I estimated the platform to be about 20m high, with 11 jumping platforms. The platforms break as the vine draws taught to help absorb some of the energy. The idea is for the jumper's hair to brush the ground...No-one was injured, while we were there, but in 1974 Queen Elizabeth II visited the island outside of the usual jumping season and a jump was performed for her during which one of the jumpers died.
Funnily enough the guys jumping seemed to be much more worried about their penis sheath coming off during the jump than anything else. This happened to one unfortunate guy, who got laughed at by the whole village and ran off into the jungle. It was a great atmosphere, with the local villagers outnumbering the tourists.
There are better videos of land diving than the one I took above on YouTube.
On the way to Pentecost we flew over Ambrym, which was spectacularly active, putting out a huge cloud of ash (incidentally, given that air travel over Europe has been halted due to Eyjafjallajokull's ash cloud, we were all fairly worried that we just flew through it...). In any case we got a great view of the volcano, and even saw the pool of lava in the crater. That's right, I saw frickin lava.
It was a great day, it is amazing how much you can pack in with your own charter plane to whiz between islands!
2 comments:
That bungee jumoing is frickin' awesome!
they are still doing this?!
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