We woke up this morning in Wilderness and had a yoga class on the beach at our hostel. I wanted to ask the teacher if she goes by Professor McGonagall because at one point I thought Brett might have transfigured himself into a salted pretzel. After yoga we loaded up the van and left Wilderness for Civilization. Well, it was actually for Tsitkama National Park, which also could have been pretty aptly named as Wilderness. On our way we passed the bungy jump at Bloukrans bridge—it is allegedly the highest static bungy jump in the world at 216 meters. This bride already sounds high in theory and seeing it in person made me really apprehensive about this whole bungy jumping business. Danny referring to it as “stimulated suicide” probably didn’t help either. We decided we would try to zip line and then see how we were feeling about the bungy jump. So we got to Tsitkama and all got strapped in to the zip lining gear. The part that clips onto the zip line felt like a carrying around a poorly concealed weapon in a holster, which also makes today the closest I have ever come to feeling Texan. We went zip lining over the waterfalls and rain forests in the park. Seeing everything from above the canopies today was beautiful and a really different perspective than kloofing through the canyons with Steve.
On the ride back from zip lining, we realized that we would have to squeeze in bungy jumping today so that we will have time to drive back to Cape Town tomorrow. Elle and I weren’t really mentally prepared to hurl ourselves off a bridge since we usually only do that on Tuesdays, so we made Danny throw on some pump up music. He started off with T.I.’s “Bring ‘Em Out” because we are apparently a junior varsity high school basketball team. Danny has been dead set against the stimulated suicide that is bungy jumping this whole trip, but once he started playing Major Lazer, I think everyone realized that we are actually here in South Africa and only have one chance to try new and exciting things. Like knitting and flinging ourselves off bridges. So Danny made the last minute decision to bungy jump with us too.
We were the last people to sign up before they shut down for the day. Will, Brett, Danny, Ellen and I walked over to the bridge while Heather and Sophia cheered us on from the bar where they could watch our jumps on the televisions. To get to the place on the bridge where you jump, there yet another bridge which felt about as stable as the Soviet Union in 1987. And 712 feet is a long, long way to fall when you are looking down, so this whole process was mildly terrifying. Once we got to the top of the bridge, my mindset totally changed. They were playing really loud techno to pump everyone up and everyone who had bungy jumped was really excited, and also still alive. As soon as they strapped my ankles in, I knew it was too late to turn back, or even pivot—ankles are pretty key. They helped me hop over to the edge of the bridge and looking out all you could see was the gorge and sky. I was terrified. They started counting down from 5 but I knew that I couldn’t let myself think about it, so before they got down to 1, I jumped. The first few seconds of the free fall I didn’t even know what I was looking at, and then it was a rush of sky and trees and ocean. On the rebound from the bungy cord, I shot back up and then down again and all I could think about was how incredibly silent it was. Finally, after the third bounce, the bungy went taut and I realized I was hanging from my ankles 700 feet from a bride. Looking around and seeing the canopy of trees underneath me, and seeing the river run past and the ocean out in front, I felt like the only person in the world. That made it feel like I could change the world too, if I wanted. I finally realized what everyone meant when they said it was an empowering experience. And then I couldn’t stop laughing.
During the car ride back, all of us were still so excited from the natural high of the jump, or maybe from the glue we sniffed…(if you are future employer and reading this, I’m kidding). We drove into Plettenberg Bay for dinner, which the guidebook described as “the San Tropez of Africa.” It was a very pretty town I figured out where they got the San Tropez analogy when I saw 2 KFCs on the main road—the fried chicken ratio is spot on.
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