Tourist survives 365-foot plunge when bungee cord snaps
Any adventurous vacationer who's considered taking a leap of faith on a bungee jump might want to take a look at this gut-wrenching video first.
It recounts the miraculous tale of 22-year-old Erin Langworthy, an Australian tourist who fell from the Victoria Falls Bridge over Africa's Zambezi River to the crocodile-infested, rapids-strewn waters below on Dec. 31. Langworthy told Nine Network television that she blacked out briefly after the bungee cord broke and she hit the river on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The stretch of the Zambezi below Victoria Falls is so intimidating that its one-day rafting trips are touted as the world's most challenging.
"You get sucked under and then you pop up so it's very disorienting -- I didn't know which was up or down," said Langworthy, who was still attached to a trailing cord by the ankles. She said the broken cord repeatedly snagged, so she "had to swim down and yank the bungee cord out of whatever it was caught on to make it to the surface."
"Luckily we had been rafting, so I remembered some of the safety tips," she told ABC's Good Morning America on Monday.
After reaching the Zimbabwe bank of the river, Langworthy was evacuated to a hospital in South Africa with cuts, bruises, and a broken collar bone.
http://travel.usatoday.com/destinat...5-foot-plunge-when-bungee-cord-snaps/598995/1
Any adventurous vacationer who's considered taking a leap of faith on a bungee jump might want to take a look at this gut-wrenching video first.
It recounts the miraculous tale of 22-year-old Erin Langworthy, an Australian tourist who fell from the Victoria Falls Bridge over Africa's Zambezi River to the crocodile-infested, rapids-strewn waters below on Dec. 31. Langworthy told Nine Network television that she blacked out briefly after the bungee cord broke and she hit the river on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The stretch of the Zambezi below Victoria Falls is so intimidating that its one-day rafting trips are touted as the world's most challenging.
"You get sucked under and then you pop up so it's very disorienting -- I didn't know which was up or down," said Langworthy, who was still attached to a trailing cord by the ankles. She said the broken cord repeatedly snagged, so she "had to swim down and yank the bungee cord out of whatever it was caught on to make it to the surface."
"Luckily we had been rafting, so I remembered some of the safety tips," she told ABC's Good Morning America on Monday.
After reaching the Zimbabwe bank of the river, Langworthy was evacuated to a hospital in South Africa with cuts, bruises, and a broken collar bone.
http://travel.usatoday.com/destinat...5-foot-plunge-when-bungee-cord-snaps/598995/1
