FACE Adrenalin, an established bungi jumping operator in South Africa, has temporarily suspended its bungi jumping operations off the old Gourits River Bridge near Mossel Bay due to the condition of the bridge.
“This decision wasn’t taken lightly,” says Thomas Ngomana, a director of Kiwi Extreme / Face Adrenalin and the operator of the Gourits site. “But after the tragic boating accident during November’s heavy rains when we lost our friend and colleague, Lundi Tafeni, we decided to conduct a complete audit of the safety and integrity of our equipment and procedures.”
The company found that parts of the old bridge were seriously rusted and in a very poor state of repair. Their bridge swinging, however (which is anchored to the new national road bridge) will continue. “The two operations have different landing areas. When you swing you land under the new bridge, which is in perfect condition and there’s no chance of entering the zone of risk under the old bridge.”
Face Adrenalin ceo, Devon Tuohey, states: “We’ve sent a number of applications to the department concerned asking for permission to improve aspects such as spectator safety and crowd control but we’ve never had any response. And, because they’re our landlords and because we’re still operating on a month-by-month permit system we can’t be expected to incur the costs of maintaining the bridge and de-rusting and painting the struts that support the deck.”
As the oldest commercial bungi site in the country, the Gourits River Bridge has become something of an icon, says the chairman of Mossel Bay Tourism, Neels Zietsman. “We believe that solutions can be found in the case of the bungi jumping at the Gourits River and hope that Face Adrenalin can quickly restore this iconic attraction - both for their own business’ sake and for the sake of tourism in general.”
