Falling in New Zealand

As I sit here thinking of islands and island life, another memory has just surfaced from my time in New Zealand. Really, it honestly surfaced. Here’s what happened.

Murray, Cliff and I were on the north island, inland a bit from a town called Waitangi. The folks in the hostel said there was a great hike that led to a nice waterfall and lagoon that we could swim in. Still trusting the Kiwi sense of time and distance, we asked them for directions. They said once we got to the stone church, it was about forty-five minutes through the forest to the falls. And the church was supposedly only ten minutes away.

 Forty-five minutes later we finally found the stone church and the trailhead to the falls. We promised ourselves to automatically add forty-five minutes to everything anyone said to us from now on. Anyway, we started on the trail and went into a truly spectacular rainforest. The fact that it took another hour and a half to reach the falls didn’t really matter all that much.

Pictures were taken in front of the falls, just to prove we actually made it. We found a trail that went to the top and proceeded up. At the top, we found that the creek feeding the falls was only about ankle deep, and just at the very edge, there was a flat rock jutting out, splitting the falls into two streams. Cliff went out and sat on the flat rock, gazing at the view while Murray and I splashed around upstream.

Cliff called us over a few minutes later. We went over to his perch where he promptly announced that he was going to jump down into the lagoon. Murray and I peered over the edge once more, looked at each other, looked back at Cliff and said “Cool! Just give us a few minutes to get down to take pictures!” It was grand to be so young and soooo stupid.

So as Cliff was screwing up his courage, Murray and I beetled down the path to get the shots. As we were arriving at the perfect photo spot done below, four locals and their dog appeared at the top of the falls above Cliff. As they leaned over the edge and saw the flat rock, one of the guys said, “I wonder if anyone has ever jumped off this thing?”

At that moment, Cliff stood up, waved and said “See ya boys” and leaped off the rock with a hearty “COW-A-BUNGA!!!!”

From our vantage point at the lagoon, I think we heard a faint ‘holy sheep sticks’, or words to that effect…

My little camera could take three frames a second and I got off three and a half shots before Cliff hit the lagoon. At 9.8 meters per second per second times the 1.75 seconds it took him to hit the water along with air friction – well, let’s say it was a hundred foot drop and leave it at that.

After five seconds under the water and no sign of Cliff, Murray and I started to get concerned. Murray really wanted his camera and I surely did not want to lug his gear around. At ten seconds with no Cliff, we decided that we would mail all his belongings back to Canada and started looking for a way to the lagoon. At thirteen seconds, Cliff popped to the surface, looking as surprised as we felt. Told you the idea ‘surfaced’.

We promptly started cheering and heard the echoing cheers from the boys at the top of the falls. It took another couple of minutes for Cliff to find a way to shore and look up at the falls to see his achievement. He remembered it for quite a while – he hit the water just a little off the vertical and was spanked by the water pretty effectively. Serves him right. We couldn’t show those pictures to his mom for about three months after we got back home or he would have been spanked again…