Falling to Your Death – For Recreational Purposes, Obviously.

Saturday 25th April

Today began like any other day... I slept in and then dandered about town. I bought some fudge and then I decided to go and do the Nevis Bungy. I was really lucky to get a cancellation, so I didn’t really think it through; I just got on the bus. This seems to be something I do quite a lot – I don’t really think about what I’m doing. It has its good points – I don’t get scared or hyped up, but then I guess I don’t get as much out of it as others because I don’t really let it phase me. Anyway, after a long drive we got to the Bungy site – we got our harnesses on and waited for the little cage thing that takes you to the platform where you jump. I’m not very good at describing this...
The platform is enclosed – like a cable car I guess, but it doesn’t move. There is a glass floor so you can see people on their way down! You wait until you are called (it goes by weight, which they write on your hand, I think this was more traumatising than the actual jump). When it’s your turn you get all strapped in, they take a few pictures and then you shuffle to the ledge... The guy counts down from three and on one you jump. Very straightforward. Nat.

It wasn’t actually that bad – but for a split second I did think I wasn’t going to jump. I had shuffled to the edge and then I looked down and realised just how high up I was. When you are skydiving you don’t have to think about what you’re doing until you are out of the plane and falling towards the ground. When you do a Bungy you are standing at the edge, looking down and there isn’t anyone strapped to you. You are totally alone and you have to make the decision to throw yourself off the platform. When I looked down I instantly thought “I can’t do this” and then as soon as he said one, I was jumping.

The feeling of falling is quite strange. As soon as you dive off the platform you want to put your arms out to stop yourself from falling – at least I did. It’s quite funny the things you think about. I literally had a really logical thought process. I wanted to put my arms out to stop myself, but in my mind I was thinking “Well, that would be nice, but there isn’t really any point because it wouldn’t do you any good. You can’t stop yourself from falling, so you might as well keep your arms out so you look good in the pictures.” I’m not even kidding, that is actually what I was thinking. Then you bounce – it doesn’t hurt at all, in fact, it happened so quickly I almost didn’t realise. But then you start falling again and the whole, I’m falling to my death, sensation kicks in. Then you remember that you have to pull a blue cord if you want to be in a sitting position as they pull you back into the cable car. So I started yanking at this blue cord, but it didn’t work – I was puling so hard that I had to stop, in case I pulled so hard that the entire Bungy rope snapped – which isn’t possible, but still, you don’t want to risk it when you are hanging upside down from a rope.

They pulled me back up, I spun around several times and then I was back in the cable car. The Nevis Bungy was good, I’m glad that I did it. But I don’t think I would do it again. If someone else paid for me to do it then I probably would, but I wouldn’t waste my own/my dad’s money to do it again. I think that if I ever get the urge to do another Bungy I’ll just watch my DVD. I bought the DVD and the pictures, which is a total must – it goes so quickly, you definitely need a DVD to remember what happened!
After that we made our way back to Queenstown where I had another Ferg, got ready and then went to the Altitude Bar with everyone – I met up with Mariead, Mike, Tiggs, Gemma and Shane – the people that were on our West Coast bus, so that was really nice! They are a really good bunch of people and I had a really good night with them – Queenstown has really good nightlife!

Xx