Australian woman Erin Langworthy described the moment her bungee cord snapped, plunging her into the crocodile infested water’s of Africa’s Zambezi river, saying her survival was a “miracle”.
The 22-year-old's feet were still tied together as she plummeted the 111m (364 ft) from the Victoria Falls bridge, careering into the water head first, after the cord snapped halfway through the jump.
The video of the New Year’s eve jump shows the moment when the bungee cord snapped and her body is swept toward the black rapids below.
She told Australia’s Channel Nine News of the terrifying moment she hit the Zambezi river, which borders Zimbabwe and Zambia.
"It went black straight away and I felt like I'd been slapped all over.
"As I went deeper down, the water got colder and it must have snapped me out of it.
"The water was going quite quickly and then I started to hear the roaring.
"It's like being in waves, you get sucked under and then you pop up so it's very disorienting, I didn’t know which was up or down."
As the current attempted to drag her downstream, she told the broadcaster how her bungee rope lodged on river rocks, pulling her further beneath the surface.
"It was quite scary because a couple of times the rope actually got caught on some rocks or debris," she said.
"I actually had to swim down and yank the bungee cord out of whatever it was caught on to make it to the surface."
Daredevil Langworthy had been white water rafting the day before, and had remembered some safety tips from that activities' briefing to help her survive. She managed to make it to the Zimbabwe side of the river, before medics took her to hospital in South Africa.
"When I was first pulled out of the water, they put me on my back, and so all the water that I'd inhaled,meant that I couldn't breathe, so I made them roll me on to my side, and that's when I started coughing out water and blood," said Langworthy.
However the Australian backpacker sustained no major injuries, apart from a massive amount of bruising and a fractured collar bone. She was in hospital for a week after the dramatic fall.
Zambian Tourism Minister Given Lubinda assured tourists that bungee jumping equipment was safe and the incident, organised by adventure company Safari Par Excellence, was a one off.
"The bungee has proven to be a very viable operation considering that more than 50,000 tourists jump on it every year," he told the Lusaka times.
"It has been in operation for 10 years. This is the first time I am hearing of an incident. The probability of an incident is one in 500,000 jumps."