12,000 feet above Wanaka

Speed: 60 meters per second

View towards Lake Wanaka

View on the Clutha River

The end of 2011 is near – time to recapitulate a bit more (note: blog post first published in December 2011 on my old Posterous blog “Hitting The Road”). And so I figured it would be a good occasion to write about my biggest personal victory of the year: Skydiving in Wanaka, New Zealand.

Since years I have been telling around that one day I was going to try Skydiving. So far, I just always had some good excuses not to… But everything changed in October this year: I had another volunteer to join me and we were blessed with a blue sky on a windstill day when we passed the Skydive Center on our way to Wanaka.

In retrospect, there wasn’t much thinking involved; things went rather fast. We had one hour time between the sentence “Let’s have a short stop at this center and get some information on Skydiving” and the moment when we were both strapped to some beautiful strangers that made us jump out of a plane 12,000 feet above Wanaka. Scared? Hell, yes! I remembered why I had always searched for good excuses not to try Skydiving…

But the adrenaline and Otago’s scenery did their job. After a free fall with up to 60 meters per second, I enjoyed floating and hanging in the ropes with a view towards Mt Cook, Lake Wanaka and the Clutha River. If you asked me, I would repeat that trip anytime and be much less stressed about it.

Thank you Skydive Center Wanaka for the awesome photo memories!