New Zealand pt 5 — Skydiving in Wanaka, Arrowtown

Part 4: https://medium.com/@timothyteoh/new-zealand-pt-4-little-paradise-lodge-f802ea297fe6

We chose Wanaka for tandem skydiving instead of Queenstown because we’d heard the view in Wanaka was better.

There were a few different packages: a 12k-ft or 15k-ft fall, and the choice of videoing the jump with a handheld camera from your tandem jumper, or from a dedicated videographer who would do the jump with you.

We all decided on a 12k-ft fall with a videographer — that was really expensive but we felt recording the jump for posterity would be important.

Mimi didn’t want to do the jump with us at first but she eventually got peer pressured into it haha.

The briefing area was styled like an airplane. We were shown a video briefing and given a checklist of backing tracks to play on our video: an intro song to play while ascending, a song to play when the jump started and a final one when the chute was deployed.

They were all rock songs so I didn’t know any of them except for Mr. Brightside so I jommed that.

We milled around outside for a bit and took pictures.

After all it could be the last time! :p

After a bit we were called to the “departure lounge” where we suited up.

Since all of us were doing the videographer package we were told to draw shoutouts on our hands as well.

My hands are pretty small so I kept it short.

Mimi and Karen had pretty cool videographers who were taking clips of them and being very friendly.

Mine arrived only a minute before takeoff and only asked me a couple questions before we all had to get on the plane. That was a bit disappointing but oh well, I thought.

The jump itself was incredible. During the free-fall phase you don’t really feel it because of the air resistance — it’s more like flying, really. I didn’t manage to feel afraid at all!

My tandem jumper spinned us around a bit before deploying the chute.

Then it was a few minutes or so of floating down with the chute. The views were incredible.

I guess I know what being a bird feels like now.

My legs were very wobbly after landing on the ground and I was still feeling the “high” when my videographer told me to say some things to the camera.

I paid a ton for the video so you’re very welcome to view it at bit.ly/timskydiving :).

Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong about my videographer though. We all thought my video was the best and most professional looking of the lot. I guess his curtness earlier was just him being very efficient as the jumpers all had to go up for another run immediately after ours.

I had a couple other entries in this post about Wanaka and Arrowtown but I think they’ll seem pretty tame now. I’ll put then in another post

We had lunch in a cafe near Lake Wanaka, still giddy from the skydiving. Did some touristy stuff like feeding the birds too.

On the way back to Queenstown we made a pitstop at Arrowtown in the Saffron, which is supposed to be one of the best in New Zealand. @bossming had asked Mimi to buy a cookbook that had been published by its chef. It was sold out unfortunately.

We went back to the cabin and hung out there for a while taking pictures. We’d originally planned to go kayaking but the lake was a bit too rough for that.

We went back into town for dinner. I had a lamb burger from McD (with bacon).

Then it was social media time.

We were taking a tour bus the next day so we headed home early.

You might wonder what Mimi is doing here. She looks like she is warming her butt by the fire or bowing to her phone but she was actually going through this phase where she was really into exercise. She would download exercise programs on her phone and follow them every night.