Falling to earth

While we waited for our turn to jump, we had a chance to admire the rest of the morning's jumpers. From 12000ft there was about a 30 second freefall before the chute was deployed. This flutters around above you, not looking very promising for an alarmingly long couple of seconds, and then suddenly makes up its mind and unfurls into a miraculous canopy.



Watching this over and over again, it seemed just a matter of time before one of them wouldn't open in time. But by the time we were ready to get suited up, we must have seen a couple of hundred jumpers land safely which was a measure of intellectual reassurace.



In fact, I was pretty excited to give it a go - it was just the jumping out the door bit which I thought would be bad. But then I decided it would make it easier if there was something else to focus on, so I asked my tandem instructor if we could do a somersault out the door.



Katie was last in the plane and consequently the first out. She and her tandem partner shuffled to the roll-up door and dangled their feet. She gave a quick smile to the exit camera and then she was gone. Then it was my turn. I have to say the initial plunge is pretty heart-stopping, but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Somehow, the ground being 2 miles below gives your brain a bit of a breather before the moment of truth.

Anyway, I got a somersault and a corkscrew during the 200kph freefall, and a fabulous view of Lake Taupo below us, and the volcanos of Tongariro National Park in the distance. In fact we could see the Pacific to the east and the Tasman Sea in the distant west.

Mercifully, I was barely aware of the chute opening until the final jerk, and then we were just floating around in relative silence. I had a quick go at steering the canopy which was suprisingly maneuverable and then we did some steep spirals to descend to the airfield where we slid in to land smoothly on the grass. It was an absolute blast.

We bought a DVD of the jumpers in our group but sent it home before we were able to find a computer with a DVD reader to grab any more pictures.