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Published: November 18th 2008
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The View
You can see the hills in the background and just imagine that is me, the photo packages were insanely expensive, so Nick and I passed. But this is what I saw. Nick and I arrived in Cairns yesterday at 9:00am on a Qantas flight. Getting off of the aircraft we immediately noticed the intense humidity, Cairns is known as one of the most humid places in Australia. At 9:00am it was already 30C and we drenched with sweat before we could even take our shirts off. We were picked up from the airport and shuttled to our hostel which is called NJoy. It is pretty nice and has a swimming pool and pool table among other things. At $35.00 dollars a night for a room with a fridge, air conditioning (everything in Australia has air conditioning), two beds and a shower...pretty good deal considering we only spend time in the room when we sleep.
At 12:00pm we were picked up from the hostel by Cairns Sky Diving and brought to the training centre and office. After some brief instruction and document signing (sign your life away literally) we suited up in harnesses and jump pants and headed for the small airport located in the tropical countryside of Cairns. On the drive out we saw huge hills that were covered by leafy green vegetation, tropical trees and the Sun was peeking through holes
Just before going through a cloud
Again, this picture is just to give you an idea. in the clouds and illuminating small circles on the hillsides…like a stationary search light. Just beautiful. But don’t venture into the hills because Australia has 18 of the World’s top 25 most deadly snakes, there are so many cool ways to die in Australia (sky diving included). At the small airport we boarded a small fixed wing plane that had a side door that slides up and down like a cover on a roll top desk. There were 14 people that boarded the plane and we were all sitting on the floor inside the fuselage each person with legs wrapped around the person in front and in two rows front to back. I was very close to the door which remained open as we took off, I thought that this was a little negligent but then again we were going to jump out anyway, so what the fuck! Excuse the swearing but sky diving is extreme and it calls for extreme language and I’m just telling you what was going through my mind…I’m sure you would have said Fuck at least once to yourself if you were in my shoes (jump shoes). All of the jumpers on the plane were
strapped in to professionals who were behind us and securely attached...I hope. We started to climb to 2000Ft and things were looking very small very fast, the view was incredible and I could see the same hills we drive by from a different perspective and fields of banana trees below (Cairns is Australia’s largest banana producer). At 7000Ft we had gone through some lower level clouds and at this time the instructor I was strapped in to told me that we half way up to the height we were jumping from…gulp. Two of the jumpers were going to jump from 11000Ft, we had this option but again, when you are going to jump out of a plane you might as well go as high as you can, what the fuck? I watched as the Indian couple approached the edge of the plane and swung their legs out the side of the plane and they were visibly nervous…I mean fucking shaking! And then they were gone…just disappeared. It’s really weird to see someone roll out the side of a plane. Okay, so that was fucked and now we have to climb higher so we can jump at 14000Ft and I was now really close to the door because we had cleared up some room when the first two pairs jumped out. I was going to be the second person to jump out and the first was the English girl beside me who was loosing her shit way worse than the Indian couple and Nick was going to be jumping 2 places after me. My jumping partner Coops (an Australian with long hair, I think he was high) asked me: “Are you peakin’” which means are you scared shitless? I said: “I’m good to go” and I edged my way over to the door and slid my legs over the side and they were dangling 14000Ft above the ground, but hey, what the fuck? All I could see when I looked out was the tops of clouds and I could feel the air rushing by my legs and making the material on my pants blow like a tarp on the back of a trailer on its way to the dump. I was actually pretty relaxed at this point and I was smiling back at Nick and thumbs up. I just wanted to enjoy the moment, I obviously thought it was a little nuts but then again, what the…well you get the idea. Okay, here we go! We rolled out of the plane and immediately we started to plummet at 256Km/hr and the feeling was totally incredible and intense. The air rushing past your face at this speed make your face look like a kid blowing on a window, probably a scared kid. As soon as we broke through the first cloud layer I could see the ground covered by forest and farm land…and of course those beautiful tropical tree covered hills. Then we started going through a second set of clouds but this time Coops decided to send up into an intense spin that had us pull a couple of G’s of force and all of this as I actually fall through a cloud! By the way, you can feel the moisture when you go through clouds and your hand actually get a little clammy or was that sweat? It was an amazing feeling, I’ve always wanted to know what clouds feel like and now I know. Not only that I was punching a hole in one with my body, again, just amazing. After spinning around to see different views below the parachute opened and that was a hard jerk upwards…violent is a better word. There was a sense of weightlessness when the shute fully opened, but then it disappeared and I could feel the force of the chute keeping us up. We looked at the scenery some more and landed in a farmers field approximately 8mins later. I watched Nick land after me and we high fived. The whole thing felt like it lasted 20seconds. Wholly shit, we just fell 14000 feet and lived, what a great way to start our trip in Cairns. Well, that’s about all I have to say about that.
Nick and I went extreme whitewater rafting today, but I’ll write about that later. Stay tuned, it was very, very extreme!
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WOW
Very impressive men. From the description it's almost like I went sky-diving with you guys. Keep up the intense adventure and I look forward to hearing all about the rest of it. Cheers