Queenstown's adventure menu, ranked

Queenstown is the adventure capital of New Zealand and the menu is genuinely overwhelming: bungy, swings, jet boats, luge, paragliding. You could spend a week and a small fortune. We crammed a lot into two days. Here is how I would rank what we actually did.

1. The Nevis swing. Number one, and it surprised me. I asked the crew for the scariest option and they strapped me in backwards, hands up, off the edge. Dropping blind and then swinging out over the canyon at speed was the best sixty seconds of the trip. I was gutted it was over.

2. The Nevis bungy. I have done around ten bungy jumps and they still scare me every time, this one, with the whole canyon dropping away beneath you, especially. Do it first, then the swing, and let the adrenaline carry you straight from one into the other.

3. The Skyline luge. We took the gondola up Bob's Peak for the view and stayed for the luge, little downhill karts on a winding track. We expected nothing and grinned the whole way down. Pure, silly fun, the cheapest thing on this list, and a genuine must-do.

4. The KJet jet boat. A jet boat blasting around Lake Wakatipu and into the Shotover canyon, all sharp turns and full spins inches off the rock. Fast, wet and good fun, if a notch less terrifying than the canyon stuff.

5. The Onsen hot pools. Not adrenaline at all, and exactly what you need after a day of it: a private wooden tub with the cover open to the Shotover river below. This is the one your less adrenaline-inclined partner will actually thank you for.

Then the food. We dodged the hundred-metre queue at the famous Fergburger by getting there before the crowd, and it lived up to the hype. Two days is enough to do all of this. Pace the scary stuff in the morning and earn the hot pools by night.