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Woo! Waiting around in Taupo paid off and I finally got to skydive today! It was pretty sunny when I got up - not much cloud but I didn't get my hopes up because it had been cancelled so much! But reception phoned up and I was good to go! Someone was coming in 15 minutes -aaaaaaaah - butterflies! Had to fill in a form and sign to say that I understood that skydiving is a dangerous activity that can cause injury or death!! Got kitted out in another attractive outfit - a red jumpsuit flying hat and pointy goggles! and another really comfortable harness!!!!! I was the last of the 15,000ft jumpers inot the plane and it didnt take me long to figure out that this meant I would be first to jump! My jumping partner was a guy called Jeddy and my camera man introduced himself as "Unitard"???? Climbing to 12,000ft Jeddy kept going on with all sorts of random facts and asking random "What is your favourite....?" questions. At 12,000 ft only one guy jumped out and it was so fast he literally swung his legs out of the plane and then he was gone! Then we began to climb to 15,000ft and final attatchments were made! The next thing I know the plane has stopped and I have been lifterd open to the now open door and then I am falling at 200km/h 10,000ft in 1 minute! Because there was nothing to fall relative to it didn't feel like I was falling, it went soooo cold and I got wet going through the clouds! The minute freefall went SO fast but I don;t think I thought about anything or breathed atall! When the parachute was released it then hit me that I had just jumped out of a plane! My ears were popping like crazy but the views of the lake and the mountains were pretty impressive, we swooped around a bit and all around there were people falling out of the sky, another pretty impressive sight! We did a full circel of the landing area before I had to prepare to land - I didn't grind out I landed - quite gracefully actually - on my feet!!!!! :)
All afternoon at random points I have just stopped and thought "I jumped out of a plane this morning, what the hell!"
The Tongariro Crossing has been cancelled because of the weather again tomorrow! The finger crossing starts agan in the hope that it is nice enough on Saturday!
Did you know the whole of Singapore could fit inside Lake Taupo!
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