Queenstown Nevis Bungy Jump, Adrenaline and Accomplishment

All I can think of is, This is how I will die.

I walk into the Station on the corner of Shotover street, which is home to the AJ Hackett Bungy shop in Queenstown. The line is short, only two people in front of me who just finished paying.

“Hi love. Can I help you?”

I step forward and tell her I want to do the Nevis bungy jump and the Nevis swing.

“Is this a last minute decision?” she asks.

Sort of.

“How ready are you? We have one space on the 11:20 bus and a space on the 1:20 bus.”

It is 11 o’clock. I shrug my shoulders. I know going now is better.

“Less time to think. We will put you on for 11:20.”

As I sit there waiting for the bus to pick me up, I feel my body coil up like a jack in the box. The slightest little hiccup would make me pop. I start biting my lip, a terrible habit I have developed when I am nervous or when I am PMS-ing.

Breathe in, breathe out. In, out, I tell myself.

A day earlier I went into the Telecom phone shop to buy a SIM card. The man asked me what my plans were for Queenstown, and I told him that I had just gone skydiving but that I thought I was too nervous to go do the Nevis bungy jump.

“You just jumped out of a plane, mate, and you’re scared to bungy?” he said me.

I find myself replaying that conversation in my head. You just jumped out of a plane, Alexandra, at 15,000 feet. You are going to be fine. 

But then I wonder whether I should send some messages to my family, tell them I love them. I message my older brother, my younger brother and my friend Lydia.

I just signed up for the Nevis bungy jump.

At 134 meters high, the Nevis bungy jump is the highest bungy in the Southern Hemisphere. The tallest bungy is in Macau, the Los Vegas of China, at more than 200something meters.

The Nevis Swing, which I also sign up for, is the world’s highest swing and offers a little bit more freedom than the bungy jump: You can swing backwards, upside down, forward, tandem – and the drop is higher than that of the bungy.

Yet my thoughts are so far strayed from anything to do with the swing. All I can think about was why the hell I signed up for this damn Nevis bungy jump.

I remind myself, If there is anywhere in the world that is safe enough to do something like this, it is New Zealand. 

The drive out to the bungy deck is 40 minutes up steep, winding, unpaved mountain passes.

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I talk to the guys next to me – three mates from Melbourne, two of whom are doing the swing and one of whom – Nick – is doing the bungy. I cling to him like I am clinging for my life.

“I am terrified of heights,” Nick admits.

Though the height of it is unnerving, my fear is focused on the possibility of dying or the chords snapping.

We arrive at the site and I look out at the bungy deck. It looks exactly how it did that in the episode of Idiot Abroad, where Ricky Gervais tries to make Karl Pilkington bungy jump but instead he chickens out. It is literally just a shack hanging in the sky between two mountains, held up by cable wires.

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I get weighed in just under 57 kilos. I am told I will most likely be one of the last to jump.

Someone helps me put my gear on, talking to me to take my mind off the lingering jump. We talk about New York and I do not even know what else. I think maybe writing.

We weigh in one more time with our harnesses on, and I am now at 60 kilos. They make sure I am comfortable and secure, and then I am off through the door that leads to the gondola out to the jump deck.

We hang out by the gondola for a minute, and Nick and I try to remain calm. I am getting the nervous giggles. I feel weak, shaky, like my body is a rubber band. An instructor comes and gives us a run-through of what to do.

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“Hundreds of people do this every day, guys. Just remember that. Don’t want to make it seem like you are not special. But just tell yourself that, cause it helps. If you follow what we say, then you will have a great jump. It is when you do not listen to us that things get messy. It is really simple and easy – well, maybe not for first timers – but just stick your arms out, jump forward and dive.”

What if we do not know how to dive?

“Everyone knows how to dive!”

Well right now I feel like I can not remember. 

I turn to Nick. Can we go on the same gondola and jump together? He agrees – we jump together. I tell the bungy man that I am with Nick. I do not leave his side.

We step out on to the gondola – Nick, his brother, his friend, a German kid who is jumping and I. My mind is spinning, my breathing is rapid.

The gondola is moving at a glacial speed, taking its time to reach the jump deck and tempting us to look down into the canyon we are about to jump in to.

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We arrive at the bungy deck. The music is loud, and it feels like we have stepped into a club. The atmosphere is electric, the energy is so high you can cup it in your hands.

“Anyone diving sit up against this here.”

We jump up on to this bench, and I try not to look down through the window of glass in the floor. I try not to look anywhere.

Nick and I stay quiet for one minute, talk nonsense the next.

We can do it, we keep repeating. We got this.

Jumper after jumper goes, and Nick and I are amongst the last three to go.

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“When I am in that chair I am going to pass out,” he says to me.

Each jumper sits in a chair to get his or her ankles strapped together and have the bungy chord connected before heading out to the mini jump deck platform.

You also have no choice on which order you go in, because there is a revolver of five bungys that are ordered according to weight. When it is time for your particular bungy and weight, then you are up.

Nick goes, and I hit his shoulder for support. His face is blank like a fresh sheet of computer paper. He is barely cracking a smile. His mind is absolutely focused on the task at hand.

He stands at the platform and I can see his leg shaking. Suddenly he jumps and minutes later comes back up with bloodshot eyes. He forgot to pull a particular chord – like many of the other jumpers that day – and came up upside down.

“That was amazing,” he says, echoing every other jumper that has come back up to the sky deck. The smile on his face is contagious. I feel a burst of excitement.

One more goes and suddenly my name is called.

I sit in the chair and find myself feeling like I am sitting in a dentist’s chair. My legs are shaking, and I am repeating a mantra over and over in my head: Just jump, just jump, just jump. 

The bungy guy is doing up all my straps. He is a Maori guy, small in stature but definitely not someone you would think of crossing. I do not know whether it is the music pounding in the background, his level of energy that far exceeds the 143 meters we are at or the tribal tattoos blazing at me from his right shoulder, but I find myself thinking that he is a solidified adrenaline junkie.

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He shows me this lime green strap that is at my left ankle.

“Pull this after two bounces. One bounce, two bounce, pull.”

Fucking instructions!  I think. I hate instructions! 

I nod. He tells me to look up at the GoPro above my head and smile, and I do. I take a picture and then hop out of the chair.

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Just jump, I say to him.

“Just jump,” he repeats back to me.

My ankles are strapped together, and I am taking baby steps toward the plank. My heart is racing, my mind is blank. I can barely move. I inch forward little by little. I feel like I am going to trip and fall off.

I do not think I can do this, I say to him and stop before walking out to the plank. In my head I am certain that I am going to trip over the chords and my feet and fall unprepared.

Then I think, Fuck, I hesitated. Fuck. This is going to be ten times harder. Just fucking do it – Just walk out to the jump platform and fucking do it.

“I can not make you jump if you do not want to jump – ” his words blur out. I hear him saying something to me and I feel my head nodding back in forth in agreement but I have no idea what it happening. ” – but if you do not do it now you never will.”

I carefully inch out to the edge of the jumping plank. It is smaller than the diving blocks I would dive off when I was a scrawny 8-year-old swimming for Saint Anselm’s swim team. And a lot scarier.

One more picture he tells me. Look up at the GoPro and smile.

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I do not remember him counting down. I do not remember jumping. The scream just exhaled out. I do not remember anything other than plunging downward so fast I feel like I am in a video game. I remember thinking in my head - I am doing what I have seen in the videos – like on the GoPros. 

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Stupid thought, I know, but when you watch as the ground is rushing at you, it feels like an outer body experience. It is like you are watching yourself do it.

I scream the whole way down. My mouth is as dry as a desert by the end of the jump.

One bounce. My arms are flailing. I find myself being nearly flipped upright and then back down again like a pencil.

SHIT! Will this hurt?

But no, it is seamless, easy, comfortable.

Two bounce – pull the chord. I reach for it and miss it. I find myself grabbing for it, struggling to pull it but determined to make it happen. I grab hold of it and pull it, and suddenly I am sitting upright and bouncing in the canyon.

Instantly I start laughing. A smile is plastered across my face. It is euphoric.

I did it. I fucking did it. Holy shit I did it. I did it. I did it. I did it. That was unreal!

I might not remember much of the jump, but the feeling afterward is something of pure accomplishment. To say I felt like dying when I was walking out to the jumping plank is an understatement.

The walk out to the plank is the scariest bit, and for me it was not so much the height as it was feeling so unsafe, unprotected – like Holy shit I can fall off and die.

Meanwhile, I was strapped in and getting ready to jump off. I had never felt so vulnerable, so literally on the edge in my entire life.

But does it feel good. The smile on my face, the jump in my step – I have never felt so brave, so proud of myself.

The surge of adrenaline feels like someone has you plugged into an electrical socket, the currents are just raging through your body and have you on overdrive. The smile doesn’t leave your face for days.

I wanted to do another bungy instantly. I come back from my jump and Nick and I are drunk with accomplishment and excitement. We head back out onto the gondola.

I convince Nick that he should do the Nevis swing with me, and so he agrees. We go backwards together, still high from our last jump and feeling a whole new wave of excitement as we dangle above the same canyon, a little bit higher this time, waiting to drop once more.

Check out my bungy jumping video! 

Category: New Zealand

2 comments on “Queenstown Nevis Bungy Jump, Adrenaline and Accomplishment

  1. Crazy woman!!! What an accomplishment!!

    • Thanks Joanne! And thanks for commenting on and always supporting my blog!

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