Key takeaways
- One person, one cord, and the version almost everybody pictures when they book.
- Two people harnessed together. It does not halve the fear and it does change the experience.
- The crew adjust the cord length from your weight so you brush the surface or go in.
- The rigging depends on it, and the edge is a bad place to be weighing options.
Why there is a choice at all
Bungy looks like a single fixed thing from outside: you jump, the cord stops you. In practice the operator is setting a length for your weight every time, and once that calculation exists it can be aimed at different outcomes.
That is what makes the water touch possible. It is not a different jump so much as a different target: the cord is set so that the bottom of your arc intersects the surface of the river rather than stopping above it.
Tandem is a genuinely different rig, with two people and a shared harness arrangement, and it has to be booked as such.
The solo jump
One person, harnessed at the ankles, jumping alone. This is what almost everyone means by a bungy jump and it is what most first-timers take.
The advantage is that it is entirely yours. Nobody else is in the frame, the countdown is for you, and whatever you do at the edge is your own decision at your own pace.
The disadvantage, for some people, is exactly the same thing.
It is also the version the site is built around. The platform, the countdown and the retrieval are all arranged for one person at a time, so a solo jump is the smoothest of the three and the one with the least standing about while equipment is changed over.
A jumper reaching the surface at the bottom of the arc
Tandem
Two people harnessed together and jumping as one. It is popular with couples, with pairs of friends, and with siblings who have dared one another into it and would rather not be alone at the edge.
Two honest observations. It does not reduce the fear: several people report it increases it slightly, because you cannot take as long as you want and you are now responsible for somebody else being committed.
And it makes the photographs much better. Two faces at the moment of leaving a bridge is a considerably more interesting image than one.
The practical wrinkle with tandem is the weight arithmetic. Two people on one cord is a different and larger load than either of them alone, and the pairing has to sit inside the rig limits, so a couple at opposite ends of the weight range may find the option is not available to them. It is worth asking at booking rather than assuming.
The water touch
The option most people regret not taking, and the one that changes the memory of the day. Instead of stopping above the river, you reach it.
There is a gradation. A hand touch means brushing the surface with your fingertips at the bottom of the arc, which is dramatic and leaves you essentially dry. A head dip means going in properly, to the shoulders or beyond, and coming up wet.
You tell the crew which you want and they set the cord accordingly. The margin they are working with is small, which is a good reason to be honest at the weigh-in.
One further thing the crew are doing that is invisible from the deck: the river level is not fixed. The Kawarau rises and falls with rainfall and with releases upstream, so the same cord that produced a hand touch last week may produce a dunking today. That is why the setting is done fresh on the day rather than from a table.
The water itself
The Kawarau is glacier-fed and it is cold in every month of the year. In summer that is refreshing and briefly shocking. In winter it is a genuine decision.
Being wet also has consequences for the rest of the visit: you are two and a half hours from your hotel including transport, in a building with limited facilities, in Central Otago.
Bring a towel and a change of top if you intend to go in. A surprising number of people decide on the touch at the last moment and then spend the transfer back to town dripping.
Which to take for a first jump
Solo with a water touch is the common recommendation and it is a good one. The solo part is the real experience and the touch is what converts a jump into a story.
Take tandem if the alternative is not jumping at all. That is a perfectly respectable reason and the crew see it constantly.
Take a dry jump if you are cold-averse, short of time afterwards, or jumping in July and sensible about it.
A last consideration for anyone travelling on. If this is your only bungy jump ever, take the water. If you are working through Queenstown and intend to do the higher one later in the week, keep the touch for this bridge, because the higher jumps have no river to reach and cannot offer it.
Changing your mind
You can decline the water at the platform and the crew will simply not set it that way. That is a five-second conversation and nobody minds.
What is harder to change on the spot is tandem, since it is a different booking and a different rig, and solo, since the cord is already cut to your weight.
The one decision you genuinely cannot defer is whether you jump, and that one is not made in advance by anybody.
