yolanda sangphugpha - journeys - new zealand

confessions of a bungy jumper

Adventure was the last thing on my mind when I saw the BUNGY! sign on the road into Queenstown. I'd had a brutal day on the bike, and I was dying for a break from the sun-baked hills and headwinds. The AJ Hackett Bungy parking lot happened to be a perfect spot to weeble-wobble to a stop and collapse on a bench. When my legs stopped feeling like silly putty, I followed the music and the whoops and hollers over to the jump site. One by one, white-legged tourist were bailing off the 143 foot bridge spanning the Kawarau Gorge, and dropping like rocks toward the shallow snake of river at the bottom.

I don't know why I wanted to jump, exactly. But looking over the edge into the nauseating depths, fascination got the best of disdain. The bungy jumpers could rightly be called crazy, but not faint-hearted. Obviously, we're not talking about the sustained courage of a Sir Edmund Hillary on Everest, but something more like the guts to do a cannonball off the summer pool high dive from hell. Still, the obvious question arises. Why squander your courage on a bungy cannonball?

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