Skydiving!

Monday, January 11^th.

Today was the best yet and would be very hard to top. Jan Eric, Nicola, Medi and I were picked up at reception by the SkyDive Fox Glacier company. The weather was perfect, sunny, blue skies and warm. We were driven a half hour out of town to their airfield. We were given a brief set of instructions and kitted up. My tandem partner was Piotr from Barrie, Ontario! We talked about that for a bit.

Then Nicola, me and an American with our tandem guides loaded onto the airplane. Jan Eric, Medi and an other guy went up in the next flight. We had to sit in our guide's lap for the flight as they strapped themselves to us. We were going to jump out of a plane at 13 000' and drop at 125 mph! We had a 10 minute flight to think about it as we climbed to our jump altitude. I was amazed that I was not overly nervous. The view from the plane was gorgeous with the snow covered mountains, including Mt. Cook (New Zealand's highest peak) and Mt. Tasman beside it, the Fox Glacier, a few lakes, the ocean in the distance and the fields below. Nicola and her partner were the first out and then it was my turn. Piotr worked us over to the door, had me drop my legs out over the edge, lean my head back on his shoulder and hang on to my harness straps. Then he pushed us out. Instantly we were buffeted by the wind and my mouth was forced open with cheeks flapping as we fell. He gave me a tap on the shoulder and I could stretch out my arms and fly. We fell for 65 seconds before he deployed the parachute at 5000'. It seemed that we were pulled back up by it. As we floated down Piotr gave me the parachute handle straps and I guided us down for a bit turning left and then right. He took over the controls and we made a graceful landing sliding across the wet grass on our bums. Mission accomplished and what an exhilerating ride!

We were quickly driven back up to the airstrip where we got our photos, video and t-shirt and were driven back to town by 9:30. We went to the hotel for our included breakfast and after watching our videos and loading them onto our computers Marie, Jan Eric and I walked across the street to the Franz Joseph Glacier Helicopter company for the next adventure.