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We left Napier feeling like we'd seen pretty much all there was to see in the town. We took the intercity bus north through wine country to Lake Taupo. On the way we experience THE most informative, no let me get this right annoyingly informative bus driver in the south pacific!! At first I thought it was great finding out about local nature, exports and history. All took a turn for the worse when he started digressing about the amount of time he waits at particular intersections or traffic lights - hilarious, we could hold the laughter in as we left the coach!!!
Lake taupo is situated in the heart of the north island engulfed by volcanoes in the central platau that makes up the geothermal area in NZ. It was welcome return to the scenic beauty that we became so used to in the south. Lake Taupo itself is the size of Singapore and the largest lake in NZ. The reason for our visit.....to skydive!! It seems all our adventure sports take place on Sundays (the glacier walk, rafting) and now Skydive Sunday. As we ate our breakfast Sam was suspiciously quiet, "Im not doing it...what am I thinking!"were mentioned more than once but I knew these were just pre-dive jitters. There was a slight breeze in the air so a call to the airport hanger was needed to confirm that the drops were still taking place....they were and now was the time to get nervous!!
The bus collected us from our hostel and we were greated by an English nutter from Richmond who screamed, "Dont worry guys nothing will be more scary than my driving today"as she screeched around another "bend "Oh, that'll be a corner then!!" We signed our lives away on the dotted line, got weighed and jumped into some sexy red boiler suits. As we sat on the tarmac watching the previous group fall from the plane one by one like little toy army soldiers, it hit me....WHAT AM I DOING!!! The tamdem masters returned to the hanger, and Sam said to the rest of the group, I bet that ones mine, sure enough he walked up to the group and called out "Samantha Summers" in his strong Czech accent. Sams intuition never fails to impress. The bright yellow plane hit the tarmac and it was now out turn to board, squeezed into a cabin no bigger than a shed we sat on the laps of the guys that were about to take our lives into their hands...literally.
I took the plane about twenty mins to reach the altitude of 12,000 ft at which point the hatch opened. We all put our hats, goggles and gloves on and edged our way one by one to the hatch. Sam was set to jump first there was no goodbyes, no glances back and she was gone dissapearing into the sky!!! Next up was Jeary, we schooched forward and sat so my legs hung over the edge before rocking backwards....one two three...AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!! Theres no other feeling like it in the world, freefalling for a minute at terminal velocity and it feeling like its never ending.....just falling from the sky. It completely took my breath away and made my heart jump into my throat....the rip cord was pulled and we were yanked veritcally up, suddenly the noise dissapeared and the whole experience became oddly peaceful as I floated back down to earth like an eagle!! I even took control of the cords as we swooped down spirraling left and then right. Touch down was very smooth and I would definately do the whole thing again!!
We've bought DVD's and wont watch them until were back in the UK so it'll be a surprise for everyone!!! The adrenaline rush rocked and I doubt nothing will top that, unless I learn to do it solo!!!
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