Bungee Jumping

In pretty much any given action film involving heights the hero or heroine is pretty much guaranteed to be given the time-honoured advice of 'don't look down'. When you stand there at the top of a bungee jump and peer downwards you know exactly why they say that, and why it is as pointless a piece of advice as its close cousin 'don't panic'. You can't help but look down - whether or not you suffer from vertigo, we all have a fascination with the fear of falling. Look down just once and your stomach contracts to the size of a walnut. Every tube in your body goes into an agony of indecision about whether to lock down like a bear trap or open up and let fly. Look around and all you'll see is the hearty grins of those not about to jump. At which point someone will probably say something inane like 'ready?' and that's it, you're off: arms, legs and pretty much everything else akimbo.

Bungee jumping goes way back. The first bungee jumpers most probably came from the small islands of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. The story varies slightly depending on who's doing the telling but the bottom line is that it became a rite of passage; young men on the threshold of manhood would hurl themselves off towers with springy vines tied around their ankles. You've got to admit that as an introduction to adult life the rush of bowel-loosening blind panic is a pretty accurate picture of the way things are going to go. Although that could just be my life.

Whatever, the young David Attenborough took a BBC film crew down to Vanuatu and came back with film of the 'land divers' of Pentecost Island. This promptly inspired the members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club to use elastic ropes - bungees - to tie themselves to the Clifton Suspension Bridge prior to throwing themselves off. They chose 1 April 1979 for their jump but the April Fool joke was really on the rest of us as the idea of commercial bungee was born.

It took a New Zealander called A.J. Hackett to popularise it in the 80s, and in a neat bit of self-promotion he took a dive off the Eiffel tower in 1987 and created himself a thriving business in the process. Now bungee jumping can be found all over the world, from bridges, towers and even cranes in car parks. New Zealand remains the Mecca of bungee with a wide range of sites, but a tour of the world's best places would probably include:

Bloukrans Bridge, South Africa: the world's highest commercial jump at 216m.
Viaduc de la Souleuvre, France: beautiful scenic viaduct site run by A.J. Hackett in Normandy.
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe: take a plunge against the backdrop of the 'smoke that thunders'.
Queenstown, New Zealand: the 'capital' of the bungee world.

Or of course you could just jump off a crane in a car park; the choice is yours.

Variations on the classic swan dive jump include the bat where you start off head down, held by your ankles; the lovers' leap where you jump in tandem with another person (not necessarily your lover) and the water splash where you briefly touch the water at the bottom of the jump. Some sites allow you to take a running jump off the top, others (such as A.J. Hackett's in France) insist that you have done a minimum number of standard jumps before you start experimenting with the fancy stuff. Where it's on offer, a jump at night is another way of turning up the adrenaline dial. For the ultimate in bungee you could always look out for operators that offer heli bungee. All the fear of falling plus the roar of rotors and the force of the downdraft.


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