Kia Ora!

Well, where should we start with our Taupo experience! We drove to Taupo from Hamilton on Monday afternoon and headed straight to 'Freefall' where we wanted to do our skydive as we were eager to get it booked up. There were free spaces but the weather was poor and they hadn't been flying due to the cloud cover and rain. We were disappointed that the weather had turned against us but decided to book in for 11am the following day and kept everything crossed. Despite the dull day, we decided to make the most of Taupo by visiting the Huka Falls, which were quite impressive due to the sheer volume of water gushing through the rocks. Later, we drove around the small town of Taupo in search of somewhere cheap to stay, thanks to our dwindling funds, and came across 'Rainbow Lodge'. We were really surprised by how nice the hostel was and we were back in a dorm room for the first time in a while, but it was only a four bed dorm which was quite nice! We tucked up for the night and loaded a film onto the laptop before falling asleep.

We woke up fairly early to the sound of pouring rain. We rang 'Freefall' who informed us the 11am flight wouldn't be running, not that we were surprised, and that we could reschedule for 1pm. As we are now coming to the end of our travels, our funds are very much budgeted so we decided we'd go and get some food from Pak'n'Save and we spent the whole day in the car by Lake Taupo. We continued to ring 'Freefall' with no luck but got the last slot of the day with a 5pm booking. We sat and watched as the weather cleared up, the sun came out and it became a beautiful day - it was so clear in fact that we were able to watch skydivers who were lucky enough to get a 2-4pm slot tumble from the sky and paraglide down. That was until 4.30pm when it began to pour down once more. We were miserable at the thought of having to waste yet another day anxiously waiting to skydive but we rang once more to be told they might still be going ahead as the weather was clearing quickly. We drove straight to the 'Freefall' building and signed ourselves in.

We made ourselves comfortable, chose which package we would be going with and before we knew it we were being kitted out in bright red jumpsuits, leather caps and harnesses. We were told that there was still a possibility that we wouldn't get up in the plane and not to get too excited, which Sophie ignored and got overly excited! We were given a brief safety talk before we were teamed up with the professionals; Sophie with Karl and Kie with Benny.

'Freefall' and the other skydiving companies are so close in proximity that they share flights if there are too few people to fill a plane. Although we were supposed to have a yellow plane, Sophie was delighted to be sharing the bright pink plane with 'Skydive Taupo'. Finally we were all ready to go at 6.15pm; we boarded the plane and began the 25 minute ascent over Lake Taupo, tightly packed in to the small plane. Not only were there the skydivers and their tandem partners but also the camera crew too, along with a couple of 'Skydive Taupo' skydivers. Before we knew it, we were ready to go. The door opened and the jumps started; they leave about 5 seconds per person to jump! Kie was second to last and Sophie was last; not through choice but we were put in the plane first! Sophie watched Kie as he launched out and in no time at all she was joining him. During the freefall you drop 10,000ft in 60 seconds which is pretty mind boggling! Needless to say G-Force was working well at this point and some of the photos are less than pretty! Once the parachute is released you are flung back up before you gently glide down to terra firma. Kie was lucky enough to have a very chilled out jumper who chatted to him about the area from start to finish while Sophie was lucky enough to be able to take over the control of the parachute and paraglide around for a few minutes before Karl took over to land.

We were back on the ground within minutes and it all went so quickly. We had an amazing time and our skydiving experience lived up to and exceeded our expectations! We LOVED it! We waited around for our DVD, photos and free t-shirt before we made our way back to Delilah, to drive back to Hamilton for the night.

Lots of love, Sophie and Kie xx