A 22-year-old Australian backpacker says it is a “miracle” she is alive after her cord snapped during a bungee jump over the Zambesi River on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Erin Langworthy was sent plunging into the rapids below, and forced to swim with her feet still tied together after she fell from the Victoria Falls bridge, 111-metres above the water, on new year’s eve.

“It went black straight away and I felt like I’d been slapped all over,” she told Australian broadcaster Nine News. She said it was “quite scary” because the rope got caught a few times on some rocks in the river.

“I actually had to swim down and yank the bungee cord out of whatever it was caught into,” she said.

“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,” she added.

Ms Worth said it was definitely a miracle that she survived the jump, which is understood to have been organised by Safari Par Excellence. The company’s website prices the bungi jump experience at $120, advertising it as: “Not for the faint hearted!”.