the “just-another-city” tag after seeing that.

The jump itself was exhilarating if over quickly. A big step into nothingness and the adrenaline-packed plummet was in full flow, flying down to the building tops below and staring out over that beautiful sea view.

Unstrapped at the bottom and bag recollected, it was time to get on with the rest of the day. In at 10am, out by 10.45am having leapt off an 193m building. Adventure waits for no man in New Zealand, and there’s plenty of the stuff to go around.

New Zealand Below: Caving

We’re standing 65m below ground, waist-deep in 12 degree water in the Waitomo Caves with less room than a killer whale at SeaWorld. It’s not the only time we’ve been in the water in New Zealand, but it’s certainly the coldest.

Surfing hadn’t required a wetsuit, canyoning in the stunning Piha Canyon; abseiling down giant waterfalls into perfect blue pools, had required one, but it hadn’t been too chilly. Whitewater rafting on the Kaituna river, taking on the seven metre biggest commercially rafted waterfall in the world, had pretty much been like a journey through a tropical rainforest.

“If they had called them the Waitomo Maggot Caves you wouldn’t have come down here, would you?”

This, standing 213ft below ground level in the Waitomo Caves, was something really quite different.

Stalactites hang down from the alien-like rock formations on the roof of the cave, 10 or 20 metres above. The walls show signs of erosion and wear taken place over millions of years. The sounds of waterfalls can be heard funnelling far through the passageways.

And yet neither us, nor any of the company we’re travelling with, could care less about any of that. We’re all fixated on something far more unique and compelling; the glowworms.

Dangling from nearly every surface in the passageway since we first abseiled the 35m into the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, to give them their full name, have been stunning sparkles of blue illuminating the darkness.

It’s a startling experience, and one that quite literally shines a whole new light on the adventure options of New Zealand, and the majesty of nature as a whole – it doesn’t end with big waves and sun-soaked waterfalls or berms and bungee in the Southern Hemisphere. Don’t forget to look down.

New Zealand: The Wild Island

The flight home was somewhat more monotonous than the journey out to New Zealand. It turns out jet lag does exist back in Scotland.

Looking back at the trip, it really does seem like the stuff of dreams. Adventure after adventure; challenge after challenge; always out in the wild without ever having to travel excessively to do so. We packed in more than a hoarder moving house – and there’s still so much we left completely untouched.

In the generation of wanderlust, it’s easy to see why New Zealand is such a prominent player, if not the focal point of the entire scene. It’s simply got to be on your bucket list – and don’t underrate the North Island just because you’ve heard the South is the best.

Determined to continue the adventure, I climbed back on my bike and kept the surf game up in the admittedly less-desirable climate of my homeland on my return. After I’d worked out how to kick the jet lag and stop taking naps on my lunch hour, that is.

New Zealand doesn’t only provide everything you need for whatever wild adventure you can dream up, it inspires you to live the life even after you’ve left the island – to the point where it’s easy to see why some people don’t.

Thanks to Tourism New Zealand for making this feature possible.

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