Who needs Icarus!
After our exploits into the jungle, and with what can only be described as some form of German Measels over my legs delivered by our small flying friends, we return to the adventure capital of Equador, Baños, for a bit of relaxation and a general day of recovery time.

Or in myself and Vince´s case to risk our lives by jumping of a big bridge.

The set-up was secure enough, in the pub 3 nights previous, a man with a questionable beard approaches:

in a slightly broken accent

" any of you guys fancy jumping off a bridge"

reply:

"sure, can´t imagine any potential problems with that"

Suffice to say it was nearing the end of the night, and with our Dutch daredevil friend leading, my will to resist was small, and my enthusiasm to jump on board any hair brain scheme was large, this fuelled by the consumption of an obscene amount of Banana dhakari(why is it when you go abroad you start drinking absolute nonsence drinks?).

Anyway fast forward to our return to Baños, and the day of the proposed jump. From the original numbers of 6 we now talleyed 4 resolute souls, who were in various stages of conviction, myself obviously the most enthusiastic(it was starting to get pretty windy)

A small family hatchback pulls up in front of the hostel, and we are beckoned into the back seats and the boot, it wasn´t looking good from a safety prospective!
A 10 minute journey down bummmpyy roads, brings us out at a bridge crossing a serious of waterfalls, and more importantly to our surprise a large group of locals. There must have been 50 or so people, whole communities had decided to make this their Sunday afternoon outing, in the hope they would get to see the possible death of some idiotic gringos, who had nothing better to do than loose all perpective on reality.

Let me just explain, this was no bungy jump, no we didn´t get the luxury of a bouncy rope, no we were using climbing aparatus, one end of the rope tied to ourselves and one end of the rope attached to the other side of the bridge. The idea, to superman dive from one side of the bridge, freefall for around 4 seconds, and then hopefully the rope would strain and swing us underneath the bridge creating a kind of giant pendulum action --- pretty fun all in all.

NO --pretty scary all in all

The forementioned badly bearded gentleman(kind of related to him) attached a set of harnesses to me and encouraged me to leave the safety of the ground and stand up on the hand rail of the bridge.
I don´t know if anyone has been in a such a situation, but you really start wishing you had taken that last trip to the toilet, you can´t stand on the hand rail because your legs are shaking, so much so that if you were unassisted, you would just fall off to the fate you don´t want to happen anyway.
Then on the other side of things you´ve got a Dutchman who is doing chicken impressions at you, 2 other friends with cheesy grins and big thumbs up signs, and worst of all the faces of 50 bloody locals who decided that this will be the funniest thing they seen since they descovered a penis shaped banana in there plantation.

The countdown 3,2,1 jump,

and jump I bloody did, I bloody jumped!

Admittedly not the prettiest of jumps, a big slash on my nose, where the rope decided to try and come through my face, but for around 4 seconds I was bravest man in the world, and that much closer to the beeauty of flight.

Will I do it again--- nope!

Side note:

Although we´ve been at altitude for the last 2 weeks, this was the first time Vince used his enhaler--- kind of exilarting!

- posted by Anonymous @ 1:12 PM