Adventure Stories – Bungy Jumping and Bridge Swinging

The seeds of my South African adventure were planted years ago when a young man named Anthony wrote me and said he found my scuba diving web pages and wanted to share something about himself. Anthony said he is a paraplegic and also likes to do scuba diving. We belonged to the fraternity of disability and extreme sports. We kept in contact and one day Anthony sent me a video clip of someone in a wheelchair bridge swinging. From there I was hooked. I knew one day I would travel to South Africa to do some bridge jumping. Laurence posted his video of bungy jumping at my YouTube channel.

This is where Bungy jumping began in South Africa! Gourits River Bridge is 65m high, and is the longest running bungy site in Africa. There were two companies that offer jumps off the Gouritz River bridge: Wildthing Adventures and Face Adrenalin. The company we used Face Adrenalin (www.faceadrenalin.com/). The Gouritz River Bridge is 4 1/2 hours EAST of Cape Town. We drove eastward along the southern coast. The concept of bridge jumping is to swing from one bridge, to which the rope is attached, under another, like a pendulum. Bungee jumping is a drop straight down. Your fall is slowed by the bungee cords before you reach the bottom.

Anthony asked me if I wanted to go first or should he. I told him I was still attaching cameras to my chair so he should go first and I could get an idea how they affixed the straps so I could mount cameras accordingly. On the left, Anthony gets a lift from the folks putting on his harness. In the middle picture, Anthony is about to go off the platform. Lastly, we see Anthony going off the platform – separated from his chair! When I saw that I turned to Laurence and said, “Change of plan. Take off the cameras.” They fished Anthony’s cushion out of the river while we just watched hoping Anthony wasn’t hit by his own wheelchair.