Skydiving
If you’re looking for suitable skydiving operations in South Africa, try Skydive Africa where you can search for dropzones throughout the country. On the Garden Route, we narrowed it down to Skydive Mossel Bay or Skydive Plettenberg Bay. The Plettenberg Bay option was slightly cheaper, and, we thought, what an awesome place to jump. That view!!! (Actually, the view is quite immaterial – you are far too terrified to worry about the view!)
- Leave time to reschedule:
We booked online for 10am on a Monday, a week before the end of the holiday, so as to give plenty of time to reschedule if the weather was bad. As it turned out, we had to come back the next day, and we were lucky because the weather closed in after that. I had to skip the beach landing, because the wind had picked up. (Because we didn’t get the beach landing, Skydive Plett gave me a really nice long-sleeved T-shirt (available in black or white) to compensate. Been there, done that....)
- Jump options:
There were several jump options (all tandem!) – from 10 000 feet or 12 000 feet, with/without a DVD and photos, with/without a beach landing –all sorts of ways to scare yourself (w)itless.
And finally,
“So Dashing Instructor Fred, how was it for you?, I asked. “Great,” said Fred, “but I think I’m going to be coughing up hairballs”.
(TIP: If you have any hair at all, TIE IT UP!)
Only trouble is, what is there to look forward to after you have been skydiving? All is boredom and mediocrity now.
Except, maybe, squirrel suit base jumping................... but that’s just nuts!
Suzy goes Skydiving in Plettenberg Bay
I’d always wanted to go skydiving. Well. I say that, but what I mean is I had always TOLD people I wanted to go skydiving, but had never gotten around to organising a jump due to my yellow-belly masquerading as insurmountable logistics.
Imagine my surprise and delight (and fear!) when my parents gave me the gift of gravity for my birthday during a visit to South Africa. They were sneaky about it, and I was caught off guard when the voucher fell out of my birthday card. They had booked it for a few days later giving me plenty of time to stew in my own juices. A few delays in the launch date and time and an aborted attempt on Day 1 (we had to turn the plane around) with Jump Instructor Fred, guaranteed my nerves were in rags by the main event.
Glossing over various safety messages, like How High Will We Go and What Happens If I Pass Out and What Does The Inside Of My Head Look Like, my dashing instructor Fred strapped me up and we were good to go(-ooooooo-ooooo). On our ascent, Fred was very kind, trying to take my mind off what was happening by pointing out rock formations, seals off the coast and interesting-looking cloud formations. I nodded dutifully, but inside I was clawing at the walls thinking WHAT AM I DOING? At last we were at 10,000ft and it was crunch time, although thankfully not in the literal sense. Fred hooked us up, opened the door, and in what has to be the most terrifying moment of my life to date, pushed us out of the plane.
WHATAMIDOINGWHATAMIDOINGWHATAMIDOINGWHATAMIDOING – the ground rushed up at an unnerving rate; yet all the time I was whooping and wishing it would never end. We did a few somersaults and Fred finally managed to coax me off the brink of insanity for an obligatory thumbs up at the camera. When he gave the “wedgie” signal, the chute went up and we gently drifted back to the drop zone.
Fred had told me on the day of the first attempt “Deal with it tonight”, and that’s exactly what happened. As soon as I closed my eyes to go to sleep that night I couldn’t get the image of the earth speeding toward me out of my mind. In fact, I was still “dealing with it” more than a week later, and I have been talking about it non-stop with my (very patient and soon to be ex-) friends ever since. It is without doubt the best thing I have ever done, and I may even find a way around the UK weather and national rail system to do it again. Soon.
Author : Jeannie Taljard
Ask our travel consultant your questions here. She would love to assist.
