Friday February 18, 2011- The Start to the most fascinating 24 hours of my life.

It is hard to describe how beautiful the Cape Town port is.  The closest thing I can describe it to is Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.  You look around the port and there are restaurants and retail stores everywhere around.  My pictures are fantastic and I can’t wait to post them to my blog and to Facebook.  Since my Operation Hunger trip was canceled that day, and I had a lack of anything else planned, we decided to go straight to Table Mountain, which is a must do in South Africa.  I was getting ready in my cabin to disembark the ship when I received a call from my roommate Charlie.  He asked me what I was about to do and I told him about Table Mountain.  He then hit me with a question which made me near soil myself.  “Do you want to jump out of a plane instead?”  So yeah.  That’s what I did.  Let me just start by saying that over the past 5 years I have very much inherited my mother’s fear of heights.  When I was younger…not a problem but for some reason it has become progressively worse.  The entire week leading up to Cape Town there was talk of people going skydiving.  Although I was so so so nervous to do it, I could not help to think that this is Semester At Sea, and the time to try something I never thought I would.  I even had one booked for Sunday with Steph Lavallato.  In fact I was going to put my credit card down that night just so I did not back out.  But the thing that killed me is that I was going to have it in the back of my mind and be nervous about it all weekend, and presented with the option of jumping in less than one hour of getting off of the ship was just too perfect to pass up, plus the perfect opportunity to rub it in Bryan’s face because I know how long he has wanted to do this.  Get it over with and enjoy the rest of your stay. 
        We were all freaking out.  Quite funny actually to see how afraid all of us were.  Joe Vassel, Jazmin Lopez, Sarah Larocca, Ricki something, and Charlie De Mar.  We took a 45 minute cab ride there which turned out to be the worst part of it.  Each of us made videos thanking our parents for giving us life…kind of a joke but not really…regardless, they got deleted once we all made it down alive.  Oh and we got put with some other girls from SAS.  This girl named Megan? Her mom went with us, what a crazy ass mom.  Like seriously I felt like such a little B complaining how scared I was and her 50 year old mother was doing the same thing.  We got there and the excitement was through the roof.  We were 50 minutes into stepping foot in South Africa and about to board a plane to jump out.  That is crazy.  I was picked to go in the first group of 3 because we did not want a video taken of us.  I contemplated buying it but decided an experience such as this was more of a personal goal, and something I did not wish to show off.  Especially for an extra R650 it would have cost me (glad I gave that exchange rate at the top so I don’t have to use parentheses anymore right?!?)  Anywho the first group was myself, Jazmin, and Joe.  After getting strapped in our harness we boarded the plane.  Smallest plane ever.  6 of us were sitting in each other’s laps while climbing to 9000 feet.  It was eerie how calm we all were on the way up.  Leading up to this on the car ride here and the whole last week, I pictured myself as being a nervous wreck in that plane.  Puking, crying, crapping/pissing my pants…All the above.  In reality, it was the weirdest thing how not nervous any of us were.  Conversations consisted of everything from the 2010 World Cup to the girl/guy ratio on our ship.  My tandem jumper was reading a book on the way up… that is when I knew I would be safe. We had a beautiful plane ride up with pristine views of all of Cape Town including Table Mountain and  Robbin Island.   After about 15 minutes when we hit 8300 feet, they began clipping the hooks from our harness on to their own.  A little bit more nervous at this point because you know when we start getting everything connected we are close to dropping.  I asked how long until we jump.  “30 seconds.” I sharted.  About 10 seconds after that when everyone was hooked up the first guy opened up the door to the plane.  That is one scary moment when you hear that engine and feel the wind whip through the plane.  At this time Joe and his guy made their way to the edge of the plane.  We had to follow a technique where our guy sits at the edge with both our legs out and we curl ours around the bottom of the plane.  A thumbs up from his instructor, a little push out, and they were gone.  Unless you have ever skydived before, you have no idea what it is like to see your friend drop out.  They are just instantly gone, it is crazy.  My turn.  Follow the same procedure and make my way with my instructor to the edge and curled my legs around the bottom.  It was the most nervous moment right here when I looked out at the ground 9000 feet down and for the first time, realized I was actually going to do this.  Sounds funny but up to that very point I could have backed out.  Right now there was nothing I could possibly do to avoid the situation.  I tilted my head back on his shoulder as I was instructed.  Not three seconds later I heard the words behind me that will stick with me for a long long time. “Here we go.”  We dropped out.  Again, if you have not been skydiving you cannot possibly know what the next few seconds felt like.  That initial drop out of the plane and your first feeling of free fall is the SINGLE most surreal moment I have ever had.  It is weightlessness for about 4-5 seconds and I felt mad love in my tummy.  After that it is almost like you are not free falling but rather just going against a ton of wind.  We were in the typical free fall position with my arms and legs out when my instructor dipped his right arm and we spun like a top….like really really fast.   After about 30 seconds of free fall I felt the harness loosen up on my shoulders a bit.  I was so overwhelmed with the moment of the free fall that I had forgotten a parachute was involved.  A split second of panic followed by the relief of knowing the jerk that I felt was from the pulling of the chute.  I have no idea how many “OMG’s” I dropped during the fall but it had to top 20.  The next 4-5 minutes consisted of the best view of the city I could possibly imagine.   I thought the best part of the jump was over at that point as I looked above me to see Jazmin’s chute being pulled.  Then my instructor handed me the handles to control the chute and told me to yank one down as hard as I could.  I gave it a tug and we fell into a vertical whip down.  I got scared and brought it back up.  I asked him how far of a tug is too far and he told me that I could not pull it far enough.  I gave the right handle my strongest pull down that I possibly could and we fell into an even tighter whip.  The G-forces you experience during that whip are pretty spectacular.  Unfortunately I was not paying attention and pulled to for too long.  We slammed into the ground at about 73 MPH.  Nah that didn’t happen.  We landed safely after that.  From stepping on land off the boat to landing on land, was about a 1 hour 55 minute process.  Greatest start ever to 5 full days in Cape Town.
Bryan and anyone else who is thinking about it, the experience is worth every penny you put into it.  I would suggest doing it ASAP.