Taupo; did this actually happen?...Yes, apparently it did!

Got up at stupid o’clock this morning, considering I had crawled into bed seemingly only moments before I had to get back out again (it was a few hours, just felt like a few minutes!). I was lucky, or rather someone else was rather lucky, as I didn’t so my usual drop/jump down off the top bunk, this time I used the ladder - if I hadn’t then I would have jumped straight into someone who was asleep on the middle of the floor at the bottom of the bunk! He must have passed out during the drinking session that seemed to have taken place while I was out with JJ. Thankfully I was more or less ready to leave, so just threw on the clothes I had left out and made a swift exit.

I joined the bus with a few others and at 6.45am we left Nomads, picked up a few more people and then started heading north. The drive was a bit non-descript; lots more same-y scenery, beautiful, but same-y. Lots of sheep. Lots of grass. Lots of hills. Lots of twisty-turny roads. I felt tired from the night before but felt guilty to sleep and miss seeing the views, so looked out of the window as a courtesy. Everyone else was asleep!

A few thousand hills later, Metro pulled the bus over to the side of the road, where we hopped out briefly and he pointed out to us some more hills in the distance. Apparently, these are Lord of the Rings hills. I believe he said it was Mount Doom. Of course, it looked nothing like the LotR hills because they would have CG-ed them to look more interesting and middle-earthy. I took photos anyway and then asked for clarification as to which of the hills I was supposed to be ‘Oooh-ing’ at, just to be sure! Apparently amongst these hills, there is a volcano which is still active and last erupted in 1996, thankfully it chose not to erupt whilst we were driving past.

After some more hills and sheep, we arrived at a different view – a massive lake. It was so massive, that I thought it was the sea, as I couldn’t see across to the other side, then Metro told us that it was a volcanic crater (I think, or some other form of geographical something that I don’t really know much about!). Apparently, a couple of years ago, they had to evacuate some of the houses that sit on the edge by the water along one stretch of the lake, because their gardens started heating up and there was some debate about whether this might indicate the possibility of an impending eruption! Anyway, the view made for something a bit different to hills, so that was good. We followed the road all the way around the edge, until we came to the town on Taupo.

Metro dropped myself and a couple of other girls off at Tiki Lodge, before heading off to Auckland – so no more Metro for the time being, I will have a new driver tomorrow for my next Stray leg to Auckland. We went and checked in, then I sat and chilled out for a bit... waiting for 2pm to arrive.

The Freefall bus picked me up and took me to the skydive centre along with a couple of other people and on arrival, we were shown a couple of videos to a) enable us to get an idea of what was going to happen and b) to show us what different types of DVD you can buy of the experience. I sat there very silently and the woman asked me if I was ok. I was not. I was terrified. I was about to voluntarily jump out of a perfectly serviceable plane at 15,000 feet. How is that ok?! Whose idea was this? Oh yes, Adam the travel agent who had booked my Stray bus ticket in Cairns. What was I thinking?! She who hates flying. She who until very recently had never looked out of a plane window from the air. Who was this person sat watching the film and what had they done with B? Who knows.

Well I didn’t really have much chance to think about it after that, as I was whisked into a hanger where I was kitted up, all in a bit of a daze. The next thing I knew, there I was wearing a ridiculously unflattering bright red jumpsuit, with some crazy haired guy called Malachi strapping harnesses and buckled things to me and telling me it was all good, shoving a camera in my face and asking me lots of questions. All I could think of was “It was probably a good idea I didn’t tell Mum I’m gonna be doing this. Sorry Mum!”. At least it was sunny, I was sure that was a good thing. Probably.

Still in a state of disbelief, in a kind of out-of-body-experience-type-way, I was taken over to a tiny little plane along with some other red-jumpsuit-clad people and the ‘Tandem Masters’ wearing yellow and blue jumpsuits. The plane was very small and I couldn’t work out how we might actually all sit in it. I found out. Not seats as such, but benches and we all sat in a line, facing forward like in a row boat, sat between one another’s legs. Like big red sardines crammed into a tiny silver tin. Odd. No seatbelts to contend with, but I guess that would be slightly ironic.

The plane bumped off across the field and then onto a tiny runway. All the while the ‘door’ which was actually one whole side of the plane, a roller shutter, was wide open and I wondered if we might think it would be a good idea to shut it. They did, but only after we were already a few feet off the ground. But I shouldn’t complain, they shut it in the end! So I looked out of the window. Mildly panicked, but feeling a bit resigned to the fact that there was naff all I could do about it now, so I might as well enjoy the view, in case it was the last one I ever saw!

And what a view it was. Taupo stretched beneath the little tin plane, lit up by the beautiful sunshine that bore down on it; an amazing tapestry of colours; fields, crops, scrubland, houses, hills and the lake. Wow. Every now and again my attention was shifted from the view, as I was prodded in the arm, only to turn around and have a camera shoved in my face. At this point it is customary to wave or do something else. I was not comfortable with this, as is more than apparent in the finished article, but anyway. So after a lot of camera pointing and some more view viewing, Malachi pointed to a thing on his wrist and showed me how high we were; 12.000 feet. He fiddled around with some plastic tubes and gave me a mask to put on – the air is thin so we had to use oxygen. Some more camera shoving occurred and then he got me to sit on his lap whilst he attached me to his harness. Hmmmm. This was actually going to happen. Oh dear. I then realised I was smiling, then noticed that my mask was no longer attached to the oxygen tube. I guess that was why I was feeling a bit light headed. That was probably a good thing, as it made me laugh. Had I not been light headed, I might have panicked more.

Suddenly, one of the yellow/blue people at the front (well, the back of the plane, but the front of all the sardines in the plane facing in that direction) lifted the roller-wall-door-thing, thus exposing one whole side of the plane to the outside and the cold air, roar of plane engines and rush of wind filled the little cabin. Then a yellow/blue person dangled themselves out of the plane as another yellow/blue person with a red person strapped to their front swung his legs over the edge and flung themselves out, followed closely by the person who had been hanging on. OMG. A split second later, the exact same thing happened again with the yellow/blue and red men in front of me. OMActualG. I was next. I shouted as loud as I could to Malachi “Are you sure I am attached to you??”, he nodded, so I shouted “And you remembered the parachute”, he shouted back “I think so” and with that slid me onto the edge of the plane and then.......................................................................

It was the strangest feeling ever. Freefall. It was exactly that. The sensation of dropping. Feeling the rush of cold air against your face. Feeling completely out of control. Totally at the will of gravity. I couldn’t move. Not just because I was attached to the underside of a mad Kiwi who likes throwing himself out of planes, not just because I was stunned, not just because the force of the air rushing past me was pinning me into place, but because I saw the view of Taupo and beyond. Not through some flimsy piece of Perspex, but with my eyes, right there in front of me. And it was getting closer and closer. But it was beautiful. And there my eyes stayed fixed. I was in awe. The world from an altogether different perspective. Malachi made us spin around, this way and that – not upside down, just in circles, so as to take in the whole entirety of my surroundings. So much was I fixated on the view that Malachi had to keep pointing at the yellow/blue camera man that was freefalling with us, filming this madness, to remind me to look at the camera. I wasn’t even bothered. I didn’t even feel scared any more. I was way past that. If I died there and then, at least it was on a high (is that a pun?!).

I was jolted sharply out of my mesmerised state – Malachi had pulled the parachute cord and we were suddenly fighting back against gravity. The freefall had lasted about 60 seconds - I am not sure if it felt longer or shorter than that, but he had told me we would start the canopy descent at around 4000 feet. Having been freefalling in one position (the official term being ‘banana’), it was odd suddenly being upright, but when turning, shifting position again to be slightly more horizontal – I got a bit disorientated and felt unsure which way was up and which way was down, but thankfully the fact that I had pure blue in one direction and green in the other helped me to differentiate between land and sky! Another difference between this and the freefall is that now I was able to hear and could take my silly goggles off. The cold air made my eyes stream a bit, but I didn’t really mind. Malachi spun us about a bit, which was quite an odd sensation, making me a bit dizzy, but all good. He then gave me the ‘controls’ (some straps) and showed me how to turn us around, so that was really cool – I was in control of my own movements, so I could turn us to see the different views. Amazing; me dangling from some material at a ridiculous height above the ground, feeling happy and not remotely in fear of my life – quite a different person to she who had rocked up at the centre in the minibus earlier on almost too scared to speak!

As we neared the ground, Malachi explained that I needed to lift my legs up real high when he told me. I could see a few people landing beneath us. We came in closer, I did for a minute think we might be about to land on a roof, but then at the last moment, Malachi turned us again and we were headed back towards the field where everyone else was landing. He told me to lift my legs, so I did and we grounded ourselves, sliding across the grass on our behinds at quite a speed, but skilfully avoiding crashing into everyone else thanks to Malachi’s masterful control of a parachute! As we came to a halt, the folds of silk (are parachutes made of silk?!) gently dropped on our heads and Malachi detached himself from me and we climbed up out of the mess of material and cord, then once again I had a camera shoved in my face!

When everyone was down, we had to get in a group and do a big cheer, before going back to the hanger to get de-harnessed. It wasn’t until then that my legs went to jelly and I genuinely thought I was going to fall over! I think it was the sudden realisation of what I had just done. I was blown away! Once I was out of the jumpsuit, I headed to the reception area where all the girls there were really lovely to me and couldn’t believe the difference from when I had gotten into the plane looking like a terrified rabbit in the headlights! I gushed about how great it had been and how wonderful the view was!

After sitting outside in the sun and watching the next load of people head up into the sky, I was called into a mini cinema where myself and the other two people who had been filmed were shown the final edited version of our film. It was really cool! What struck me was that my experience had been completely different to theirs. They had been the first two people out of the plane and during their freefalls had spent the whole time looking at the camera, waving, pulling silly faces and getting into funny positions (like Superman etc), whereas I was just there, face beaming, staring around at the scenery in amazement for the vast majority of the freefall, barely looking at the camera at all! We all loved the film and buzzed with excitement! I then sat back out in the sun, still slightly delirious, as I waited for the DVD to be compiled, before they took me back to the hostel in the minibus.

Feeling kind of ‘floaty’, I did a bit of washing in the sink, hung it up on my bed and decided it would be a good idea to go for a walk into town, so I picked up a map and headed in the general direction of the lake. As I got to the water’s edge, I noticed that the sun was beginning to set, so I followed my way around slowly, appreciating the colours in the sky changing, from yellow to orange, then to red and purple. It was beautiful. This walk had brought me into the town, so I just had a gentle, general mooch around, as most things were closed, just taking it in and grabbing a quick bite to eat. I called Nikky on the walk back to the hostel and told her all about my skydive – she had done one yesterday! We both enthused about how great it was and had a general catch up about how our Stray tours were going so far. It was good talking to her. I noticed, along the way, a sign in a cafe offering free wifi – excellent; coffee there tomorrow morning then!

Back at the hostel, I sat on my bed and generally clicked about online for a bit, chatting to the others in my room for a while before turning in, still amazed at what I had done. Did it really happen? Yes it did. Awesome.