I know there's probably threads on this already, but the search feature has thrown up nothing so here I am.
We're going to New Zealand in a week or so, for a month. I want to try to get a few days riding here and there. We're hitting both islands, but I'll have more time for riding on the south. I'll need to hire a bike as well.Â
So I'm looking for recommendations for places to ride with decent bike hire nearby. With uplift or without, either bikepark with plenty of jumps, or steep tech offpiste style (is this a thing in N.Z?)Â I'm all about enduro or park laps and not interested in XC, gravel or bikepacking type stuff.
Another nice to have would be close proximity to beginner paragliding sites, as the wife intends to fly while I ride... niche knowledge request there, I know.
Any advice much appreciated.
Queenstown n Wanaka areas spring to mind for both, Cardrona, Coronet Peak.
Wanaka has skydiving (Skydive Wanaka... go figure) so almost certainly has people that will do paragliding. I _think_ a friend is working there again. I can ask.
With uplift or without, either bikepark with plenty of jumps, or steep tech offpiste styleÂ
Queenstown and surrounding areas seem to be the obvious suggestion but I'd have a look at Nelson as well . The NZ enduro champs are held in Cable bay and I've heard amazing things about the gorge bike park . I don't really know about paragliding but there's lots of big mountains around nelson to potentially throw yourself off 😀
Spoke to my mate: He's at the dropzone at Queenstown.
Judging from his FB feed, and despite him working as a tandem instructor, the mountain biking looks good there. I asked him about paragliding, but have not heard back yet. I'm going to assume there will be people in the area that do that as well; there's a lot of cross pollination between skydiving and paragliding.
Queenstown and Wanaka have the mountains, Nelson has less alps but some damn fine riding anyway. I think there's quite a lot around Rotorua in the north as well.
As for paragliding, like many of the above, I'm assuming that where you sky dive you'll also paraglide. So QT and Taupo are the 2 big spots.