Sky-Diving Spectators

Tuesday 28 January

Struggling to keep up with my daily reports on Facebook, and definitely on the blog - this is what happened when Richard decided to throw himself out of a perfectly serviceable aeroplane at 16,500 feet! To be fair - it was his own choice and the three of us on the ground exhibited significantly higher anxiety than he did! But what an amazing tick for the bucket list!

We picked up Diana and Richard quite early and drove over to Franz Josef to check him in the statutory 30 minutes ahead of the booking time - then waited 40 minutes before there was any action! Richard and about a dozen others piled into the official van, while we dallied around getting a coffee and an enormous Afghan biscuit for Di. We set off with a not to scale map to find the airstrip he would be leaving from in a plane and returning to via parachute... and arrived with impeccable timing as he had finished the very short briefing (smile, breathe and lift your legs for landing) and was all togged up ready to go.

The three of us on the ground watched as the small aircraft took off and circled higher and higher over the plains and the glacier - what we were not aware of at this point was that there would be people jumping at three different altitudes so once we saw some specks detach from the plane we gleefully followed the yellow chute as we knew that was Richard's colour - only to discover that these were the cheapskates who had jumped out at 10,000 feet. Another 2-3 jumped at 13,000 feet and finally the speck of an aircraft at 16,500 feet ejected 4 microspecks, of which 3 had yellow chutes! We hastily checked which stripes Richard had on his tandem chute and for the most part managed to follow his incredible descent. Apparently there were 70 seconds of free fall before the chute was opened, and Richard was laughing all the way! He got to have a go at control the direction and swing of the chute on the way down and executed a fine landing with his feet well up and a huge beaming smile plastered across his face - what a hero!

After a full debrief and a big relief filled hug from Di we headed back to Franz Josef township for coffees and hot chocolates.

Back down to earth we wandered up towards the base of Franz Josef glacier that Richard had circled over several times in the plane - spoiler alert, it has receded a fair bit so the view was a bit small and faraway - but impressive nonetheless.

Sadly the latter could not be said of dinner - we had G&Ts at Banjo then wandered back to Betsey Jane’s to pop our names on the waitlist but it was super busy (90 minute wait) so we tried elsewhere and had a very lacklustre dinner at Cook Saddle Cafe Saloon which then gave Louis food poisoning 🤢. Note to self - get your name on Betsey Jane’s list before you start drinking!!

Said our fond farewells to the Sands as they were heading North in the morning, up to Hokitika and Westport, and we were staying at Fox for another couple of days. So lovely that we could get to spend this time together!