Skydiving has been on my bucket list for more than 3 years now, ever since a friend of mine went into raptures over her skydive in Arizona.
I was fascinated by the idea of jumping out of an aircraft to experience a feeling of total freedom, but somehow I never ended up having enough spare money to afford this kind of adventure and therefore had to postpone it to “one day”. And as we all know “one day” is mostly never going to happen… Therefore, I decided on Saturday to listen to my inner voice and turn this imaginary day in the future into “tomorrow”. I’ve simply ignored the fact that basically I still don’t have the money for it and instead made an appointment to spontaneously accompany my roommate Shannon the next day.
Sometimes you just need to do what makes you happy…
On Sunday morning we were picked up by our cab and driven to our destination about 40 minutes outside of Cape Town. Once we arrived we had to fill in a form and were told that we were next – so luckily no time to become nervous before our upcoming “leap in the dark”. Our instructors shortly welcomed and briefed us and after we put on our gear we were ready for take-off. Together with another girl and her guide the 6 of us squeezed into the small aircraft. For about 20 minutes we slowly soared into the air and enjoyed the view of the shimmering sea and beautiful scenery below us.
Contrary to expectations I didn’t feel nervous at all and was only looking forward to this incredible experience…having such a handsome instructor to jump with might have helped. And knowing the fact that he already did this more than 6000 times might have been advantageous as well. Then the time had come – the door slowly opened and we were about to jump off that plane. I sat at the edge, looked down, knew I couldn’t change anymore what was going to happen…
…and then we hit the silk!
30 seconds of free fall and all I could do was to close my eyes and scream.. After a few seconds of screaming I realised that I was still alive (what a big surprise), so I opened my arms and felt free as a bird!
“If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.”
– Coco Chanel
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