The Gorge Swing Debacle

I’m happy to report that we have made it to Johannesburg, South Africa after a very pleasant 16hr bus ride from Botswana. We rented a car, which makes me feel free and flexible again. The little Hyundai Atos feels like a sports car after spending so much time behind the wheel of the turtle. We are headed off to Kruger park next but due to popular demand I decided to do a little more in depth version of this ‘gorge swing free fall thru a tree’ debacle.

The Zambezi gorge swing is probably the scariest thing I

have ever done. 5 years ago I heard about it and went and it is about as extreme as you can get. Scarier than skydiving or bungee jumping I think. The swing starts out like a bungee jump except you are attached below your chest. You can step off the cliff forwards, backwards, head first backwards (called the roll of death), or tandem which is always backwards. Once you freefall 53 meters the rope catches and swings you like a pendulum across the gorge. I tried it all 5

years ago and loved it. So when Heidi arrived and said she wanted to do it I was ready for take 2.

Besides the swing you can also zip line, rappel, and abseil (which is like rappelling forwards, think Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 3.) Heidi and I abseiled first which was a blast. Then we did the zip line, which is kinda child’s play, but a nice view out over the gorge. Then I really wanted her to go solo swing first but they were set up for tandem so we both harnessed up.

Heidi was pretty nervous which I thought was very cute.

We shuffled backwards until our heels were hanging off the platform. Everyone counted dow

n 3, 2, 1…. Then we both hesitated until we realized no “go” was coming and then we lifted our toes and fell into the oblivion behind us. It was so exhilarating. Then just as we near the gorge floor the rope caught but just a little too late. Someone had mis-measured the rope or the slack and we were sent crashing thru the upper branches of a tree. We swung out in surprised shock over the gorge, hoping that we wouldn’t hit the tree on the back swing.

I knew we had hit pretty hard, and there were some branches ripped off in between us hanging, but I was still surprised to see blood on my forearm. As the adrenaline from the jump wore off Heidi and I started feeling all the places where the branches whipped cuts and burns into our arms and legs. We were not a pretty sight. We were able to walk out of the canyon but trying to clean the wounds was almost more painful. The guys who worked there were pretty shocked as well. They said something about the rain yesterday caused the rope to stretch and the trees have grown. I wanted to tell them to hire a fucking gardener, but I was still too surprised that something like this happened.

We have tried to not let the wounds slow us down. And I took a picture of a few of the wounds so I’ll post them up. Looking on the bright side at least we didn’t have any broken bones or branches sticking thru our legs. I guess they make you sign that indemnity form for a reason.