Saturday, November 05, 2011

Jumper-Third Eye Blind

So, I had been saving tales of this little adventure for after its successful completion, so I wouldn’t worry you (unless you are my Mother, in while case I had to balance the “please tell me when you are going to travel” rule with the “don’t tell your mother you are going to jump off of a bridge because she will worry” rule and decided in favor of the former). My classes finished on the 28th of October, and the past week was “SWOT week”, which is an acronym that has something to do with reviewing and studying for finals, but for most of the international students meant a week off school to go travel and have adventures. Since I am one of the few people who are not on a pass/fail system with my courses,  the classes that I am taking here will affect my GPA at home, and I need to do well in them. This meant that I actually needed to study during SWOT week (since my first exam was November 5th, and it was my zoo theory, which I expect to be the most difficult of my exams), so it was not a good use of my time to go gallivanting off to Cape Town. Believe me, if I had the chance or was able to delude myself into ignoring the rational reasons why I couldn’t go to Cape Town, I totally would have been there. Unfortunately (although I don’t totally know why it’s a bad thing), I am both fiscally and academically responsible, and therefore Cape Town didn’t happen. I am really disappointed that I won't make it while I am here, but I just keep telling myself that I won't get there on this Africa trip to make myself feel better.

Amongst this and other platitudes, I consoled myself about the lack of Cape Town by taking an overnight trip on Monday to go bungee jumping. I went with Jens, one of the Germans I have traveled with before, Cameron, who is on exchange from the UK, and Kristen, who went with me to Durban (so much diversity! All of the accents make things fun… including Kristen’s southern accent, which doesn’t seem as exotic as the others but is a fun addition to the mix). We met at 4:10am—such a sacrifice—to catch a bus to Plettenburg Bay, which ended up being an hour late (in true South African style) and stayed in a hostel there overnight. The hostel was fantastic, and took care of reserving jump spots and transportation for us to the Bloukrans Bridge, which is in the Tsitsikamma National Park and is the highest commercial bungee jump in the world.

Us in front of the Bloukrans River Bridge (above) and a view from the bridge (below)

The ride to the bridge was a little less than an hour, through some gorgeous mountains and next to the sea. It seems like everywhere I go is just so beautiful here! I loved Plettenburg Bay, too. Although the others were a bit bored (since we were there on a weeknight during the off season) I think that of the places I have traveled to here, Plett is the one I would most like to live in. A seaside town, it isn’t that much bigger than Grahamstown, but it has more going on as far as far as downtown. Plus, everything was just so beautiful, and there was so much to do there.

 (Plettenburg Bay... sorry all of these pictures are kind of in shadow, I took all of them in the late afternoon)

The actual jump was fantastic. It was a little bit terrifying, but isn’t that what makes it fun? I have always wanted to jump of the edge of a cliff into the middle of nothing just to feel what it is like, and this was my chance. Granted, the fact that the bungee chord was attached to my feet freaked me out a bit—what if I just slipped out?—but I got back up to the bridge after in one piece. Technically, my throat was a little raw from the (completely involuntary) screaming that tore out of me about half a second after I jumped and my body send messages to my brain that I was going to die, but it was perfectly safe, and I didn’t even get whipped around by the chord at the bottom of the jump. It great fun, I would totally do it again (although I would prefer to go skydiving first) and I definitely recommend it. Although you can’t hear me—according to the guy who brought me back up, the rest of the gorge could hear me just fine—I attached the video so you can watch:

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