New Zealand - Home of the Bungy Jump

Just a couple of days after the Hines' left, Matt Reinaker arrived to embark on a two week tour of New Zealand. Matt may guest author a post on VisitToTomorrow, so I won’t cover all of our adventures, but I'll touch on the highlights.

New Zealand is home to extreme sports. If you’ve got a desire to get your adrenaline pumping, you have plenty of options: skydiving, jet boating, zorbing (rolling down a hill in a massive plastic ball), sledging (whitewater rafting on a boogie board), and of course bungy jumping. Queenstown is the home of bungy jumping. We had the option of bungy jumping at the first commercial bungy bridge in the world (Kawarau Bridge – 43 meters), or the highest bungy jump in New Zealand (Nevis – 134 meters). We ended up choosing Kawarau Bridge as Nevis looked insanely intimidating, and you can’t go wrong with the bridge where people have been "safely" bungy jumping for 30 years. Dana decided that she was just going to watch from sturdy ground, having just seen this video of a bungy gone bad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJUk_4stXis



Kawarau Bridge



This picture might not give the height of the bridge complete justice. Standing beside it, it appears really high, and they either scare or inspire you with videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGUPWbsjX1s as you walk into the building to book your jump. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. 

Here are pictures of Reinaker and I taking the jump, with some thoughts going through my mind at the time:

Your feet are tied together and they have you shuffle all the way out the edge and look at the camera man. Apparently I couldn’t even muster up a smile, as they had just told me I could be completely dunked in the river below.

Mr. Adrenaline Reinaker seems to be enjoying himself

The first part of the jump seems to be in slow motion, the guy gave me a slight nudge and it feels like you’re barely moving until your body in almost vertical.

Picture perfect form from Reinaker

Once your body goes vertical, it picks up acceleration so fast that once you realize you’ve jumped, you’re already at the bottom.

They told me to keep my arms out and head tucked in case I hit the water. I had the arms covered, but totally failed to keep my head tucked.

My hands hit the water, but I didn’t get fully dunked.

The rebound is fun, you’re relieved to know you have pretty much survived the jump.

You feel pretty helpless as they lower you into the boat. They bring you to the shore and then you feel like superman as the adrenaline is still flowing through your veins.

The 43 meters at Kawarau Bridge was enough for me for the first bungy. Reinaker was inspired by the jump and looked up the highest bungy jumps in the world. For those of you in the US…..the highest one in the world is 321 meters and is at the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado. Uhhh, that’s pretty high.