This past weekend, I drove with 3 others to Jefferies Bay to go bungee jumping for my first time at Bloukrans Bridge. Apparently it is the highest bungee jump in the world at 216m or 708ft. There have been higher jumps, but none commercially available. To get to Bloukrans, we drove on the so called Garden Route, which is a stretch of highway along the coast in South Africa with a lot of sights and nice towns to visit along the way. I traveled with Chyrstal, Martin and Linan. Chrystal is from Holland and is doing some volunteer work at a children’s home in Durbanville, the same town I am working in. Martin is from Norway and came to Mozambique to do some volunteer work and is now traveling in Africa. Linan is from the U.S. and is doing an internship for a refugee organization in South Africa. We all met in Cape Town a few weekends ago and kept in touch since we are planning to stay in South Africa for a while.
The drive took about 7 hours to Jefferies Bay. It would have been a nice drive, except it was raining most of the day. The night we got to Jefferies Bay, we were all tired so we had some dinner and called it an early night. The next morning we left for Bloukrans Bridge, about an hour drive from Jefferies Bay. It only takes about 6 hours from Cape Town but we wanted to stay at Jefferies Bay for the weekend. We slammed some Red Bulls as we anxiously arrived at Bloukrans. Martin was the only one that had bungee jumped before. Linan was still deciding whether to do it. She finally decided to jump once we got there. I never had jumped, but I figured, how bad could it be?
Walking on the catwalk right below the bridge was the first time my heart really started racing. The catwalk comprised of a flimsy thin wire mesh keeping me from falling to the gorge floor. I kept telling myself to look forward, but kept looking down as I walked to the jumping stage. Once at the jumping stage, everyone was excited, music was pumping and the employees were prepping us with instructions on how to jump and so on. We all were called up to the platform in no particular order. I was last of the four of us. When I was getting suited up, my heart started racing again. The guy who was helping me kept saying random stuff I couldn’t understand with a heavy Afrikaans accent. I just wanted him to shut up so I could concentrate on jumping. Once I got to the edge, I had to place my toes over the edge. I got real freaked out when I looked down, so I immediately looked forward. Then the countdown began, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and I took a leap of faith.
The jump was a serious trip. A rush of adrenalin, feelings of disbelief/surrealism, happiness that I was still alive and worry since I still had to be pulled up to safety. It happened real fast but I remember seeing the ground getting closer and closer, and then farther and farther as I bounced back and forth. Blood rushing to my head and pressure on my eyes as I was hanging upside down. Finally, I was pulled up by the guy hanging from a rope for a job. What a job. Then I was pulled back to the jumping platform and I was happy to be alive. We went back to Jefferies Bay and got trashed.
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