Daniel is currently halfway through his journalism work experience placement in Mendoza, Argentina. He recently decided to do a skydive. Here’s what he has to say about the experience:
Nine weeks ago, on a long, winding bus journey from Somewhere to Somewhere in Ecuador, I wrote my 
Bucket List in jerky, thoughtful penstrokes. A bucket list, I´m sure you know, is a list of Things to do Before you Die, and was popularized by the eponymous film starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, who had little idea they would act in the worst film in the entire world. Nevertheless, a good premise. Nestled on my own list, between number 12 – “Punch someone in the face” (violent) and number 14 – “Do an extraordinarily good deed” (sickeningly boy scout-ish) is number 13: “Skydive”. God knows why I chose lucky number 13 for an activity that could kill me.
Hence why I find myself one gorgeous morning in Mendoza, Argentina, 2800 metres above the air in an airplane that could practically fit in my pocket. Strapped to my back is a very nice Argentinian man who bears more than a passing resemblance to Moby, who is just about to thrust me out into the atmosphere and float me safely down to earth. That, at least, is the plan, and as I lay hunched in the rumbling Cessna plane I very much hope it comes to fruition without my remains being sent home in a ziplock bag.
Per and I were picked up by Adrian A.K.A Moby early in the morning and driven an hour out of town to the airfield. We spend hours waiting for an unsafe gusting wind to pipe the hell down, and then Per jumps. Then it is my turn, so clearly Mother Nature decides to do her thing once more and blow man, blow. I spend seven and a half hours at that airfield. I do not jump. At one point he comes to me and says brightly “Ok! Now we go -”
“Hurray!”, I think.
“-back to Mendoza.”
I return home buzzing with disappointment, like a thousand bees waiting in line to try and exchange crappy Bee Christmas (or perhaps Hannukah) gifts.
Nevertheless, I return the next day, my head buzzing with excitement like a thousand bees having their 5th birthday party, whilst also vowing to start using more complex similes. I am the first in line, and it´s a clear, windless day. I strap on a very fetching orange jumpsuit and rig, and we walk towards the plane. I tap the door on which Adrian has optimistically painted “God is my co-pilot”, lovingly stroke the grass goodbye, and we´re off.
Once in the air, it´s hard to think of much. My mind is cleared of thoughts, like a thousand bees meditating in….well, you get the picture. The plane thrums relaxingly, more like a small fishing boat than anything else. I resist the urge to nod off, and instead look at Mendoza slowly fading in size and colour, melding into a patchwork quilt of earth tones. For luck, I kiss my necklace and touch my watch – the one thing the muggers didn´t take. My head rests against the pilot´s seat and without even stretching my legs, my feet touch the back of the plane. There is not room to swing an anorexic plankton in here, let alone a feline. As we continue to chug slowly upwards, I find myself thinking that I´m jumping from almost three km high, yet in the deserts of Bolivia I was treading breathlessly on ground that was five whole kilometers above sea level. Two thousand metres higher than where my single-engined prop plane is currently motoring. I struggle to compute this odd factoid.
I am just pondering why I don´t feel more scared, given the obvious fact of where I am, and my chosen mode of transport from Point A (teeny airplane) to Point B (ground), when the door opens accidentally, drowning my head with cacophonous cold. Adrian quickly shuts the door – we still have a thousand feet to climb – and my heart begins to pump something through my system. It´s less fear, more nervous expectation. I feel very detached from everything, as if it´s all a little absurd to, as wits say, “jump out of a perfectly good plane”.
Mentally I recap the order of the positions I´m supposed to assume. During the briefing – of which I´ve now had two, so clearly I could practically have done this on my own… – Adrian told us that once out of the plane to keep our heads up and legs stretched out behind us and between his own.
“Como una ballerina?”, I ask.
“Exacto!”, he beams, the sunlight bouncing off his shiny scalp.
Be a ballerina, I chant now, to the beat of the propellers.
Then all too soon he is clipping himself to me, uncomfortably tight, reassuringly tight. We shift, slow and ungainly, 
towards the hatch. Behind my clear plastic goggles my baby brown´s are no doubt widening of their own accord as adrenaline drains abrasively into my system. Yet I still feel quite calm, as if watching proceedings from a safer place.
I am inching towards the door, I think to myself.
The door is open now, I think to myself.
The wind is very strong and my feet are cold, I think.
Sandals were a bad choice, I think.
It is hard to get my legs out of the hatch because they are so long, I notice.
My legs are outside now, on the footstep attached to the plane.
I have to face to the front of the plane but the wind has other ideas, and buffets me anywhere but, pushing me, bullying me, bellowing at me.
My arms reach out to hug something, anything solid. They press against the struts and the body of the plane. It´s strange how little control you have when fear suddenly dips into you. You shouldn´t do that Daniel, I say to myself. Adrian thinks the same thing and pushes my arms to the correct position towards my body. He starts to inch forward, off the step and closer to Nothing.
“Bla bla bla?”, he asks. It is very hard to hear what he says. I think it best to shrug noncommitally.
“Bla”, he says decisively.
And then I am falling.
It goes without saying that after a lifetime of tripping over my own limbs and falling, at most, four feet, it feels very strange to tumble and keep on tumbling towards no object in particular. Things lose all sense of scale and the mind goes haywire. I know I´m plummeting incredibly fast – over 200 kilometres an hour – and yet it also feels like I´m not really moving at all. As the body is assaulted by the physics of air and gravity and concepts like ´terminal velocity´, the brain rebels. “I´m getting the hell out of here”, it says scornfully, and leaps out of your head about the time you leap out of the plane. I lose all sense of time, but after a couple of seconds the rushing feeling of fear melts away and I can open my eyes and stare literally goggle-eyed at the land below. The fact that I´m still alive makes me very happy indeed, and I start to howl like a man possessed.
“I´m skydiving! I´m skydiving! I´m skydivingggggg!” I bark eruditely to no-one in particular.
Too few seconds later, Adrian pulls the cord and suddenly we are yanked mightily upwards (or so it feels like) as the parachute cuts our speed in half. Then I am dangling comfortably with an Argentinian on my back and the sun on my face. I kick my legs like a restless schoolkid and grin happily.
“You enjoyed, yes?”, says Adrian, smiling into my ear.
“Flumphlg”, I gasp in the affirmative. The blasting air hoovered every microbe of spit out of my mouth, and I struggle to remoisturize.
“You want to do some spins?”, he asks cheerfully when I´ve recovered my voice.
“Certainly do!”
He tells me to place my arms in the parachute cords with his own, and we pull strongly on the right one. Immediately we start to corkscrew through the sky, faster and faster. I hoot gleefully as we go right and my stomach is inexorably shoved left.
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