Day 7: Swinging in Taupo

We left the majority of the group at Huka Falls to hike into Taupo, while a few of us had more adrenaline-inducing activities to pursue. Jaimie's skydive plans were aborted by cloudy weather. But, Gordy, Aine, and I still had a date at AJ Hackett's Taupo Bungy & Swing.
I really had no intention of taking part in any of the extreme sports invented in NZ, but Aine was desperate for someone to latch onto during her first death-defying leap, so I let her talk me into doing a tandem Swing Jump (NO WAY was I bungy jumping!!).

"What is a tandem swing jump", you ask? Well, somehow I convinced myself that it was a less-scary alternative to bungy jumping, because even though you drop off the same cantilever platform as the bungy, it doesn't involve all the spine-stretching effects of bouncing up and down on the end of giant rubber band. Plus, it eliminates much of the risk of miscalculating physics variables, like how far someone of your weight and height will fall without smacking their face into the river.
Instead, you sit in a harness that's connected to a long cable that lets you freefall for 44m (only 10ft less than the bungy) before it smoothly catches and pendulum swings you across the beautiful Waikato River at 45mph.
One of the swing's other benefits is that you don't need to step off the platform yourself. You just need to sit down in the harness while still over 'solid ground' so that they can winch you out over the drop-zone. You DO get to choose if you want a countdown or not... but big surprise, the cheeky operators usually don't wait until you get to "1" before pulling the release.
We watched Gordy take his warmup swing first, since he was also going to bungy, and we wanted a live demo of what we were in for. I thought it looked like fun, but I got the distinct impression it terrified Aine even more. I managed to remain fairly Zen through all the harnessing and preparations, but I'll freely admit there was a good deal of profanity coming out of my mouth during the drop, and I was unable to release the death-grip I had on the main cable for the entire swing.

On shaky legs and with a general sense of euphoria, Aine and I rushed down the hiking path into the gorge to find a good vantage point to watch Gordy's bungy jump. I blame the adrenaline coursing through our systems on the excessive volume of our reactions to his drop [Consider yourself warned for the attached video]

The travel gods were watching out for us because we managed to hike back up to the main building just before the clouds opened up and started pissing down rain. Thankfully, Sam and Janelle were interested in witnessing our possible demise, so we and several of the faster hikers who had also stopped to watch, hitched a ride with them back into Taupo; avoiding a very wet mile-long walk. We rewarded our bravery with a beer tasting rack and pretzels at the Crafty Trout Brewery before we had to load back onto the bus to drive to Turangi.Read more