Garden Route day three

day three

Wednesday the 15^th of February. Today was the big day. I woke up and realized that we would be bungee jumping today. For breakfast we could either have eggs with bacon tomato and toast or a health breakfast with muesli, yoghurt and fresh fruit. I decided to have the health breakfast seeing that it is my regular breakfast here in South Africa. We put our plates in the kitchen and went to our rooms to pack our bags. We left the backpackers around 9 ‘o clock to go canoeing. When we arrived, there were 5 canoes on the shore. I shared my canoe with Lotte and we were the first ones to leave. We called ourselves the dynamic due seeing that we were a great team and stayed ahead of everyone. They told us that we had to go up the river for about half an hour but after fifteen minutes we couldn’t go any further unless we lifted our canoe over the rocks and walk 30 meters or so, so we decided to stay here and relax for a while. The boys were doing a contest for who could make the stones bounce on the water the most and who could throw their stones the furthest. After about fifteen minutes we went back, this time downstream luckily.

We drove for about one and an hour to Bloukrans where the bungee jump was. When we arrived we had to wait another hour before we could go on the bridge. We had to fill in the forms and we had to stand on the weight scale. With a permanent marker, they wrote our weight and jump number on our right hand. My jump number was 69 which was quite unfortunate seeing that there were only 2 numbers before me to jump. We had to wear a harness and after half an hour we could go on the bridge. Only two of us decided not to go and they waited in the cafe where they had an amazing view over the mountains, the sea and us jumping. There were for about 15 other people jumping with us. There was a long cage hanging from underneath the bridge where we had to walk through. I was so scared when I was walking in the cage because the bottom was see-through and you could look down, 216 meters. I got really nervous and I thought to myself... Why am I doing this! I did move on and when I eventually made it till the bridge, I heard the music playing which made me less tense. It was quite cold up there but the staff handed out blankets to keep us warm. I was actually looking forward to the jump now and was so glad I would be the third one to jump but then they started calling out random numbers instead of doing it in the order of the number. I was the 6^th one to jump which was not that bad. I had to sit on a bench where they attached protective pads around my legs and tied the rope around them. Lourents was before me and I could see him jumping as well as screaming. They told me it was 100% safe and asked me some questions but I wasn’t really paying attention, I was thinking of the jump and the height. They asked me to stand and walked me to the edge of the bridge. I could hear the music blasting in my ears and I could feel my heart beating against my chest. They were counting now... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 BUNGY! I jumped off and felt like I was flying. I was a complete freefall and felt like I had never felt before. At a certain point I thought I was going to die but then I was bounced up again and saw the amazing view. It was incredible but after about half a minute, my head started to feel like it was exploding. I imagined myself to have this big red head and my feet hurt a little but when I looked up I could see someone coming down along the rope. He told me not to worry and He attached me to this cord and pulled me up. Once up, they were taking pictures of me. I could see the rest of the group coming towards me, jumping up and down and sharing my excitement. It felt like I was on drugs and still flying. I watched the others jump and after everyone had had their turn we went back again. We went to the shop where everyone bought their video and photos. The teacher gathered everyone back together and we left to go to the backpackers nearby. At the backpackers, we watched everyone’s video of the bungee jump and had dinner. On the video, you could see everyone dancing in the back which was quite enjoyable and when I was watching my video, I was reliving the moment. This was by far the most amazing thing I have ever done. After dinner, everyone enjoyed themselves by playing card games, playing billiard or watching a soccer game on television. I played the card game bullshit with Julia and Kadi (the exchange girls from Hong Kong), Yiyo (from Chili) Lotte and Cristian (from Colombia). Even though the Julia and Kadi won most of the time, everyone had a great time. We laughed a lot which might have been a bit disturbing for the rest of the backpackers seeing that it was quite loud and Lotte kept on screaming BULLSHIT all the time. We went to bed quite early seeing that everyone was a bit tired and we had to get up early again the next morning, day four.