My big day

Mom, I apologize for the heart attack I'm about to give you. Really.

Think back to a time when you were at a mall, one of those verticle ones with six or seven stories. You are on the top floor with the food court. Now, have you ever looked over the edge, down at that huge drop to the bottom floor, and wondered, just for a second, what it would be like to jump?

Well I just found out. I did a bungy jump. I was at the Kawarau Bridge, 20 min outside of Queenstown. It is the original home of bungy. I got to jump in front of all my friends of the Kiwi Experience bus.  It was a 43 meter drop, and I got a bit wet.

So yeah, check it out.



Words really cannot describe it. Somewhere deep down my subconcscious understood that I was not about to die, so I was not scared for my life. Yet, what I experienced was the sheer and enourmous terror that only such a situation can bring. I was falling down the middle of a canyon. And there were no supports for myself visible. I also knew that I would be hitting the bottom because I would be partially submerged in the water. I'm still a bit rattled by the immensity of the experience.

In other news, I'm writting this from Dunedin. I did my big jump yesterday, and then rolled into Queenie (Queenstown) that afternoon.In the afternoon I went to the top of the gondola. I hiked up because I was far too cheap to pay for the gondola, and the station at the top did not look very far away. At the top I got some beautiful views of the whole area.

That night I had to say goodbye to a lot of the people I knew from the Kiwi Experience bus because I was leaving in the morning. Most people spend a lot more time in Queenstown, but I had a schedule to keep, and my schedule had become even tighter when I missed that bus in Picton. So here I am in Dunedin. Tomorrow I will see that Catlin Islands, and then arrive in Invercargill where I will be staying with some old family friends for a few days. They own a sheep farm.

Again Mom, I'm sorry.