Give a man enough rope (January '03)

My Contiki bus pulled out of Arrowtown, New Zealand, about 11am on a sunny January day. The group had had a mid morning stop at the town to look around, but it was sold to us by our guide as a chance to stock up on some dutch courage - on tap at the local bar, open this time of the morning probably only to serve this demand. Years later I'd find out that most dutch people were completely unaware that we made jest of them in this way in the southern hemisphere. Never the less, I stayed away from the beers that morning, certainly not because it was before midday, but because I was sure it would only make what I was about to do that much more messier.

I was headed to a bridge between Arrowtown and Queenstown - a small but famous bridge: the home of the bungy jump. Only to "look" of course... my parents had forbade me to jump off that bridge in the weeks leading up to the trip. But I was 22, and over 2500kms away from their influence here in New Zealand. Of course I wasn't bloody here to look.

Checking in at a building nearby, I paid my dues and walked myself down to the orderly queue stretching to the centre of the bridge. I reviewed the score card I'd been given when I weighed in; 73.5kgs, clothed. Yep, I was still a beanpole. Leaning up against the rail, I followed the screams echoing up from the canyon down to a body dangling above the river surface below. Yep, I was still going to do this.

It takes a while to properly strap someone to a bungy cord, cross check, get them to the edge and coax them to jump. Not everyone is so keen when they're standing on the edge looking down. That's where the challenge of bungy differs so much from other experiences with height - no one is going to push you over that edge, you have to decide to jump. A girl further up the line got all the way to that edge before she decided it just wasn't for her, and the crew dutifully brought her back from the brink, unstrapped her, and sent her back to the office for a refund. The waiting line of people smiled sympathetically as the queue shortened this way. Some don't make it even that far: sometimes being at the head of the queue and watching someone disappear right in front of you is enough to send you on the walk.

My turn at the head of the queue was spent with my fellow travelers trying to lend what encouragement we could to our friend who was struggling to reconcile her pact with gravity. Shaking, she stood at the edge for a long time, convinced she couldn't do it. Scared of death or permanent injury, the crew did their best to reassure her that she'd still be alive in another 30 seconds. A few tense minutes and she'd managed to roll her self over the edge. We all knew she was okay, because the screaming went on much longer than the fall could possibly have taken.

I clipped into a safety harness and stepped beyond the rail. Sitting down on a small platform perched just below the level of the bridge, I handed over my weight card. The guy running the show then asked me: "Would you like to get wet". I heard this question asked many times in the preceding 20mins, so far no one had taken him up on the offer. For most people it's enough to just get yourself over the bridge. I replied to him, "I'd like to keep my shoes dry". A wry smile came across his face - one that I've gotten to know well in businesses like this. The "game on!" smile.

A towel wraps around my legs before a carefully selected rope comes close to cheaply amputating both my feet at the ankles. All the while I'm receiving my crash course in bungy: "Now, to hit the water, you don't want to jump out, you want to just roll over the edge.", "Put your hands forward into a dive to break the surface tension of the water", "and most importantly, chin to chest when you hit the water. We don't want any snapped necks today".

Two of the crew held me steady while I lifted my legs up to the edge of the platform. They released me from their grip, and I was now standing out there; just me, the fresh mountain air and the river. As directed, I looked up to the camera perched on top of the canyon wall over to my left, struck a pose, then returned my undivided attention to the Kawarau river below. It flowed at a moderate pace, small eddies of current giving the moment shape as it bubbled downstream. I took a deep breathe and let myself roll forward into its arms.

Leaving my stomach on the platform, the river's surface sped towards me before the rope caught and pulled me into a sharp deceleration. By not jumping out, you get none of the rag-doll whiplash as characterized by any decent media beat-up of adventure sport. With the pin-drop, the rope starts to stretch much closer to the water, and the water... it still approaches oh so fast. Holding my arms in a dive I strike the surface nearing the end of the rope's elasticity, my head, stupidly forgotten as an appendage that needs proper positioning, is still looking at the water and gets pulled uncomfortably back as it passes the boundary. Ice cold mountain water exploded into my sinuses through my nose, temporarily curing me of the hay fever that had, and would go on to plague me for the length of that holiday.

For that split second where motion doesn't exist, my body was held immersed in New Zealand's finest yet-to-be bottled - up to about my waist.

But as fast as I came to be here, I was wrenched back out again - flying halfway back up to the deck above, only to become weightless again. With outstretched arms, I brush my hands across the surface of the water when i reach full stretch this time. Bouncing upside down less and less, my weight comes into a slow swing ten or so meters from the water.

Dripping with icy water, I let my arms hang towards the water as I took the experience in - semi aware of the inflatable boat that was now approaching with the flow from up stream. Two sets of hands guided me to a safe head first landing as the rope lowered me down to the craft. The pressure on my ankles was released before the boat was winched back against the current to the launching point. "How was it?" I'm asked by the crew. Bloody amazing.

Full of adrenaline, I took the stairs two at a time back up the canyon to my girlfriend, who carried both a towel and an expression of mock disapproval. She'd been worried for a time, but had quickly come around.  It would take the folks much longer to forgive me, but luckily this being at the beginning of the trip, telling them immediately allowed them this time while I was off doing other stupid things.

No, you don't let disapproval stop you. You just plan for it.

Hunting the Whaleshark (July '08)

In 2008, about the time I had planned to be swimming with the world's biggest fish, I was instead sitting at a BBQ table, legs pulled up on the seat, drinking goon from a blue plastic picnic mug.

I was devastated.

Lyndall and I had traveled all this way for only the purpose of this swim, and a near monsoonal front was delivering high wind and rain, buffeting down on our hostel. The covered BBQ area that we occupied only transferred the odd spray of rain towards our centrally placed table, which was an island above the uniform three inches of water that covered the entire courtyard. The goon was cheap and made the situation easier to bare, even if the real cost is always paid the next morning.

The root problem was that said hostel was in very close proximity to the body of water our boat could only operate on in swells less than three metres, and it appeared that conditions weren't going to be favourable for days to come. Aside from trying unsuccessfully to stay dry, we spent that afternoon trying to rearrange our trip to accommodate this disaster.

The town was Exmouth, and the month was July. Hundreds of kilometers from anywhere, it's a town whose prominence rests on the nearby coastline, which is home to the longest fringing coral reef in the world - Ningaloo. It's not an easy place to get to by any means, and we'd shacked up overnight in Perth waiting for our connecting prop plane to convert lots of our hard earned cash into the 1500kms between the two. What books the hotels around here solid at this time of year is that this is the only place in the world that multitudes of whaleshark reliably congregate each year, for the grand and worthy purpose of nomming on bucket-loads of delicious plankton.

Vlamingh Head Lighthouse

Planning to drive back to Perth over the next week and a half, the weather proved to be a considerably large spanner. Exmouth is a miserable place to be waiting when you can't go outside, so the next best option we were facing was to instead spend a week traveling to Broome and back - then trying our luck with the weather in Exmouth one more time, before significantly increasing the profit outlook on the local regional airline for our passage back to Perth. Luckily our worries were unfounded with the weather coming good the next day, so we found ourselves instead waiting out in the Indian Ocean on a boat.

Cape Range NP

That's because hunting whaleshark is all about waiting. Despite the numbers in the area, its not every day they decide to venture to the surface for a feed. Planes fly the coast daily to spot whaleshark for the flotilla of vessels full of tourists like us. After killing a few hours snorkeling inside Ningaloo, the call came through that the banquet was being held some fourty kilometres to the south. And then the waiting starts a new.

Some two hours later our boat joined the small queue of craft waiting to dump their passengers into the path of the whaleshark. It's a very orderly process; when your boat gets to the front of that queue, they get to drop the regulated ten people into the water who then madly kick as long as they can to keep up with the shark once it passes them. The boat then circles back and picks up passengers when they've fallen from the trail.

It's a daunting feeling, sitting on the rear of the vessel waiting to hit the water. It's certainly not like you could do-it-yourself and swim from the shore. We're kilometers out to sea, and the rich, dark blue abyss extends to eternity beneath you. Even a seasoned madman like me gets to wondering what else might be lurking in those depths. Or if the plane mistakenly called in an oversize tiger shark.

But you don't come this far and hesitate, so I'm soon in the spreading wake of the boat, kicking in the direction I had to blindly accept as the correct one. At first you can't see much more than the turbulence kicked up by the flippers of your fellow swimmers, but as you spread out, you find yourself staring expectantly into the open water. It's hard not to let your heart race when you see shadow and shape forming from the sapphire haze, especially a mass as big as a whaleshark.

The first priority is to get out of its way. Aside from not wanting to collide with its bulk or its largely inert but potential power, swimming straight at the sharks tend to make them dive for deeper water. Being eaten isn't of so much concern unless you're near the size of a phytoplankton. Safely out of its path, the goal is then to turn and swim with the animal for as long as you can keep up.

The whaleshark is a slow and graceful beast in the marine world. Their enormous mass glides easily through the water on a tail movement that could best be described as "Sunday morning stroll". That said, it is incredibly hard for human legs to come anywhere near matching their slow pace. But its and incredibly serene experience to share the water with the gentle giant.

Falling off the trail, you bob around in the water with your co swimmers waiting for the boat, hoping that safety in numbers means something to whatever else could be swimming beyond your vision. Then you keenly await your next drop off.

(this isn't just some random's video... we're in there somewhere)

With six or seven drops, there's so many ways to enjoy the experience. Swimming alongside the sharks massive, drooping pectoral fin - stopping in the water to just watch it pass - slipping into its wake and watching the gentle but powerful movement of its tail. But no matter how you wish for more, six or seven swims is enough to exhaust any but the most accomplished Olympic swimmer. By the end it's a real effort to pull yourself back onto the deck.

At the end of the day it's a long way home, but it's easy enough to loose time starring back across the waves after a solid experience like that. A large tray of nibblies often helps, too. Beers are had in the warm tropical air that night, a sense of comfort returning to the trip. And in twelve hours we'd be jammed into our Hyundai Getz, cruising south again on the open red plains, searching for the next box to tick.