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Published: October 30th 2008
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The weather was pretty grey as we headed across the hills to Taupo. It is another absolutely stunning drive, massive lumpy hills covered in sheep. Slow progress though and it did take a couple of hours to get across. The sun was shining brightly as we approached Taupo - can't believe how lucky we are with the weather here! The plan was to do a skydive, but neither of us were sure if we would have the bottle! We checked ourselves into a campsite, and straight away went out to the airport to check out what was going on. When we got there we found plenty of people getting into jumpsuits, loading themselves into planes, going up, up, up in the air and then hurling themselves out. I watched them floating down in the beautiful sunshine and decided immediately that it was something I wanted to do. Rich wasn't so sure though - to be fair he hadn't really wanted to do it at all, but was trying to pluck up the courage to come with me. After about half an hour of staring into the skies he decided it wasn't for him, but I signed up as I wanted to
do it now I had plucked up the courage and after a really rather nervous hour of waiting for a space in a plane, I was off!
They cram about 8 jumpers (plus tandem instructors) into a teeny tiny plane. It was a quite extraordinary experience. My instructor was cool as a cucumber (of course - he jumps about 5-10 times every day!) and certainly put my nerves at rest. In fact I was surprised how not nervous I was - I think it was just such a surreal experience. I was last into the plane and thank God that meant I was first out. Apart from meaning that I didn't have to watch other people go first, it also meant that I was right by the 'door' and didn't have to do more than swing my legs over the side of the plane, dangle there for a moment, smile at the camera (not so easy at that point!) and then get shoved out by my instructor! It is by far the most bizarre thing that I have ever done. At first you really can't believe what you are doing - sitting on the edge of an aeroplane at
12,000 feet with the door open and your legs haning out beneath it is very odd. Then comes the bit when your instructor jumps and for a few seconds you are just falling, falling, falling. Bloody scary! But then as you get into the proper jump position (belly first with arms out and legs up behind you) you really don't feel like you're falling, just kind of hanging in the air but going extremely fast at the same time (200km per hour speed). The earth beneath me looked like a picture postcard, we were so far up, and the skydive seemed to last forever although it probably wasn't much more than 40 seconds. I can't honestly say I really got to grips with what I was actually doing, it was just far too strange a sensation. Bloody awesome though! I was yelling my head off, so proud of myself for doing it 😊 Then at 5,000 feet nutty guy pulls the cord and with a bit of a jerk you end up vertical again and parachuting down. This bit was fine - hey, I was an experienced paraglider now! Amazing to be floating down from so high though, and it
gave me time to collect my thoughts and really think about what I had just done. I even controlled the parachute as we went round and round and down and down. It was nice to see Rich at the bottom and he has a few pretty cool photos of me coming down.
So that's Taupo! We had dinner eventually (having not had the nerve to eat all day!) and a few drinks in Taupo which we found rather dead for such a backpacker place. The weather is still beautifully sunny while I am typing this, and today we are off to Rotorua to do the luge (hee hee!) and hopefully go white water rafting tomorrow. Don't worry Mums, the extreme stuff is almost over 😊 After that we will head up to Coromandel to go kayaking at Cathedral Cove and see the gorgeous beaches, then we are rushing back to Aukland to give the van back before flying off to Fiji on the 4th. From there on we promise to relax and no do anything dangerous 😊 In fact we are thinking of relaxing so much that we may not even travel Thailand, we may just hit the islands
and the beaches for 4 weeks. We will see... it's difficult to keep still out here when there's so much to do!
So we probably won't be able to blog now for a while but we will be back. We miss you all and love hearing from you - keep up the messages guys! Very excited to hear all your news from back home and looking forward to catching up again with you all at Christmas 😊
Loads of love,
The Fun-loving Fryers 😊
xxxxx
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Victoria Mummy Ham
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Proud Mum
Oh darling I'm SO proud of you! What GUTS! You always said you wanted to do it, right back in the Oakham days... WELL DONE on achieving your dream, and WELL DONE RICH on fabulous photos of her doing it. Your little bodies must be exhausted between extreme drinking and extreme sports, I think you will well deserve a bit of beach life soon! All well at home, Treacle mending fast, pond re-filled with clear water, definitely going to replace the pergola too - hope it will be all done for you to see at Christmas time. LOADS OF LOVE MUM AND DAD XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX