So, our big day had arrived. I got up feeling strangely worried that I was not feeling more nervous. I knew I should be more nervous, but having never thrown myself off a cliff before I had no context into which to place the day’s activities. After breakfast, Lucia went off to have a walk around the shops, and Skins and I went to ‘The Station’ to be picked up to do the Nevis Arc Canyon Swing.
The Nevis Arc is the world’s largest swing, it’s a 60m freefall down one side of the canyon before being swept across the bottom by the river and launched up the other side. All in all I think it’s about a 160m ride which is over in a couple of seconds. As we were only doing this once we thought we should make the most of it, and having had our requests to do a naked tandem swing categorically rejected, we thought we should make it as interesting as we could in any other way possible.
We got into our harnesses (fully clothed), attached to one another and to the swing, turned around backwards and suspended upside down with our feet in the air and our heads down to the ground and out to the canyon. The operators said they would release on three; the longest three seconds of my life. As it turns out, at three, they decided to pause for a few seconds for effect before letting us hurtle towards earth and some stupidly scary pace.
I can’t really describe the feeling, so I won’t try but we did decide to do it again straight away after, this time upright and backwards which was, oddly, even scarier. To end our Nevis Arc experience we were caught trying to film on our cameras the films that they had taken of us doing the swing which were being replayed inside and they were trying to sell to us for 50-150$.
For lunch we went to the highly acclaimed and much recommended FergBurger, which is somewhat of a QT institution. FergBurger was excellent- very reasonably priced and one of the best burgers I’ve had. We followed this with a couple of games of pool and some beers while trying to gather some Dutch Courage for our afternoon bungee jump. Unfortunately the lunchtime beers and burger concoction did not mix well, and we headed to the bungee jump both feeling nervous and sick.
We met Lucia after her walk, and got the gondola to the top of top of the mountain where our bungee jump was. The jump we did was called ‘The Ledge’ which, while only being a 50m bungee was placed 400m above QT, so when you look over the edge it seems as if you’re going to fall a long way! Our time slot was from 5-6.30pm, and when we arrived we found that we were the only two people there instead of the usual group of 7/8 people. This meant that the three jump coordinators had the time of their lives inventing scary ways to eject us from the platform, during which time they actually had to speak with their safety administrator to see if they were allowed to blindfold people as it had not been done before!
Unfortunately for me, it was allowed and I was the guinea pig. My third and final jump involved standing on the edge of the platform backwards, blindfolded, having the music turned up and told that sometime during the course of the next track I would be pushed from the platform backwards. This was possibly the longest wait of my life, hence why I chose not to go again. Skins, on the other hand did six jumps, experimenting with the front flip the squirrel and other such moves.
Having gone home and changed my underwear the three of us headed out for quite a plush meal at the Captains Table then tried to cover a few more pubs. We went back to Buffalo Club where they were doing a promotion whereby if you come with a ginger you will be gifted a $50 bar tab.
So, thanks to Skins, we had a few free rounds in there before heading on to another pub for a few more beers and to watch the first leg of State of Origin, before heading back to bed.
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