The Further Adventures of an Idiot Abroad (4 page)

The mood started to change. The other bungee jumpers were getting impatient and shouting, as they were getting tired of waiting. I suppose they’d hyped themselves up to do it and now I was
getting in the way and giving their inner voice more time to make them reconsider, which isn’t good when you’ve probably paid around £130 to do this. I asked them to shut up, as I
couldn’t think straight with all the noise.

In the end I decided to listen to the voice in my head and not do it. Sam and Kyle did though. They didn’t hang around as long as me and think about what they were about to do. They got
hooked up and jumped without looking down and didn’t give time for their inner voice to get a word in. They came back up
woooohing
loudly, but nothing made me want to do it. In a way
I was proud of the fact I said no. To this day, there is not one bit of me that wished I had done the bungee. I wonder how many people end up doing it under pressure from spectators standing by
yelling at them the way they did with me. How many of them are brave enough to say no? How many of these people would do it for themselves if no one was watching? I’ve always been quite good
at not doing things I didn’t want to do. When I was younger I had loads of mates who did daft things like sniff glue and gas but I always said no. I had a friend whose ambition it was to work
in a cobblers just for the free smell of glue. The only time I took drugs was by accident at a pub quiz. There were loads of chocolate brownies on the tables. I wandered about from table to table
eating them. When I left I hailed a taxi, but when he asked where I wanted to go I couldn’t remember. It turned out I’d been eating hash cakes. I had to sit on the pavement for ages
before my address came back to me. But I can still remember the bloody reg plate of that maroon Ford Orion though.

Sam and Kyle said they knew I was never going to do the jump and had set up another activity. They took me to a golf course, but not for golf . . . No, that would be too boring for a person in
this part of the world. They wanted me to experience zorbing. I’d never heard of it. They had a huge rubber ball sat in the rough, close to the fourteenth hole. They asked me to climb in.
Kyle then started pouring in water from a big drum. I wasn’t expecting this, so I quickly zipped up the hole. They started to roll it. I was being thrown all over the place. It was like being
in one of them balls you put in the washing machine that has softener in it. The water swished about drenching me. This must be what it feels like being a baby in the womb. It was hot in there, and
the smell of warm rubber on top of being chucked around made me feel really sick. It’s not even as if it looks cool. Some people might do bungee jumping and sky diving ’cos they think
it gives off a macho look, but zorbing doesn’t even give you that. It’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t brag about. I felt like a hamster in a wheel.

I was worried I was going to be sick, which could be dangerous while trapped in a moving ball, as I could end up choking. So, I yelled all the swear words I knew at the top of my voice. They
eventually stopped it rolling. Kyle said I shouldn’t have closed the entrance as the more water that’s in the ball, the smoother the ride. That’s some information I may as well
forget about, as I’m never going zorbing again. No one should go zorbing. I think the ball should be used for shifting furniture that’s too heavy to carry. Shove in a big telly and then
roll it down the road.

Before they left, Kyle gave me a blow-up kiwi (the national bird) as a memento. I watched a programme on these birds ages ago and remembered that they mate for life. Some have been known to be
together for 30 years, but I don’t know why they make such a big deal about it. I put it down to them all looking the same. I’m pretty sure if all men and all woman looked the same
there wouldn’t be as many divorces. While I’m on kiwi facts, even though it has wings it’s a flightless bird and prefers to keep its feet on the ground like me. And it sleeps
during the day, which was something I wished I could do as the jet lag was killing me by this point.

I called Ricky and told him I didn’t do the bungee and I wasn’t happy about being put in the situation. He made some chicken noises: £1.50 a minute and he’s doing chicken
noises. But he said I had a chance to redeem myself because he’d arranged for me to go to another island where bungee was actually invented. He said the island was known as the happiest place
in the world and to stop moaning.

We were up early the next day to catch a small private plane that would take us to another airport to catch another plane that would take us to the island of Pentecost in
Vanuatu. A woman was scraping frost off the windscreen as we loaded up our kit into the small six-seater. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to ask the pilot if he could move his seat
forward so I had room for my legs. We flew really low, so low that the woman co-pilot seemed to be using a normal road map. I’m surprised we didn’t stop at traffic lights we were flying
that low.

We got to Pentecost where I met John. He took me from the landing strip through the woods where I could hear whistling and singing, and through the trees until we came to a massive tower that
looked like it was made of scaffolding poles. As I got closer I could see it was a structure of wooden poles all bound together with rope. It looked like a giant game of KerPlunk.

Men and women were dancing and singing while others were climbing up the side of the wooden frame. John explained that they were looking forward to seeing a white man do a land dive. As he
explained why they do the land diving, men were jumping from various heights with nothing but vines wrapped round their ankles. Somehow, they measure the vines so that the land divers just brush
the ground before being whipped back up by the vines.

The highest jumping platform was around 30 metres high. When one of the men jumped, the whole structure shook violently, as if it could come down at any moment. As each man landed another two
blokes ran up and cut the vines free to clear them before the next man dived, like a kind of air traffic control.

As soon as the jumpers were released from the vines they ran back up the tower to have another go, like kids in the park playing on a slide. I imagine it would be difficult to refuse to do the
jump if you lived here. It seemed to be such a tight community and might lead to being shunned. I think most people in life just want to fit in so follow suit rather than questioning things. It
reminded me of the bungee jumping situation . . .

John said that if the divers brushed the land with the hair on their head, it blessed the land. ‘No chance of me doing that then,’ I thought. I’d have to
plant my head in the earth like an ostrich for my hair to brush the land. He explained that the higher the jump, the more plentiful the harvest.

There were no St John’s Ambulance people on stand-by if things went tits up. Even in the professional set-up in New Zealand I had to sign a waiver to say if anything happened it
wasn’t their responsibility, so I doubted if this village had any sort of cover. They didn’t even cover their bollocks, so Life Cover wasn’t going to be on offer.

The men wore a nambas, which is a small bit of material worn over the knob. The bollocks are left free. I didn’t see the point of the material. It didn’t really cover anything.
It’s like when you wrap a bottle of wine for someone at Christmas. There’s no surprise there, and it was the same with the nambas – it wasn’t hiding anything.