zen and the art of the bungee jump
Friday, October 30th, 2009
The only sound you can hear above the roar of Victoria Falls is the diminishing scream of people plummeting more than 300-feet towards the Zambezi River below.
“Don’t look,” you tell yourself as the anguished screams echo back. “Do not look.”
But you can’t help yourself; you look, as the bodies before you are pitched off the bridge into the misty abyss. You look until you realize – you’re next.
Victoria Falls, the UNSECO World Heritage site which forms part of the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, is one of the largest waterfalls in the world. More than a mile wide – and 350 feet high – over 10 million liters of the mighty Zambezi River go over the falls each second with such thundering force that a fine spray of mist rises hundreds of feet into the sky like a giant cloud, casting rainbows that can be seen for miles across the bushveld. Surely there’s no more beautiful place on earth to tie a rubber band around your ankles and jump off a bridge.
But first, you must embrace the easier-said-than-done idea of jumping. This is not like skydiving, where you stand out on the wing of a plane pretending it’s all a dream before letting go and falling backwards. To bungee jump you must face forward and stare down your destination as well as the horizon; you must jump head-on into the air against every instinct your body holds for self-preservation. You must choose to make what your body thinks is a suicide leap.
As your turn approaches, supervisors check their manifest against the series of identifying numbers that have been written on your forearm with a magic-marker. Your name is crossed off the list and suddenly the juices in your stomach rise into the back of your throat as you realize the time for turning back is about to pass. You silently wish somebody had the courtesy to at least produce a blindfold.
The sound of a million-plus-gallons of water speeding over the edge of a cliff roars in your head like a herd of charging buffalo as the next victim is shuffled into position, bound at the ankles. The man in front of you – the last man between you and a leap – teeters on the edge, holding on with white knuckles. In the instant you turn to notice the small video camera that’s been set up to record it all for posterity, he is gone. Another full-throttle scream erupts, tingling up your spine, before fading somewhere below.
Vic Falls Bungee may have a 100% safety record and the experience of thousands of clean jumps but the Victoria Falls Bridge not only exists in a legal grey zone between two borders, but at 111 meters high is roughly the equivalent of two Statues of Liberty. It’s enough to make any sane person gulp.
When the last of the screams have died down, you are ushered to the precipice. Time slows to a crawl. Regardless of how poised and calm you were moments ago – when the physical act of jumping face-first off a bridge was just an amusingly theoretical construct – your mind goes into rapid synaptic overload. You hear nothing, as though a cone of silence has descended around you. Your vision narrows and your body moves without necessarily being conscious of the fact. You experience what is known as fear-induced shock.
You shut your eyes tight, wondering what has brought you to this lawless no man’s land: a bridge in sub-Saharan Africa straddling two of the world’s poorest countries.
And when you open them and begin to shuffle towards what can only be a certain and gruesome doom, you remember that you’ve paid for the privilege: $110, plus an extra $50 for the t-shirt and video.
However confident and competent your guides seem, you nevertheless waver on the narrow ridge of steel that functions as the launch point. Trying to focus on anything except the task at hand, panic, turns briefly, to clarity: this fear is real – it won’t somehow leave this city-boy with a terror of heights just by jumping. You can still turn around and go back – jumping is not an inevitability.
“Ready on three?”
Ready, you say aloud. And on “3,” you breathe. On “2,” you crouch. And as “1” rings in your ears like the crack of a starter’s pistol, or the drop of the hangman’s trapdoor, you leap up and swan dive into the air. With a scream that comes from somewhere deep inside your bowels, you drop with all the grace of a frozen turkey shot out of a cannon.
Everything is upside down when you’re headed south tethered only by your feet. Mist is raining down but goes up your nose, and Victoria Falls appears to be flowing upwards. With eyes wide open you see your face is about to slam into the rocks until the bungee cord snaps you back up into the air in the nick of time, sparing you from a Thelma and Louise-style ending.
Five, six times you bounce up and down – tossed about like bait on the end of a fisherman’s line. Blood surges into your head as you finally come to rest, suspended over the rushing rapids. Everything appears shrouded in a glistening mist and bright sunlight forms perfect spherical rainbows like an army of Glindas come to show you the Yellow Brick Road.
It is a spectacular high – and a literal rush of blood to the head – though as you wait to be winched back up, you realize it wasn’t about the jump at all. It was about the moment before.
By the time you head back across the Zambian border, upright on two wobbly legs, you understand it was all about the moment you said “ready” and believed it.
Background: The past five years have seen the area surrounding Mosi-oa-Tunya – or “the Smoke that Thunders” as the local tribes people refer to the Falls – blossom into a destination for thrill seekers, adventure tourists and nature lovers, particularly in the peaceful, politically stable country of Zambia. Whether its soaring high into the sky in a helicopter or vintage Tiger Moth (www.uaczam.com), going solo in a Microlight (www.batokasky.com), hi-speed jet boating (www.advanced-advertising.com/sites/jetx/index.htm), fishing the swift and predatory Tigerfish (www.zambezifishing.com), surfing the rapids of Batoka Gorge on a body board (www.bunduadventures.com) or riding the highest concentration of grade 4 and 5 rapids anywhere in the world (www.safpar.com), you are never more than a few minutes away from extravagant beauty and world class thrills. Zambia seems poised to become the next great adventure destination. (And as a former British colony, everybody speaks English, too) Make the journey now and have it virtually to yourself – before the rest of the world catches on.
Zebra graze near the sundeck at The Royal Livingstone
Setting up camp: On the forested banks of the Zambezi, two minutes upstream of the cataract where the Falls thunder into Batoka Gorge, The Royal Livingston Hotel is a dreamy reminder of a more elegant and courteous world: cool lounges and shaded verandas; sundowners along the river deck; high tea, butler service and the perfect Pimm’s cup. Of course there is the omnipresent smoke and thunder of the Falls, too, only minutes away on foot.
Getting there: Like most Shangri-La destinations, getting there is half the battle, making the reward that much sweeter. There are no direct flights to Zambia, however South African Airways flies daily from JFK to Johannesburg, connecting onwards to Zambia. New roomy Business Class seats convert into fully-flat beds that make an ordinarily grueling flight pass like a dream. (www.flysaa.com)
Poet-laureate Robert Burns may have written an ode to the humble haggis, but surely no other national dish causes the uninitiated to quiver in quite the same way. It’s mythology of unmentionable bits ‘n’ pieces wrapped in a cow stomach and deep fried is quite untrue for the most part. Certainly you can get your “haggis bits” from any number of chip shops – and downright disgusting they are; go for a deep fried Mars bar after a late night out instead – but real haggis is a dish of offal worth savoring. Along Ashton Lane, in the cobbled boho West End, Ronnie Clydesdale’s 
One of the lasting glories of the Victorian architects are the grand, glass-roofed train stations that defined an age of industrialization and Empire. Glasgow central station is no exception. Yet underneath that crystal palace lies 
Most Americans have an image of Scotland that falls somewhere between Trainspotting and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – salted with a tartan-clad dash of Brigadoon for good measure. It’s a highland fling flung with junkies, fascist sympathizers, bumpkins, and the battle cry of Braveheart. And it doesn’t help matters that for all of their bravado, the Scots lack a strong national identity – though what assimilated arm of the British Empire doesn’t? They are a wily, difficult people to pin down, those Scots: at times surprising, often baffling, the resistance to being pigeonholed makes them all the more mysterious and magnetic.
The axis of Sauchiehall and Buchanan Streets marks the city’s pedestrian center. A scattering of up-market shops, cafes and galleries reinforce the city’s rebirth as the UK’s hippest urban center. The Willow Tea Rooms make for a civilized, if old fashioned, chance to take a load off with scones, clotted cream, and a proper pot of tea in one of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s inspired Art Nouveau interiors. 
Rarely has an architect been so identified with a city as Mackintosh is with Glasgow. A hundred years on and his Glasgow School of Art remains not only a working art school but also a masterpiece of organic 20th century design. From the door signs to the lighting fixtures to the furniture, Mackintosh designed a building down to the smallest of details, creating a unified whole that is well worth the necessary hassle of arranging a tour in advance. (How Mackintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright arrived sui generis with similar sensibilities at virtually the same point in time remains a tantalizing mystery of the universe.) Mackintosh’s home has been preserved as well, as part of the Hunterian Gallery in the university quarter. An interesting study in the practical aesthetics of his sensibility, it’s also a remarkable exercise in conservation.
The popular (and much maligned) Gallery of Modern Art on Royal Exchange Square has a rather controversial collection of populist fare inside. But it’s the simple pointed gesture outside the entrance that seems to encapsulate the Glaswegian view of life: a classical statue of Lord Nelson astride his horse, only slightly enhanced by the traffic cone atop his head.
There’s something new underfoot at the Four Seasons Resort Nevis, where a series of interactive “Spa Sojourns” are taking travelers through a daylong discovery of rituals and remedies rooted in the environment and culture of this upscale Caribbean destination.
feast, hike home and retreat to the spa. In the outdoor gardens you can unwind by stringing together your trove of pocketed berries and plant seeds into a wearable souvenir while the Spa Director incorporates the rest of your morning’s haul into a bespoke treatment designed to complement your individual sojourn.
While more often than not a massage is a massage is a massage, there is something to be said for an outdoor massage surrounded by a thousand blooms. Discreetly tucked away at the end of Naples most fashionable thoroughfare, the Hotel Escalante might not feature the worlds most exotic treatments, but it easily wins the trophy for the most exotic hideaway you’ve never heard of.
A precious Chinese Yellow Banana nestles its mammoth flowers next to a Caribbean Jack Fruit, the largest fruit in the world, weighing in at up to forty pounds. Mysterious Satake Palm, native to Japan, has deep purple colored bark. The odd – and aptly named – Cannonball Tree, has edible fruit larger than a grapefruit. Beautiful Mexican Lilacs, which are planted in Mexico to shade the cocoa plants (hence its Spanish name Madre de Cocoa) abound.
If you suddenly get a whiff of C
hanel No. 5 during you poolside pedicure ($40.00 )it’s not a visiting society matron, you’re probably near one of the many Ylang-ylang trees which have the distinction of being the primary scent in the famous perfume.
Like nothing you’ve ever seen, the Chalice Vine has huge cup shaped flowers three quarters of a foot long, almost half a foot in diameter. It would look positively medieval if they weren’t so softly colored yellow. Think Richard III meets Martha Stewart.
Africa is many things, least of all a destination. For the lucky, it is a journey – one both literal and metaphoric – into the wilderness and a chance to step outside the quotidian grind and see the world with fresh eyes.
The sun may reliably rise each morning to stir life on the plains, but its setting also awakens a mysterious jungle world that thrives in the dark.
Bubble away in the Baker’s Retreat (30min, R350) an open-air hydrotherapy bath overlooking a watering hole that is perfect for one and even better for two. Scrub up with an assortment of Africology organic mud and bath products or lie back with a smoothie, enveloped in the sounds of the wild. Noises start to fool you, until you snap to and realize that, yes, an entire family of elephants are walking across the field not twenty yards away. This is what spafari is all about.
