Skydiving Plane

By Emily Meyer

Traveller’s Tales – The Adventurer

Oct 8, 2019 | 3:21 AM

One of the many reasons I love to travel is the opportunity for experiences that come with each destination you visit. When I say experiences, I’m not talking about lying on the beach or walking around a famous monument. No; I’m talking once-in-a-lifetime encounters that get the adrenaline pumping. Let’s take a look at some of the more extreme experiences you can have while travelling.

First up is an experience I’ve participated in myself. It’s one of those experiences you do just to say you’ve done it. And now that I have done it, I don’t think you’ll ever find me willingly jumping out of a plane from 14,000 feet again.

In February of 2014, I was in Cairns, in Queensland Australia. I would sit on the back porch of my homestay and watch the skydivers floating through the skies. It happened almost daily – their bright coloured parachutes releasing into the clouds, catching the tiny people in their freefall. Somewhere along the way, as I watched them floating through the sky like leaves from an autumn tree, I decided that that was something I’d like to do.

That March, a friend and I drove 7 hours down the coast to a little spot called Airlie Beach, just off a set of islands known as the Whitsunday Islands. The Whitsundays are some of the most impressively beautiful islands I’ve ever seen. Waters of bright turquoise and sands the whitest white you could imagine. That is where I decided I’d do my jump.

From 14,000 feet up, the door to our propeller plane opened. A blast of cold air hit me and, for a moment, I questioned if I’d be able to make the jump. I watched my friend shimmy to the door and dangle his feet over the edge, nowhere to rest them but the open sky. I can’t remember him jumping, but I remember it being my turn. I remember my tandem instructor shimmying me over to the edge. I remember his hands on either side of the open door as my feet hung free. He asked if I was ready but didn’t wait for my response before he pushed off from the door and we were falling.

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I’m not sure what sensation I was expecting from my freefall. The closest feeling I could relate to such a sensation was falling out of bed as a child. But even then, I’d always hit the ground before I knew I was even falling. With skydiving, the freefall continued. I felt both weightless and like a cannonball all at the same time, speeding towards earth with nothing holding me back. Then the chute opened. I wasn’t flying anymore. I was soaring, high above the white sand beaches and crystal waters. It was both terrifying and exhilarating and will always top the list of the coolest experiences I’ve had.

Let’s move on to another extreme adrenaline experience that also keeps in this apparent theme of freefalling. Also found in the Oceania region of the world is an experience not for the faint of heart. We take our focus to Kawarau Bridge in New Zealand, the famous home of the Bungy.

Bungy jumping began in Vanuatu, where, for centuries people would throw themselves from tall towers with nothing more than a few vines around their feet. Legend has it that the tradition began after a mistreated wife threw herself and husband from a tall tree, saving herself with the vines while her husband fell to his death. The event was celebrated annually by women and eventually by men to prove their courage.

The tradition stuck through the centuries and back in 1987, Kiwi AJ Hackett introduced the world to Bungy jumping in a radical way. He snuck up the Eiffel Tower at night and the next morning jumped from the famous landmark. From there, the world of Bungy took off, with Hackett opening the first commercial Bungy operation at the Kawarau Bridge in 1988. Adrenaline seekers from all over the world continue to flock to the famous site, more than 30 years later.

We head over to Wales for this next experience, although countless other places such as Costa Rica, South Africa, Dubai and Puerto Rico also boast as great locations for this adrenaline rush. I’m talking about ziplining; the activity that sees you suspended from a cable, flying through the air on a pulley system.

The use of ropeways for transport has been used in countries for more than 2,000 years, with China, India and Japan believed to be the original starting point. In the 1970s, wildlife biologists designed and constructed ziplines over rainforest canopies in Costa Rica as a way to study and explore, without causing disruption. As you can imagine, it wasn’t long before this idea turned into a business proposition and the zipline as we know it was born.

The competition to be the longest, highest and fastest zipline in the world has been raging on for years. For the full adrenaline-pumping extreme experience, the winner has to be Zip World Velocity 2, located over the Penrhyn Slate Quarry in Northern Wales. Not only is this the longest zipline in Europe, but it’s also the fastest in the world, sending you flying through the air at a whopping 160km/h.

The world is full of exciting adrenaline-inducing experiences that take you beyond your typical vacation day. Sure, beaches are nice and monuments are historic, but take the jump into a world beyond your comfort zone. You’ll never forget the thrill.