The scariest thing I have ever done

Here I was, feet bound, shuffling towards the edge of a bungee platform, absolutely petrified with my heart palpitating, and my head wondering why I had decided to jump off a fully-functioning bridge.

We were at Victoria Falls, World Heritage Listed and otherwise known as ‘Musi-oa-tunya’ or ‘The smoke that thunders’. The falls are 1.7km wide, 108 metres high and reach their peak flow between March and May when the average volume of water rolling over the lip of the cataract is approximately 550,000 cubic metres per minute. As a point of comparison, Khone Falls in Laos is the widest at 10.8km, Angel Falls in Venezuela is the highest at 807 metres and Iguaçu Falls in South America has the greatest volume at 55 million litres per second.

The day started out serenely enough with a 15 minute helicopter flight over the falls.

The falls were almost at maximum volume so the spray coming off them was impressive.

As we circled around the falls, it was interesting to see the zigzag of the gorges and I later learnt that the site of Vic Falls has moved upstream eight times leaving that series of gorges on the way to the present site.

The day then ramped up in excitement with our ‘half day adrenaline’ package consisting of the flying fox, ziplining and two gorge swings.

The flying fox is essentially a horizontal cable that runs across the gorge – you run and jump off a platform and with a clip attached to the harness on your back, fly over the gorge like a bird. Dom took it perhaps a little too literally by flapping his arms up and down and the staff mentioned they’d never seen anyone do that before. Dom and Nev were both naturals and definitely have the knack for jumping off things. Karen held onto the straps which kept her in a more upright position. And I was somewhere in between, holding the straps initially but then letting go one arm at a time and eventually flying like a bird. The view of the gorge on the way back to the platform was spectacular – the river was rushing through below me and an eagle was circling above.

The zipline sent me rushing down into the gorge via a clip attached to the front of my harness and sent me into fits of laughter.

Karen was particularly scared on this one and screamed loudly the entire way down, stopping only to draw breath and then scream again with the full force of her lungs!

The gorge swing was by far the scariest of the three. I was pretty nervous walking up to the edge of the platform and was leaning away from it. The first gorge swing I decided to do as a handstand where you put your hands on the edge of the platform and then someone lifts your legs up while you keep your body straight. Then you get yanked over the edge of the platform. I flipped and plummeted towards the water before swinging back up laughing hysterically and watching the eagle soar overhead. I had a few minutes break so my heart could stop pounding so hard and then got back up on the platform again. I decided to go backwards with my arms crossed over my chest. I was pretty terrified this time and got flipped around, thinking at one point that my leg was going to get twisted in the rope but managing to untangle myself before swinging back up.

As soon as I’d finished, Nev, Andrea, Dom, Josh and I were driven to the Zim/Zam border where we flashed our passports without getting stamped out of the country. As we approached the bridge that lies between the two borders a fine layer of spray from the falls landed on us, quite refreshing in the hot midday sun. Once we were numbered and weighed, we waited our turn in the middle of the bridge. Andrea jumped first though she needed a second countdown from 5 as she didn’t jump the first time ‘round. She screamed the entire way down. Josh jumped next on the count of 3. Dom swan dived off the platform and looked like a natural. Then it was my turn.

So there I was, absolutely petrified, feet bound in thick layers of pink towels, weak at the knees, toes shuffling reluctantly towards the edge of the bungee platform, and wondering why I’m jumping off a perfectly functional bridge.

I’m 30 and I’ve never bungee jumped before, perhaps as I’ve always been told never to bungee as it’s too dangerous. Add to that the recent accident at the same bridge that I’m about to jump off and it’s fair to state that I am crazy. One of the bungee prep guys spent 10 minutes talking to me and trying to convince me that I really wanted to jump off the bridge and that was because I am crazy…  I may well be and I had all the support I could need from Nev and the growing crowd, but I still didn’t want to jump off the bridge. I found myself edging away from the platform instead of towards it, and everything in my head told me not to jump. I gave up. I had failed. I was a complete chicken.

It took me another 10 minutes (and Nev jumping like a natural in between) to talk myself into giving it another go and just doing it. I think I needed that time to compose myself and get over (most of) my nerves. The second time my feet were bound, I had to switch off all the negative thoughts in my head and took more comfort in the prep guy’s words that I was 100% safe. I felt his hand placed gently on my back

and I think gravity took over and I must’ve just fallen (very ungracefully) off the bridge. It’s probably safe to say I didn’t jump – I just bungeed…

I closed my eyes, was too terrified to scream and don’t remember much apart from rebounding at the bottom back high into the air.

I was then alarmed when I fell again, but after several bounces found the humour in it and began to laugh uncontrollably. I then started to spin around and around and only stopped when a guy lowered himself down and clipped me onto a safety rope before hoisting me back up onto the gantry.

My flipflops had been lowered down to it via a rope (much earlier!) and then I walked out over it which was also a little nerve-wrecking as you could see the gorge below. I felt relieved coming back onto the solid bridge and rejoining my friends.

Other people that jumped before us had been raving about how incredible it was to jump through the rainbow. But all of that beauty was lost on me as I was too terrified.

I certainly was not brave but at least I have now bungeed and probably never need to do it again. I thanked the prep-guy profusely and tipped him generously, as I wouldn’t have been able to do it without him.

It took a while to calm down after the jam-packed adrenaline-filled day, and our group sundowner cruise on the Zambezi with free-flowing beer, wine and spirits was the perfect end to a crazy day.

The following day I came back to explore the falls on solid ground. A group of us started out on the Zim side and walked up to Devil’s Cataract where we were amazed by the volume of water gushing down the falls.

We took photos hesitantly and put our cameras away when the spray became a little too heavy – only my little waterproof camera was suitable for taking pics. On the walk up to Danger Point we began to get more and more drenched

and I later had to pay for lunch with water-logged US dollar bills (though they said they’re used to it). From Danger Point, we walked to a lookout over the bridge which had another rainbow under it.

Lee and I then continued on to the Zam side as she and I were the only ones who had second passports – all of us had sent our first passports to our home countries to get Ethiopian visas. This time we got stamped out of Zim and as we crossed the bridge I’d spent so much time on yesterday, I looked over the edge and was still just as petrified thinking about the jump!

The Zam side of the falls

was even wetter than Zim so we rented double-layered raincoats and braved the drenching spray. Some visitors were singing melodiously and dancing in the spray,

others were sliding barefoot across the (smaller) bridge to Livingstone Island.

On the walk back, there was a double rainbow on the other side of the bungee bridge. And now finally, I could appreciate its beauty.