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Sophie And Tami Were Here
Wednesday 9th May
Journal entry brought to you by Tami (who is floating just about now)
Today was an AWESOME day! I can't remember what we did before 11am, but it doesn't matter (I think we went to the chemist or something, Sophie's not well. Yes, Vivien, I'm taking care of her. She has been well dosed up on hot water with honey and lemon, and lots of porridge).
But anyhoo, it's not important what we did, because at 11am we got picked up by Freefall, to do our 15000 foot SKYDIVE!!!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!
We met our tandem jumpers, Sophie's was called Brett and he was apparently fairly quiet. Mine was called Gus and he was wicked, we had such a laugh! And how's this for a small world?! He spent 6 years of his life living in Brackley! That's like 5 miles away from Banbury! And he used to eat at Pizza Express, and he's gone to Brailes on more than one occaision! Weird!
Anyhoo, after getting over my excitement at meeting another Banbarian, I also met my Cameraman, Lenny. I had been persuaded into having the DVD made, although at $170 I really think it's a ridiculously large amount of money for a film I will probably not watch again after showing my parents. HOWEVER it did mean I got Lenny to chat to, who was wicked. When we'd got changed into our terribly attractive jumpsuits, we all crammed into a teeny tiny plane, where we had to straddle the benches and each other to fit in. I was severely squashed between Lenny and Gus. At 12000 feet, two people jumped out, which gave us a bit more room, but by then I was strapped to Gus and couldn't really move anyway. He was really sweet, we all had to have oxygen if we were going up the next 3000 feet, and this freaked me out a bit, felt a bit like being in a hospital, and I got a little nervous, and Gus gave me the biggest of hugs to calm me down. When it actually came to jumping though, I wasn't scared at all, it was just this huge adrenaline rush. Looking down out of the plane, I was just thinking, I'm going to jump now! It was SOOOO cool! The 60 seconds of freefall was insane, we fell 10000 feet with nothing holding us up, it just blows me away! It's just so INSANE! The most incredible feeling though, absolutely I can't describe it. Let's just say, I plan to do another one over the Fox Glacier, and I'm considering going into training to do it as a career. I can't think of anything more fun than doing that five times every single day! Except my ear did go a bit funny when the parachute was released, like how it does when you go underwater for a long time and then can't hear properly until you yawn? Except yawning didn't really do anything.
We then got out of our sexified jumpsuits, and settled down to watch the DVD. I look absolutely ridiculous on mine, not only do I look bald, but I am SO pale that it's lost all humour. Seriously I don't know anyone who is whiter than me, it's so not cool.
We then looked at our pictures afterwards, and found that most people had been given JJ's pictures instead of their own. I had my own, but Sophie was one of the unlucky ones, so then we had to hang around for ages while that got sorted out. We eventually got back to the hostel, and raved about the skydive for ages, proudly wearing our skydive T-shirts for all to see.
We then went in the hot tub for an hour or so with Claire, our new roommate, but it wasn't that hot, so we went upstairs and had nice long showers instead. The showers were soooo nice!
Then, something very VERY cool happened. I had a text from Luke, as in from Luke-and-Holly who we practically travelled the Australian coast with last month. We knew they were in New Zealand at the same time as us, but so far we've always been at opposite ends of the country whenever we've exchanged texts on our current destinations. However, the text I got from him today read "Woohoo we just did a skydive! We're in Taupo, whereabouts are you?" After lots of screaming and woopwooping, Sophie and I regained our composure and replied, and arranged to meet them later that night. We headed out for a Hell's Pizza first, which was amazing, a very very great pizza place. We then said goodbye to most of the people from our bus, who were all in the kitchen, as they were all leaving Taupo the next day, but Sophie and I had decided to stay on a couple of extra days to complete the Tongariro Crossing. We then headed out to meet Hol and Luke, and Rob (Holly's boyfriend) and Rory who were over visiting them for a couple of weeks. We went for a quick drink with them all, it was SOOOO good to catch up with them! We swapped skydiving stories and what we've been doing since separating in Cairns, and then Sophie and I came home as we have to be up at 5am for the walk tomorrow, and Sophie isn't too well with her cold an all anyway, so she needs her rest.
All in all, a fantastic day. Seriously, brilliant day. I love New Zealand! Not coming home.
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