Up, Up and Away

Little did I know it but Linda was quite worried when I received my Christmas present from Sarah last year. You will perhaps understand when I tell you that it was a gift voucher which enabled me to jump off a mountain with hopefully, an experienced paraglider, in Cape Town. As for me, I thought what a brilliant present and now to top that one, I'm looking forward to receiving a bungee jumping voucher for my next birthday!!

Anyway, yesterday under crystal clear and beautifully warm South African skies, the moment of truth had arrived as I was scheduled to make my tandem jump. In fairness, this wasn't a new experience as I had previously launched off a much higher mountain in Queenstown, New Zealand.  On that occasion, the flight went beautifully until the latter stages when my pilot sent us into a spiral downwards from a few hundred feet causing me to almost bring back that morning's breakfast as the G forces hit me.  It was close but I managed to retain my stomach contents and a perfect landing was executed.

Part of Linda's worry was that the vigorous health and safety policy in New Zealand might be a touch more lax in South Africa. Well her worries were unfounded as I was introduced to my pilot Mias, who confidently informed me that mine was to be his third tandem jump and that of the first two, only one had gone wrong and his passenger escaped with just a couple of broken ribs.....? I am only joshing about his number of tandem flights but the story about the broken ribs was in fact true.

The funniest thing of the whole event were the preliminaries when I was asked to sign a number of disclaimer documents, the most notable one advising me that parasending was dangerous and on occasions fatal!! I signed all the papers with a smile because I have always gone through life with a fatalistic attitude. If my time's up, so be it and I felt that Table Mountain provided a fitting backdrop if this was the way it was all going to end.

So without further ado, I was strapped into my harness, the umbilical cord was attached to Mias and final instructions were given for launch.  Not even a countdown like an Apollo launch. Walk and when I say, run.....!

A picture perfect take off (despite his heavy load) and away we sailed into the blue skies above Cape Town and its seaside suburbs. Quite simply it was a short but outstanding flight enabling me to get great views of Table Mountain, Signal Hill, Lion's Head and Robben Island where Nelson Mandela had spent so many years in captivity.

I had pre-warned Mias about the spiral effect and great credit to him that he manoeuvred us into a landing position without the need to make me feel sick. Mind you as the photo below demonstrates, it was something of a hard landing and I'm no longer 6'2"!!

In truth it was a picture perfect touchdown and I was tempted to head straight back to the top of Signal Hill to repeat this brilliant experience.

There is a video of my flight which I'm not going to post here but I hope the photos below demonstrate the fun that I had and perhaps serve to explain why I was hyper for the rest of the day as my limited supply of adrenaline coursed around my very old body.

Thanks to Sarah for the opportunity and thanks to Mias from Linda for returning me safely.