I think I'll try defying gravity...TWENDE! ("let's go!")

Yesterday, I did this:

Ok, the whole story: I left Lusaka on Sunday morning and came to Livingstone. Livingstone is south-west in Zambia, and a 10 min drive from Victoria Falls, the largest waterfalls in the world, and on CNNs Seven Natural Wonders of the World list. Met up with Joe, whom I met on the train, and who left for Livingstone the day before me. We signed up for going to the falls the next day, Monday, and when looking through the Southern Africa guide book, realized you can do a tandem bungijump off of the brigde right by the falls. Fearless as we thought we were, we agreed on a “maaaaaaybe”.

So last morning we went, Joe, Jack, Jenny and I, to see the falls, and maybe possibly if we felt really brave consider doing the tandem bungi. We started our tour of the falls down at the “Boiling Pot”, right down by the Zambezi, looking up at the brigde.

me and the bridge

We saw two people jump, and were still not really convinced. However, on the way up, Joe and I started getting cocky, and by the time we had finished the climb back to the track, we had kind of decided to do it. We had one exception though: If we couldn’t tandem, we wouldn’t go...after all, we aren’t that crazy, right?

We started walking over to the bridge, still feeling quite confident, but halfway there, we met this South African/Dutch guy who’d just done it, and he said you couldn’t tandem. Joe and I were slightly disappointed, but figured we’d go out to the bridge anyway, just to have a look. We came, we saw, we conquered, and went back to registration, signed off on the “I’m aware that this might kill me, and will not hold anyone responsible”-slip (not that I can really do much to anyone if I actually did die), handed the money over, and somehow made Jack come along too.

Three brave J’s walked back onto the bridge, and we were still quite confident.



Jack, Julie, Joe

Joe was going to go first, me second, and Jack last. But because of our weight, and Jack being the heaviest (fatest), Jack had to go second.

Jack being excited (what he "forgot" to mention until two days later was that he'd bungied before...)

I was quite torn between not being brave enough to go first, and not at all wanting to wait until the last jump, so the guys decided that Joe and I were going to have a rock, paper, scissors-contest about it. I kept my fist closed. Joe put two fingers out. Oh snap. Not so confident any more.

So I walked through the tiny tiny door that leads onto the platform, and got those four towels (!) wrapped around my feet, got properly strapped up, and asked the honest question “This won’t come off when I jump, right?”





I don't look nervous at all, do I?

 Got onto my feet, jumped over to the “exit”, and was pretty much forced to put all of my toes outside of the edge, while I was holding on to the handles for bare life.



The crew member who held my backstraps told me to let go. I let go of my left hand, and put it straight out to the side. “And let go of the other hand” “No” “Come on” “No” “You have to let go” “No I don’t” “Let go” “Fine” “Stop looking down” “No” “Look at the horizon, up, up, up, up, a bit further, there you go, noooow, a deep breath........and one more deep breath, and fivefourthreetwooneBUNGI” and somehow, I jumped.

And I flew. And I was quite surprised with myself, that I’d done it. And then I reached the bottom, and was still quite fine. And I went up, and thought, hey, this isn’t that bad. And I went further up, and then my body flipped, so I was with my head up again, and I thought, ooooh crap. And then I went down and up and down and up and spinned around and around and around for a few minutes, thinking I would really just like to get up now. And then the guy came down and got me. I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful in my life “I know this is your job, but thank you soooo much for coming to get me”. On my way up I saw both of the guys jump, and was so happy and proud of myself that I almost cried.



We survived! Jack and I being extatic, while Joe was still hanging underneath the bridge.


The rest of the day we got to really enjoy the Falls. It was beautiful!



The Zambezi River disappearing down into the Victoria Falls





"Maybe I should jump off this too, while I'm at it"

You get quite wet viewing the falls in rainseason...Joe and I

An epic day.

Other than that I bought a tent in Lusaka, as I’m going to Botswana soon, probably Thursday together with Sarah “the French” and her dad, and tenting is really the only cheap option.

And I enjoyed my time at Jollyboys Backpackers in Livingstone.



We bought icecream and made milkshake. It was actually quite good, these expressions are just for show. Amy and Joe