Lariam nights

….. no more dreams and forgot to publish this about 4 months ago. Needless to say, I’m back at work now and Namibia seems a long time ago…..

A pause in travelling and camping came in the form of Swakopmund, a German town in the middle of the desert. Driving down from the Skeleton Coast it was hard to see how a town could exist in the conditions around us. Desert to left, dunes to the front, freezing cold ocean to the right and barren wasteland behind. But exist Swakopmund does, and it has taken advantage of its position and become the adrenaline capital of Africa.

On arriving in Swakopmund, I was a little doubtful of how I would spend our four days there as I could hardly describe myself as an adrenaline junky. When we joined the trip in Victoria Falls most of the people on board went off to bungee jump, gorge swing or take part in a number of other activities which involved throwing themselves off a bridge. I was in no way interested saying that the only thing I’d be willing to jump off was plane – not really believing my own words at the time. Upon hearing about the skydiving and without really thinking about it, I had told everybody on board that I’d be jumping and when the activities briefing took place, I found myself not only signing up for the skydiving but also quadbiking and sandboarding.

Unfortunately, I once again found myself under the weather. Ever since I joined the trip, I had a cough which got worse and worse with every passing day. By the time we had reached Swakopmund it had evolved to a full blown chest infection and me being dragged to the medical centre by Gracey (the tour guide) who it turned out was in a far worse state than me. The night before Gracey had been stung by something in his sleep. The assumption was that it must be a scorpion but whatever it was it made him dizzy and feverish. The doctor saw Gracey first and was far less concerned about the sting than he was about the staph infection he believed had resulted. Gracey was given antibiotics and sent to bed where the infection got worse, his whole leg swelled up, he couldn’t walk and ended up visiting the hospital twice. So, when we left Swakopmund, he had to stay behind until the doctor gave him the all clear. Jess became our new tour guide.

As for me, I was diagnosed to have Bronchitis and was given my own antibiotics and a special cough syrup compound. The doctor enquired as to whether I would be taking it easy for the following few days to which I replied that I was actually intending to jump out of a plane. His response was “lekker” which I took as professional approval and confirmation that screaming at the top of your lungs is in no way hazardous to your health when you have bronchitis.

The next day, still without really having thought about it, I found myself in a van on the way to the airport having signed all the release forms and paid N$1,900 (£190) to be flung out of a plane. There was a weight limit of 100kg which given I was 110kg come the end of the cricket had me a little worried. Luckily it seemed I had lost 15kg by the time I’d reached Victoria Falls and they said there would be no problem for me to jump. The only concern was that because of the weight I might be in for a rough landing unless the wind picked up and therefore I’d have to jump last at wait for that to happen.

The plane could only take two jumpers and their tandems at a time, with each trip up and down taking over half an hour. I had to wait over two hours and look up to the plane 10,000 ft up in the sky as little dots fell out the opening in the side and hurtled towards the Earth at a startling rate (supposedly accelerating from 0 to 220kmph in 3 seconds). The whole time I waited I wondered when it was that I would get nervous. A few times I thought “what am I getting myself into” but then the next pair would land, say how scary the flight up was and how amazing the fall was. So, I waited, hit a few golf balls, waited some more, hit more golf balls, saw the next victims jump, waited some more and then finally got kitted up for my jump.

The crew had recently purchased a new parachute which was for heavier tandems. The chute itself is supposedly the same size but the small chute they release when leaving the plane was meant to be larger to reduce the impact of opening the main chute. Having just finished his last jump, my tandem introduced himself, had a cigarette as the plane was refuelled and then we went with Louisa, her tandem and her cameraman and crammed onto the tiny plane. Upon setting foot in the plane Louisa began to freak out but still I was oddly calm. I’m not sure whether my brain hadn’t registered what I was getting myself in for but somehow I was looking out the open side of plane at the dunes below, taking photos and joking with the crew as Louisa got more and more freaked out.

The accent lasted 25 minutes and then the engine sound changed which indicated we had slowed to jumping speed and I was pushed towards the opening where I had about half a second to realise what it was I was doing “OH FU…..” and then we were out. Tumbling through the air I couldn’t work out which way was up and which was down and was too disoriented to even scream. After a couple seconds I remembered what I was supposed to do with my arms and legs and then began to enjoy the free-fall and the feeling of travelling at over 200kmph. I gave thumbs up to my tandem and then it was over. 30 seconds of free-fall seemed like two and the tandem had pulled the cord. For the first time since leaving the plane, I could hear him again as he asked if I’d enjoyed myself. What I didn’t register at the time was just how much effort he was putting into pulling of the cords of the chute. I had looked up and seen the chute open and hadn’t thought that anything could be wrong. As he battled with the cords I simply figured that it was normal just after opening that it was hard to get aligned and to be honest, was more thinking about how awesome the free-fall was. I thought he was just being friendly when he said “So you enjoyed that huh – would you like to do it again?”, fuelled with adrenaline I responded the only way anyone would “Fuck yeah”….. at which point he cut the cords on our main chute and we were free-falling again. THAT is when I freaked out. The others had said how once they were under the parachute their tandem would release a couple of the restraints which connected them which gave them a momentary feeling of dropping. I thought for a split second that was what he’d done but then I kept falling. I couldn’t feel him behind me any more, I was alone and falling…. fuck! That second free-fall must have lasted only two or three seconds before the reserve parachute opened but it seemed far longer than the first . “What the….?” was about all I could get out and the tandem explained that I had said I wanted to do it again so he thought it would be fun to cut away the first chute. I couldn’t believe him and he laughed and said that the main parachute had got tangled and was wrapping around itself so he had to cut it free. I asked what would happen if the reserve didn’t work…. “The reserve chute always works!”

When we reached the ground there was a lot of confusion as to what had happened as everybody watching had seen this other chute disappear and then the stories began. Supposedly that was the first time in two years that they had to use a reserve parachute. Later I heard that the last time they did have a problem somebody died. Somebody else said that 9 out of 10 times they’ve needed a reserve chute is when it is heavy people like me. Another said that a friend had done over 10,000 jumps and only needed their reserve 14 times. From all of this I reckoned that the chance of a parachute failing or developing a problem is less than 0.1%, and it just had to happen to me. I felt a little sorry for the people that had just arrived and had to go up after me hearing all about my near death experience, which is of course the story that I told for the rest of the evening “I nearly died!” might have come out of my lips on one or two occasions even though I knew nothing about it and was never in any great danger. My tandem was brilliant, not only was he battling with the parachute, trying to untangle it, working out that it was screwed, pulling out a knife to cut it away and getting ready to pull the reserve, but he was also talking to me the whole time, not letting on that there was a problem, asking me questions, joking and laughing. I can’t say that I would like to be in that position again but doubt I will ever be quite so jubilant in the midst of the impending disaster unfolding around me.

I was still buzzing the following afternoon when we went quadbiking on the dunes. They had three types of quad, 125cc automatic bikes for novices, 250cc fully manual bikes for those who’d ridden motorbikes before and 250cc semi manual bikes which were slightly easier as they didn’t require holding in the clutch which we were advised were the best. So, everybody raced for the semi manual bikes. I was keen to go fast but worried about jumping on a fully manual having never ridden a motorbike before. The lead guide said that if we could drive a car it wouldn’t be a problem and after 10 minutes of frustration I agreed with him. Manual was definitely the way forward. It took a little getting used to pressing the clutch with one hand, changing gears with one foot, braking with the other and accelerating with the other hand but once everything was aligned we were flying. A few people in my original group kept having problems so at the half way stage I joined the adrenaline junky group with the main guide. He spent most of the time on one or two of his four wheels and enjoyed showing off but also took us up some fantastic dunes. To start with I was a little nervous of driving up the near vertical face of a dune and waiting for the power to die before turning and flying back down following a roller-coaster style line, but that didn’t last long. Once I got a little worried about flying over a dune as I hit a bump and didn’t think I’d be able to turn in time but ended up fairing better than another guy in our group who crashed into a rogue bit of grass in the desert and did a spectacular face plant into the sand. The two hours raced by and in the end definitely filled my new found adrenaline craving.

The last activity was sandboarding. I had initially said there was absolutely no chance of me doing it but after seeing the introduction video I’d done a 180° and was definitely doing it. Back in 2004 in Western Australia I’d sat on a skateboard (with no wheels) and it was pretty rubbish. This sandboarding was completely different, we had to lie down on pieces of Formica which were polished with wax. There were 6 different runs of varying steepness with the fifth being the all important one where the speed gun was brought out. For this run all those who chose to do proper sandboarding (ie. Snowboarding on sand) joined the rest of us. I went down first and clocked 72kmph which was a long way off the fastest recorded at 82kmph and not enough to win the day which went to Lizzie with 76kmph. Included in the trip was a dvd of the day and lunch which made it extremely good value at half the price of quadbiking and 1/8 the price of skydiving, but it appears that in the adrenaline world you get what you pay for, in my opinion all three were value for money but nothing quite compared to that feeling of being pushed out of a plane over the desert.