Day 4: Bay of Islands

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8th January 2011

It was another early start for me as I was being picked up to do my sky-dive. The weather weren’t looking too great this morning so I thought the sky-dive was doubtful and when I got to the airport, I was correct and they had to cancel it. Luckily they had space for me to try again in a couple of hours so I had to hold tight and wait for the verdict. By the time they picked me back up I could see that there were a few breaks in the clouds and then when we arrived at the airport we pretty much had blue skies with zero clouds so it was definitely going ahead this time. They harnessed me up and got me ready whilst they were warming the plane up – it was the smallest plane I’ve ever seen, literally had enough space for the pilot and 4 passengers! At this point I weren’t really feeling nervous at all so I just took in the views of all the different islands. The other girl in the plane was jumping from 12,000 ft so when we got there she jumped and then I still have to go up another 4,000 ft, this made me a little nervous but still fine. Eventually when we got up to 16,000ft, they opened the door and we jumped! It was the greatest feeling ever! We had about a 75 second free fall and then he opened the shoot and we had a good few minutes before we landed. It was incredible! Once we were down I took all the gear off and waited for my photos. I got dropped back to the hostel and met up with Sara – one of the girls I had met yesterday and we got the ferry over to Russell which is one of the islands. We walked through the town and round to the beach which probably took half an hour or so. The beach was pretty quiet considering it was such a nice day and we just chilled out for the afternoon. Got the ferry back around 6, got some dinner and had a drink with everyone.

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