After our morning game drive, and when I say morning I mean 5am morning(!), I eagerly called up Plett Skydiving to check out the conditions for a sky dive. I couldn’t believe it – it was on! We were supposed to be driving back to Cape Town (a good 9-10 hours from Shamwari) to get some rest before catching an early plane to Doha the next day but Jules was nice enough to let me try and fit in a sky dive before departing the beautiful country that is South Africa. It was a blessedly gorgeous day but it failed to occur to me that it was Friday the 13th until one of the skydiving dudes pointed it out to me! Thanks buddy!

Even though we go to the sky dive place fairly early in the afternoon it wasn’t until closer to sunset that I dove. It was pretty cool though as I got to know the little group of skydivers who either work as skydivers or simply hang around just cause its there thing. Its like this funny little community and they were all so friendly and helpful and full of advice.

Flying up to 10,000 feet in this little baby plance was just amazing with a beautiful beautiful sunset. The plane was packed to capacity as well which added to the fun. I opted for a tandem sky dive because no way was I going to trust myself to be able to pull the cord at the right time! It was just a shame I couldn’t convince Jules to come up with me. Jumping out of the plane was a bit hairy because I had to step out onto a ledge without holding on to anything. Technically I was connected to my instructor but I thought with my weight I’d pull him out with me before he was ready! It didn’t happen though thank goodness.

Its hard to explain how it felt coming out the plane. Awesome. Extraordinary. Magnificent. Standout. Sick. Over too quickly!!!

At 10,000 you get about 35 seconds of free fall but it went by just like that and even once our canopy had gone up it still felt like we were dropping very quickly and it was over before I knew it.

Unfortunately due to condensation the freefall part of the jump was obscured but here is most of my video anyway (I guess this means I’ll just have to jump again 🙂 ):