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Published: March 10th 2009
No, I can't quite believe I did it either. And I didn't mention I was thinking about doing a skydive just in case I wimped out!
Sorry about the photo quality - I'm having problems with this PC. I'll try to put some better ones up soon, but this'll do in the meantime.
In fact 3 years ago when I came to New Zealand it wasn't even a consideration, but this time I thought why not? Why should other people and not me...
Taupo is a wonderful spot to do it because of the lake and surrounding mountains - not that I registered too much of the beautiful scenery. And actually Mac, my instructor/tandem partner, brought us down a bit too quickly to appreciate it - the only negative thing I would have to say about the experience. That and the sore ears.
There was a bit of a wait for the cloud to clear when I chatted nervously with my fellow divers (4 of us, all girls - boys are wimps); while suiting us up the instructors joked around about this being their 2nd jump; to just get yourself down if we got separated...and so on...then we just waited for
the little pink plane to return from its last drop.
The first scary hurdle for me was getting in such a small plane. But actually it wasn't at all bad and once I had conquered that fear I felt (slightly) better about the jumping-out-of-a-plane part.
I guess I did get quite nervous a few minutes before the jump. I was the last to go and actually this wasn't a bad thing, as watching the other 3 helped me feel I could do it, so when my time came I was pretty calm.
I don't remember an awful lot about the 60 second freefall, except for alot of wind. I have a DVD in which you can see the wonderfully attractive results of this (unfortunately the file size is too large to upload to this website). It was certainly exhilerating.
Then the parachute opened and it suddenly went quiet as we floated slowly down to earth, taking in the beautiful scenery of Taupo and its surroundings.
A totally fantastic experience.
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Russell
non-member comment
Flaming 'eck! Amazing!