Khara Per­sad

At least that's the idea. But let­ting go and trust­ing a har­ness to sup­port your weight as you glide through the air on a ca­ble takes se­ri­ous gump­tion, and at times, much coax­ing (which feels like "bouff­ing") from the per­son wait­ing be­hind you.

On Tues­day, the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) opened its new zi­plin­ing ad­ven­ture to the pub­lic, hop­ing to lure thrill-seek­ers for yes­ter­day's na­tion­al hol­i­day.

With sev­en new­ly in­stalled zi­plines set up through­out Mac­queripe Bay, the high­est ca­ble about 100 feet up and the longest ca­ble about 500 feet, a be­gin­ner is un­der­stand­ably hes­i­tant, but af­ter the first glide, the re­main­ing six re­quire con­sid­er­ably less coax­ing.

The zi­plin­ing ex­pe­ri­ence be­gins with the ba­sic for­mal­i­ties of pay­ing $120 and sign­ing a waiv­er.

Then it's time to suit up. A qual­i­fied line guide helps you in­to a har­ness, which is clipped on snug­ly to your body. Rid­ers are fur­nished with a hel­met and gloves, and giv­en a quick mock demon­stra­tion show­ing how to po­si­tion your body and hands while on the ca­ble, and how to slow down.

While on the safe­ty of the ground, look­ing up at those go­ing be­fore you, it doesn't cross your mind that this may not be as easy as it seems. Five ex­cit­ed teenagers from St Mary's Col­lege, who had just fin­ished their CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions, test­ed this the­o­ry and said af­ter the ini­tial fear of let­ting go, the ride was noth­ing short of "ex­hil­a­rat­ing."

En­joy­ing his free­dom from school, James Amow, 17, wel­comed the new ex­pe­ri­ence and was hap­py the ride was avail­able.

"The speed is the most fun part."

There are sev­en plat­forms spread out through­out the area, where zip­pers are se­cure­ly clipped on to the ca­ble and jump off to get to the next plat­form. From there, zip­pers must tra­verse a canopy walk or net bridge–a plank of wood which rests in a net–to get to an­oth­er plat­form that be­comes the new re­lease point.

There are five net bridges, which con­nect the sev­en zip lines.

This "wob­bly walk" was the on­ly down­side for the young men.

"The bridges were scary," said Stephan Moses, 18, who said the course was too short, but joked, "No mat­ter how long the course is, it will al­ways be too short."

They all want­ed more, and said the ask­ing price for the ride was not too much, as they got their mon­ey's worth.

Safe­ty was not a con­cern ei­ther, as staff at Mac­queripe are cur­rent­ly be­ing trained by ex­pert guides from St Lu­cia, where zip­ping is big busi­ness.

"They took very good care of us, they knew ex­act­ly what they were do­ing," Amow said. Moses agreed, say­ing he was com­plete­ly con­fi­dent in their abil­i­ty to han­dle the ca­bles.

Matthew De­vaux, one of the in­vestors from ZIP-ITT Ad­ven­ture Tours, said the course's safe­ty was "on par with zi­plin­ing places around the world," ex­plain­ing that they used a dou­ble har­ness to pre­vent any in­ci­dent.

Still, an am­bu­lance is al­ways on stand­by, he said. As an­oth­er safe­ty pre­cau­tion, a course in­spec­tor will test each line every morn­ing be­fore pub­lic use.

It takes about 45 min­utes to an hour to glide through the sev­en-zi­pline course, and in­quiries from the pub­lic have been over­whelm­ing so far, De­vaux said.

"Peo­ple want to zip."

Chil­dren un­der 18 are al­lowed but must meet a min­i­mum height re­quire­ment of 50 inch­es and have their par­ents' con­sent. The max­i­mum weight al­lowed is 250 lbs.