So, there I was – hanging on a wire two hundred feet up in the air, completely stuck, suffering from dehydration and feeling a little bit like a complete idiot.
The guide wasn’t the least bit happy with me. I could feel his glare fifty feet away from me like the Death Star ray on Alderaan. Turning my body around on the spindle, I weakly reached up and tried to pull myself along by just using my arms.
Nope, not gonna happen.
I could hear Christina (AKA Mrs C) yelling at me from the other end, being generally encouraging and wishing that she could actually help.
I look down. And I think to myself, without a trace of fear, wow, it’s really beautiful here. I’m very lucky to be alive.
Costa Rica is a really lovely place, especially when you find spots that are a little – well, a lot out of the way of the main cities and towns. The people are friendly enough (well, they have to be, since their country hasn’t had an army since 1948) and I was glad that Christina and myself were having a great time on our honeymoon so far, especially since a lot of it was outside, adventurous and within the confines of ‘civilised’ wild nature. The country certainly ticked a lot of boxes when it was first suggested to us by another couple, so while my at-the-time-bride-to-be (otherwise known as ‘ATTBTB’ in the on-line gaming world) was working with preparations for the wedding, I was chasing up after companies, getting the nine or ten day honeymoon set up.
Yes. Good choice.
A sharp buzzing noise interrupted my dehydration-induced state of euphoria – it was a handle attached to a rope, running down the zipline towards me. The guide shouted at me to grab at it, which I did, without too much success. Then he started to encourage me - to not be afraid of the height, that everything was okay and above all, hurry up as he has a lot of sleeping and reading to catch up on. I wasn’t afraid – I just didn’t want to leave any time soon. Especially when it involved moving away from the really nice view of the canopy, overlooking a river set into a valley. What did he think I was? Crazy?
I made another lunge and unfortunately caught the handle. Our guide pulled at the rope, dragging me unceremoniously along with it, and got to the other end without too much trauma and a fair bit of sympathy from my new wife.
Our guide – let’s call him Pelé, because he ironically looked the exact opposite to the famous football player – said to me something along the lines of, ‘Don’t stop on the next one. There’s no rope to help you on the next one.’
To which I said – nothing, because I was too knackered to speak.
Nevertheless, I only got stuck because it was my own fault anyway, thinking that I had to slow down from the breakneck speed in which I was going. Slightly too much, it seemed.
The next few ziplines came and went without any incident – they merely had a cumulative effect on me in how great the views were and how pretty the country was, particularly when viewed from a greater height. Costa Rica seemed to have been set aside for the postcard industry.
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