Yes, I did go ahead and fulfill one of the most notorious and stereotypical study abroad activities of all time - skydiving. The experience began with an interesting exchange of emails. Here is a copy of the directions sent to me by the Skydiveandes employee:
Deben tomar un bus interurbano con dirección a Melipilla en Estación Central: El bus se llama Ruta 78 y es de color Blanco. Una ves en el bus deben indicarle al conductor que su bajada es en el restaurante Barbarela.
1.- Cruzar con mucha precaución la autopista.
2.- Se encontraran con un árbol, deben bajar por el lado derecho del árbol.
3.- Encontraran un camino de tierra deben seguir ese camino que los llevara al medio de la pista de aterrizaje.
4.- Son 15 minutos de camina hasta llegar al hangar.
The instructions begin by telling us (Brittany and me) to leave Santiago on an intercity bus to Melipilla, but to advise the driver to let us off, alongside the freeway, at the Barbarela restaurant. Easy enough, right? Hop off on the side of the road and follow some easy directions: 1. Be very careful crossing the freeway; 2. You will come to a tree, you should go to the right of it; 3. You will then find a path (after passing said tree) and follow it until you reach the airstrip; 4. Its about a 15 minute walk to the hangar.
Umm, you want us to do what?
I wanted to very clearly express to him that Skydiving in South America is considered to be dangerous enough by most people, much less crossing a freeway and finding a tree and then walking through farms to the hangar. Well... we did just that.
So, we travelled over hill and dale, farm and freeway, agricultural runoff ditch and airstrip to arrive at the hangar. We were greeted by smiling faces, who I'm sure were all in on the huge joke that we just followed those stupid directions and now were about to pay an ungodly sum of money to hurl ourselves at the ground. Hahaha very funny. Walking into the shady office was a welcome relief if the wording of the liability release form wasn't. After initialing paragraph after paragraph that prevented me from suing them for anything from drunkenness to a faulty parachute, I encountered my favorite passage and one that made me laugh out loud. Here it is:
14) Experimental Airplane
I am aware that SkydiveAndes Club airplane is an amateur-built experimental Comp Air 8, and that the airplane does not comply with standard safety regulations for certified aircraft.
Initial to indicate agreement (____________)
Its a WHAT? At that point, I probably wouldn't have been surprised if paragraph 15 said: "You will be dropped from genetically modified pigeons from an altitude of 12,000 feet. Initial to indicate agreement (_____)" Thankfully it didn't. BUT STILL.
After laughing, nervously, and maybe peeing a little, we initialed and handed over a large wad of blue chilean bank notes to complete the transaction. We then waited and waited and waited. For around 4 hours in total. Then I went skydiving. Then Brittany waited for another hour. Then she went.
Here are a couple videos.
Pre skydive:
Explanation of the videos: As I put the harness on, my heart instantly took residence in my throat and began to beat very fast. I was soon acquainted with the amateur aircraft, both inside and out. On the way up, I sat between the legs of the professional jumper and stared at the back of the plane. I inspected the inside of the aircraft: it was stripped to its bones of the normal plastic and padding that would normally be there and instead was a military-patterned kevlar looking material. I had to think to myself: why does military camouflage always end up being associated with extreme sports? I tried to avoid looking at the thin sliding plastic door that would be my escape from this amateur aircraft (which, of all things, had a sticker that read: "No Farting"). The view out the windows actually turned out to be incredibly peaceful: To the right I looked a hundreds of miles of snow-capped Andes mountains that rose above the Santiago smog and stretched up and down the backbone of the continent. To the left was a shimmering blue Pacific Ocean. How cool is that? I was seeing the width of Chile. And it was gorgeous.
TWO MINUTES
What? Oh right, I'm about to fall out of a plane. I forgot. WAIT WHAT? TWO MINUTES? And just like that the heart beating and the air breathing went into overdrive. Well, until I saw the first guy nonchalantly fall to his right out the open hole in the side of the plane, then I started losing it. But, we inched towards the door and I waved at the camera and we fell. See below.
The official video I paid to have made:
Yeah. It was awesome. Intense. However many adjectives that you want to add but that all fail to capture what its like. Especially because there is one HUGE problem with skydiving. During the whole process of going up and falling, you become so inflated with adrenaline that when its all over and you are back on the ground, everything feels lame. All you want to do when you land is keep the feeling going. My initial thoughts were: shoot guns, run really fast and far, chop down trees and drive a rally car really fast. Essentially the skydiver wastes an incredible amount of adrenaline in the time after the jump is over. They should just have you hop in a boxing ring right after you land. It would definitely be appreciated, at least by me, if not by many.
Thanks for reading.
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