Day #7. Taupo.

I did it!!!!! I went skydiving.  If I could sum the experience up in just a few words, those words would be

CRAZY(est thing I've ever done in my life!!!)

amazing!

iNsAnE!

nerve wracking

PhEnOmEnaL!

to die for! (literally)

UNREAL!!!

wicked....

retarded :)

And that's pretty much all I did today.

We had a new bus driver this morning.  It was kind of sad for me.  I missed the old one.  But the new one was cool too.  He liked to talk a lot (unlike the old bus driver).  I think he liked the sound of his voice.  He ended a lot of sentences with "Nice and easy."  But it was pronounced like new-ay-ce and easy.  "Ladies and gentlemen we got all your hostels booked for you tonight, nice and easy", "We're gonna park here and you can walk to the waterfalls - it's only a minutes walk, nice and easy", "They take you up in the plane to 15,000 feat and then you jump, nice and easy."  The bus wasn't full today so I got 2 full seats to myself!  I sat across from Peter who looked quite refreshed in his plaid shirt tucked into some khaki shorts and the signature high socks that reached to his knees.  Two English boys - Nic and Pete - sat behind me and we struck up a good conversation.  Nic is a history major at King's College in London and Pete just graduated with a degree in politics.

We made 3 stops this morning before entering Taupo.  The first stop was to some bubbling mud thing, the second was to the "Lady Knox Geiser", and the third was to Haku Falls.  The bubbling mud thing was awesome, but you can only stand and watch mud bubble for so long.  We only stayed there 15 minutes.  The Lady Knox Geyser was super neat!  I was told by a lady sitting next to me that it goes off every single day at exactly 10:15.  I was like, sikkkk!  That's crazy.  How does it go off at the same time every single day??  When I found out why, I felt very cheated.  A park ranger walks up to the geyser at exactly 10:14 every single day and dumps a bag of surfactant in it!  hahaha… wow.  It does blow its top in a very impressive way though :)  Finally, Huka Falls.  Peter decided against skydiving (I was trying to convince him to do it) and opted for the Huka Jet instead.  The jet takes you on a crazy wild river ride to base of the fall.

Lake Taupo is breathtaking.  So beautiful that I considered spending one more day here… but that would mean one less in the South island, so I'm moving on in the am.  On the way over, the bus driver insisted that the YHA hostel was the place to go.  But for once I had actually read hostelworld.com reviews and almost all the ratings for YHA were negative.  I took my chances and went to the Nomad Urban Retreat  which got rave reviews.  I'm very stoked on my hostel choice tonight - it's bomb!  Right on the lake too, and the room smells amazing.  Or maybe that's just my roomie's shower gel.  I took a 45 minute power nap, then woke up and drank a Diet Coke before heading over to the skydive place.

There were about 9 of us in the group.  Nic from England was very extremely nervous.  We played foosball while we waited for the plane to calm our nerves.  Nic beat me by 1 point, after I had a 5 point come-back!  It was a heartbreaking loss.  Steph from Germany then beat Nic by 1 point.  Very close games.  The plane arrived, we were partnered up with our tandem experts, and before we knew it we were at a very high altitude!  That's when what I was about to do hit me.  And the caffeine kicked in.  I was a laughing, jabbering, nervous wreck.  I had to pee, too.  It definitely didn't help that the instructor next to me said it was "Ronny's 1st time going tandem."  Ronny was the German dude who had my life connected to him by some straps.  I had visions in my head of my partner pushing us out of the plane and me grabbing onto the handle bar last minute while he dangled from my belt and everyone in the plane struggled to pull me back in.  This thought was seriously in my head, that's how demented I was.  But I put my fears aside, placed my oxygen mask on, and waited.  

The scariest, craziest part of the dive isn't the free fall… it's the part when they open the door and you're sitting on the edge of the plane.  I felt Ronny's body start to heave behind me.  One… two… THREE!  We were falling.  It seemed like FOR-ever.  I actually started to get worried cuz Ronny hadn't pulled the cord yet and they said we would free fall for 60 seconds and it was DEFINITELY MORE THAN 60 SECONDS ALREADY!!!!!!!  I have never been more relieved in my life than when the parachute deployed and we were lazily floating, rocking, twirling, laughing.  Would you believe it, from the time we sat on the edge of the plane until that moment I had not screamed?  Not even once.  But when Ronny sent us into a spiral I screamed my lungs out.  The view from up there was just phenomenal.  It is debatable wether I will ever go skydiving again, but the experience I had to today is one that I will never forget.

I spent the rest of my evening enjoying a tomato, sweet onion, and tuna salad sandwich, walking to the lake, and jumping around in a playground with my new English friends that puts all other playgrounds to shame.  Nic and Pete were very glad I  accompanied them to the playground as this would make them appear "less-gay", they said.  Get this, the playground has a handicap swing built for a wheelchair!!!  How freaking cool is that?!  

As I write this blog, I am surrounded by a group of girls watching "Anchorman."  Forgot how stinking funny that movie is….hahahahahaha, "afternoon delight!" hahaha!  Oh gosh… the flute scene.  HA.  Now I gotta trek over to McDonald's to post this blog since the hostel doesn't have wifi can you say LAAAME.

Plan:  heading to National Park tomorrow with a stop in Waitomo for some Black Water Rafting!

Budget:  $26 hostel, $1.50 Diet Coke pick-me-up prior to skydive (BIG mistake - caffeine = speed, plus you have to pee right before you jump), $360 skydive & exit photo, $17 produce/fruit juice (expensive! $4.50 for a small bottle of OJ and $3.50 for grapefruit juice… but I was craving it for some reason so I had to buy it)

p.s.  Called the Waiheke lost-n-found... no camera :(