Jumping off waterfall and zip line

When I was a kid my mom often said the famous line “Well if your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” I always responded with “of course not.”
Now, my mom never said “if your friends jump off a cliff would you?” But now I would have to answer “Um well maybe.”
A few weeks ago to celebrate our one year anniversary in country, some of my peace corps friends and I met up in Mindo, a tropical town full of extreme sports in northern Ecuador.
We had two goals for the day: zip line and waterfall jump, both insane adrenaline rushes. We found a 15 line zip line for $10, could you ask for a better deal? It was awesome, and surprising not scary at all.
Then we headed to the famous waterfall jump. As we were hiking down I could feel my heart beating and my legs getting ready to be shaky. I knew I wanted to jump, I’ve always wanted to jump from a waterfall like what you see in the movies. But the idea of jumping off a 70ft cliff into a waterfall started to really hit me. When we got to the top of the jumping point my nerves definitely hit but there was not backing out. I may have been the slowest in going and actually making that jump off the cliff aiming for that circle clearing in the water below, but after 30 minutes of hearing the directions about 10 times I finally did the leap. It was like doing a dead man’s walk in a pool, only you just fell a really long distance before the painful impact of the water in the end. But it was worth it to do once in my life. So as the expression now goes my friends jumped off a cliff and well, yes I did too. Sorry mom.