Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would jump off a bridge with an elastic rope tied to my ankles. Not only was I uninterested in bungy jumping, I have been a hard “F*ck No” on the subject. I guess this is one more example of “never say never”, because on my recent trip to New Zealand, I did the unthinkable and leapt, face first, from a 140-foot bridge. Spoiler alert: I survived, and now I’m here to tell you all about my experience bungy jumping in New Zealand. Weeee!

*Note– I’ve often seen this activity spelled “bungee”, but because the company with whom I jumped spells it “bungy”, I have adopted that spelling as well. If it annoyed you above, it will continue to annoy you for the rest of this post. 🙂

Deciding To Bungy Jump

No one would ever mistake me for an adrenaline junkie. Though I travel alone and work on planes, things some people would consider scary, I lack whatever impetus it is that makes people want to drive fast, or swim with sharks, or jump from high places. You see, I really want to live to 200.  I like my feet on the ground.

But there is something about being in the place where a thing was created. There is something about your friends signing up, seemingly unafraid.

When my friends started talking about bungy jumping in New Zealand, I said I didn’t want to, but my wheels were turning.

“Well if I ever were going to bungy jump,” I found myself thinking “It would have to be there.”

It’s the birthplace of bungy, the right place to do it. It’s an origin story (and we love a good story.) The notion floats by you and you swat it away. “Nope.” But it seeps into your brain. The more your friends discuss it, the more normalized it becomes. Perhaps it is exposure therapy: I read about it enough, heard enough of my friends talking about it, and eventually the thought seemed less scary. Perhaps I’m a teenager and just want to do whatever it is that my friends are doing, even jump off a bridge.

Whatever came over me that changed my mind, I’m glad it did. Bungy jumping was one of the funnest, scariest, and best things I did in New Zealand.

A very brief history of Bungy Jumping

Though New Zealand is hailed as the ‘Home of Bungy’, it’s origin story actually traces back to Vanuatu. Here, on Pentecost Island, men perform a ceremony called “Land Diving”, in which they jump off wooden tower-like structures up to 100-feet tall, with tree vines tied around their ankles. This is an ancient ritual, supposedly first fueled by a bad marriage (sounds about right). Land diving is a cultural display of masculinity, and also has religious symbolism and agricultural ties. If you’d like to read more about Land Diving, check out this CNN Travel Article.

Should the natives of Vanuatu, responsible for the idea of bungy jumping, be compensated? Probably.

Inspired by Land Divers, AJ Hackett started working on designing a mechanism to make the act safer. Eventually, the bungy cord—the one used for bungy jumping—was created in the mid-1980s. In 1986 he performed his first amateur bungy jump from Upper Harbour Bridge in Auckland, and in 1988, he and partner Henry van Asch set up an official bungy site at the Karawau Gorge Suspension Bridge, just outside of Queenstown, NZ. This became the first commercial bungy center open for business.

Today, when you search “Bungy (or bungee) jumping in New Zealand”, you’ll be hard pressed to find a different company in the results. The AJ Hackett Bungy Company is still going strong with four locations across the North and South Islands of New Zealand, plus international locations in Australia, the US, China, and France, to name a few. They also offer other adventure activities like zipline, and massive swings.

To learn more about AJ Hackett’s origin story, other projects, and global network, click here.

Where to go Bungy Jumping in New Zealand

There are several bungy sites throughout both islands of New Zealand. The AJ Hackett Bungy company operates two sites in Queenstown, the Karawau Bridge Bungy and the Nevis Bungy, on the South Island. On the North Island there is a bungy site in Taupō, and one in Auckland, right in the harbor.

We knew we wanted to bungy jump in the beginning of our trip, to get the scary stuff out of the way. And since we started in Queenstown, that’s where we jumped.

We jumped at Kawarau Bridge Bungy, known as the “World Home of Bungy” because it is the first ever site for commercial bungy jumping. At 43 meters, it’s not the highest jump, but it is the original, which seemed cool to me. To be honest, I cannot even imagine jumping the Nevis Bungy, a gobsmacking 138 meters high—nearly 100 more than we jumped! I guess if I ever find myself in New Zealand again that would be the one to try.

My knowledge of bungy jumping in New Zealand is strictly limited to my own experience, so that’s what I’m going to be referencing for the rest of the post. To find out about the other bungy locations, to plan your bungy jump, or to start some exposure therapy of your own, check out AJ Hackett Bungy NZ.

Getting There

Kawarau Bridge Bungy Center is 30 minutes north of Queenstown on a straight-shot easy highway. If you have a rental car, the drive is simple. If you don’t, the company offers a free bungy shuttle that picks up from the center of town. You can ride the shuttle whether you’re taking the leap or just there to watch.

How much does it cost to bungy jump in New Zealand?

Currently, your first jump from Karawau Bridge is $320 New Zealand Dollars (about $194 USD at the time of writing this.) If you choose to jump a second time (or third), those additional jumps are heavily discounted, at just $85-95 NZD.

The price may seem steep, but upkeep costs money, friends. Included in this fee, you will also receive a free tee-shirt, photos and video footage of your jump, and bragging rights for all of eternity. Not so bad, right?

The Experience

My experience bungy jumping in New Zealand was fantastic. The vibe was very chill and very safe; The best kind of paradox.

Options & Need to knows

There are options for your bungy jump at AJ Hackett. You can wear whatever you want, including nothing, they say. You can jump facing forward or backward. There is one option called “Sparta”, in which the jumper faces the platform and a staff member kicks them in the chest while shouting “THIS IS SPARTA!” They ask you if you want to touch the water (meaning a longer rope) and you can say yes or no. We both said yes to touching the water, but we didn’t want to be completely dunked. They did a conservative estimate and neither of us made it quite far enough to touch the river. Womp womp.

The minimum age to bungy jump at AJ Hackett is 10 years old, as long as they meet the minimum weight allowed—35kg, or about 77 pounds. The maximum weight, in case you’re wondering, is 235kg, or about 518 pounds. There are no height restrictions for bungy. As you can see, this can be for everyone! (Except if you’re pregnant or have photosensitive epilepsy. See safety and medical info here.)

Safety First

No one sat us down to have a safety briefing before jumping, which surprised me. They just weigh you, ask some medial questions, and send you on your way. Once outside, on the bridge, where I expected to be scared, the atmosphere was one of a well-oiled (and not too anxious) machine. It was oddly calming. Each action was done by one team member and cross-checked by another. One AJ Hackett employee fastened and checked my harness, then another came over to check it once completed. The same happened with the ankle straps which would attach to my FREAKING BUNGY CORD! One person suited me up, the next person checked their work. They seemed both at ease and completely focused on safety.

It reminded me a lot of my job as a flight attendant. When we arm and cross-check the airplane doors before departure, and disarm and cross-check at arrival, it is a similar approach. Everything critical is checked by more than one person. This cross-checking system is just one of the many ways flight attendants mitigate risk and account for human error. Four eyes are better than two, after all.

It made me feel comfortable, safe, and in good hands to witness the folks at AJ Hackett Bungy Center using the same system, albeit in a very different environment. How could I be scared when everything felt so safe?

(There was also the fact that the person who jumped immediately before me was a 13-year-old boy. I couldn’t have backed out if I wanted to after watching him take the leap.)

The Jump

The fear did creep in as my turn to jump approached. As I slid myself onto the platform to have my ankles wrapped in thick towels and harnessed together with a metal clasp, as the two bungy staff, with not a care in the world, told me to stand up and walk to the edge. The turquoise water swirled below, the green of the trees so vibrant it could make you dizzy. They told me to turn and wave. And then they told me to jump.

“Just… jump?” I asked, stupidly.

“Just jump,” they confirmed. “Head first.”

I waved to the camera and followed instruction as best I could. Rather than a graceful dive, though, I crouched down, involuntarily, knees bent to 90 degrees, before throwing my upper body into the gorge. In the video footage, I see that my less-than-graceful “dive” attempt was not the only awkward moment of my bungy jump. I flapped my wings like a chicken trying to fly, ostensibly some deep-seeded instinct kicking in. Push the air, save yourself, fly.

But in that moment, I did not know that I looked like a chicken flapping her wings. All I knew was falling. Air around me, water before me. My voice, a scream or a laugh, ringing through the canyon. And when that bungy cord reached capacity, caught me just before the water did, the whole thing changed. Relief. Laughter. Joy in my limbs, blood in my head. I was safe.

The part of bungy jumping I’d always thought would be the worst—the snap at the bottom, turned out to be the best part. It didn’t hurt, like my friends said it wouldn’t. And after that moment I was free. I could watch the world around me, and laugh with all my might, and actually, perplexingly, have fun. As I shot back up to where I’d come from, my body a straight line, there was no more fear or worry or instinct demanding I fight to live. Instead, I enjoyed all the remaining fractions of seconds of flying through the air, the smaller and smaller bounces, the crisp air and the sound of that turquoise water churning.

Once I stopped bouncing, and settled ten feet or so above the water, hanging like a bat, a raft with two AJ Hackett Staff paddled over and extended a long oar or pole for me to grab hold of. They pulled me down toward the boat and one held my upper body while the other unhooked my feet from the harness. The sun was beating down on the boat and the blood rush to my head caused a foggy kind of feeling. As they lowered me down, placing me gingerly on the floor of the raft, the one holding under my arms said “We’ve got you. You’re safe now.”

And this, not the bungy jump, was what killed me.

Hey you! Yes, you!

Thanks for stopping by. I’m Toni, and I run the show here at A Wheel in the Sky. Here we talk all things travel and flight attendant life, with (excessively) personal anecdotes sprinkled in the mix. I hope you enjoyed this post about bungy jumping in New Zealand (and that you’ll do it, too!)

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If you’d like to support the site, which runs on long nights and lots of caffeine, you can now buy me a coffee at buymeacoffe.com/awheelinthesky. A gift is never expected and so, SO appreciated. I’ve linked some more outdoorsy content below, click around at your leisure and feel free to peruse the archives. I hope you’ll come back and see us again. <3

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