Zipping through a rainforest

I hesitated.

"You want a thrill? this is it," said the guide.

A few minutes later I am on a zip wire hurtling across  the 350ft  Breakfast River gorge in the Morne Trois Piton Rainforest on the island of Dominica.

Maybe if I had time to think about it I would have had second thoughts.  Certainly my travel insurance did not cover it and before getting strapped in I was asked to sign several disclaimers .

It was more of a thrill than I had expected with the rally scary bit not the leaping out into space above the rainforest but the arrival where mattresses were wrapped around trees in case the brake didn't work. You just got to have confidence that the operators know what they are doing when you are hurtling at 40 mph on a piece of wire straight into a tree.

( This zip line, the highest in the Caribbean, is broken into three sections: easy, moderate and really scary and yes some do chicken out at the third section and choose to walk down.)



Not everyone though is happy with the development though of these aerial trams and zip wires above the canopy of the rainforest for I noticed graffiti scrawl on walls as we entered the reserve.

For island of Dominica is promoting itself as an eco-tourist  destination and the Morne Trois Piton Rainforest  is a UNESCO nature world heritage site.

Here I must confess that my eco-tourism credentials took a severe battering for the temptation to glide above the rainforest was too much. This was something I had always wanted to do.  Then came the final offer of a trip on a zip wire.
And I succumbed.


This rainforest contains 172 species of birds including two endangered species of parrot but the only wildlife I saw though was one bird which looked like a black sparrow and a giant rat, which looks like a rabbit with a rats face and it is eaten by locals an it said to taste like chicken. On the other hand I did hae other things on my mind.


As for rainfall they get over 30feet , yes thirty feet, a year . ( Scotland gets three feet).

"What's the oldest person you have taken up? " I ask my guide as I took the harness off.
"Well, we had an 83  year old man and an 85 year old woman."

Well, I guess I have a few more years to go before I break that record. .
.
Was it worth it? yes. Would I do it again? yes.


www.rainforesttram.com