It was a reasonable drive down toTaupo, we stopped off along the way at Puzzle world which had freeentry so we though it was worth a look.... however, it was basicallyone maze which you could see over the top of, so we headed onwards!We then stopped at a honey farm where we tried a bit of honey beforemoving on. This time we stopped at a Prawn Farm where the water isheated geothermically. It was too expensive to fish for the prawns(and would have been immensely boring) so we had a few shots at theking prawn hole in one game! Basically a driving range which had beenset up over the prawn pools. There were floating holes in each of thepools, the further away the hole the more money you won if you gotthe ball in it. Unfortunately we all missed but it was a good laugh!
We then went to Taupo centre and headedstraight to the airport to look at sky dives as we wanted to book onefor the next day. After seeing a few good companies we decided tobook a place at 8am with Freefall. This way if the weather was bad inthe morning we would get preference for later slots.
The town is pretty small so after aquick walk about 1we parked the wagon up in a nice spot right by lakeTaupo and cooked our first meal using the gas burner! We didnt havematches though, but luckily there was another camper van who lent ustheir lighter which embarrassingly we had to ask for two more timesas the flame went out! Liam had beans with toasted (burnt) baguette,John had pasta with tuna and I had a huge tin of salami, bacon andpasta soup with bread. We had a few beers then got an early night tobe fresh for the sky dive in the morning!
We woke up nice and early, I slept asbadly as ever, and as ever, I had to go to the toilet at about 3am!Our amazing good fortune with the weather continued as the sky wasblue and there was barely any clouds in site!
As we approached the airfield we couldsee other sky divers coming in to land so knew we would be fine to goup. After signing our lives away we got straight into our jump suitsand introduced to the instructor we would be jumping with. We hadgone for the top package, a 15,000ft sky dive with a dvd, photos andt shirt! So along with our instructor each of us had a camera manjumping with us who would film the jump to put on a dvd. Also,through the use of a bite operated switch, the camera man took stillphoto shots! The nine of us just squeezed into the plane, I wasjumping first and sat right by the glass door with a great view overthe lake. We had oxygen masks which we used from about 10,000ft untilwe needed to prepare for jumping out of the plane!
We had all written messages on ourhands, John had HI MUM, I had gone for ARH YEH (Kiwis say this alot!) and Liam has opted for WILL IT OPEN? We have all joked howdeath seems to be following us on this trip. Someone had died on theWorlds Most Dangerous Road in Bolivia a few days after we did it,then a group of people died on the salt flats the week after we didit, then the volcano in Chile. The list goes on. This time it got alittle closer.
I jumped out first and it was anamazing feeling just falling but really noisy! The air was reallycold and it felt hard to breath for a second. I think my brain wasconfused for a few seconds as to why I had jumped but not landed, asusually you are only in the air for a second but this was justconstant falling! Then it was just brilliant, the camera man came inclose and we were joking about and then he would drop away. The viewswere fantastic, we could see the volcano by the lake and for milesall around the lake. After what felt like twenty seconds (it wasactually over a minute!) the chute opened and the camera man droppedaway into oblivion as we shot up and into silence! I could then talkto the instructor and he then pointed out that one of the otherjumpers had had to cut away their first chute as it had not openedproperly for some reason. We saw that fly away and the reserve chuteget deployed! Phil (my instructor) thought they may land in the waterbut they had plenty of time to turn back over to dry land! We floateddown peacefully for a few minutes with Phil doing some good sharpturns along the way and then landed safely by the hanger. Liam didnot realise just how fitting his WILL IT OPEN? statement on his handswould be! As we made our way back we were told it was Liam's chutethat had not opened!! He had no idea as his instructor had not toldhim on the way down! So death is no snapping at our heels but weremain in front for the time being!
Next we waited as they made our dvd andall spoke about ho much we had enjoyed it and wanted to do it againas it is over so quickly!! The dvd is great as were the photos whichI will upload soon!
We then headed south on a long drive toWellington!
