Otherwise known as Canopy Tour, or Xtreme Cable!
Will, Mara (the two Aussies) and Marisol (my lovely engaged British pal) went to Panajachel (the bigger town on the other side of Lake Atitlan) for the day and ended up zip-lining through a natural park. It was killer. I have never been on such long ziplines. There were 8 in total, each one averaging 300m (almost 1000′) long, on which you fly along at 20m/sec (60′/sec), at least 15m (50′) over the forest canopy. Wow, what a rush.
I was impressed by the rigging. They used all U.S.-made equipment, and all of it was top-notch. Really good harnesses, pulleys, and backup safety gear. The rigging was also done correctly (“Never saddle a dead horse”, one of my favorite phrases from Stagecraft 101), which is more than I can say for a lot of suspension bridges I’ve seen in the States (I’m talking simple footbridges, not automobile bridges!) All too often I’ve seen wire rope clips put on backwards or in the wrong order.
Anyway, the ziplines were a total rush. Lovely view from up there. I even managed to shoot a video while zipping along.
After the ziplines, we walked around the ecological park. A handful of spider monkeys live there, which were fun to watch. They have the largest and strongest prehensile tail of all primates. Frankly, it made me envious to watch the way they could swing their entire body around holding onto a branch with only their tail. They don’t have opposable thumbs, but their big toes are, go figure. They spend most of their lives in the trees and rarely come down to the ground. Sort-of like that crazy tree-hugger in Berkeley.
We also fed bananas to these crazy creatures called Coatis, sort of a cross between an aggressive raccoon and a kinkajou.
I want to post more videos, but I didn’t hear back from any of you after that last set. Were you able to play them? Which ones? Do you prefer QuickTime, Flash, Windows Media, or some other format?
The in-line (windowed) ones are a bit of a pain, so for now, I´ll just give a couple of links where you can download the videos.
Here is a video of me taking off on the zipline
Click here to see a Spider_Monkey swinging from it’s tail
