Activity 5: Zip-pity Do Dah!

As if bungee jumping wasn’t enough time spent in the air, I spent the rest of the afternoon zip lining through the canopy top.  In my book about wildlife in South Africa the area is known simple as the forest and is characterized as "a community of trees with canopies that touch or interlock, with little or no grass cover.  Ferns, mosses and leaf-litter occur in the understory."  The forest that we were in was indigenous forest, commercial plantations and the ecosystem known as Fynbos.  We were in the Tsitsikamma area along the Garden Route.  The word means "place of abundant or sparkling water" in the language of the Khoi Khoi.  With the Indian Ocean to the south, the Eerste (First) River in the east and the Bloukrans River in the west the names makes perfect sense.

But enough with the fun facts.  This was the first time I had ever done anything like this before.  The last time I was on a zip line I was maybe 10 years old (probably younger) and it was at my elementary school and it was maybe 8 feet off the ground.  I fell off and got the wind knocked out of me.  Luckily, this time I was harnessed in and all the wind stayed in my body.

The zip lining itself was pretty cool.  We all had harnesses that were then clipped into to the zip line.  You had a glove on one hand that you used to brake simply by pulling down on the main line.  There were a couple of shortish runs and then two or three that were quite long where you got going pretty fast.  I wasn’t very good at braking and my landings on the platforms were not graceful, but it was fun anyway.  What was really cool was just being in the forest.  I had never been in an ecosystem like this one.  It kind of reminded me of a jungle, mostly because it was so green and there were so many kinds of trees and other vegetation.  The platforms that we stood on while we waited weren’t bolted into the trees or anything - everything was done with tension.  This ensured that the trees weren’t damaged at all.  The tallest platform was about 15 meters off the ground.  Quite tall, but considering many of us had just jumped off a bridge 216 meters as high, it wasn’t too bad.  We didn’t see any monkeys or anything, but we saw some birds and just the surrounding nature was really nice.

An example of how the platform was attached to the tree.

My and my roommate Jess.