Jolly Harbour, Antigua - Rainforest Canopy Tour
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sun 6 Jan 2008 22:52
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17:03.970N 61:53.031W
Like you, we are just now getting back into the
swing of things after our Christmas/New Year's vacation. Ok, so maybe our
swing of things is a tad different than yours in that we are still here on
a boat in the Caribbean enjoying sunny weather in the mid-eighties every
day, but we are no longer lolling about on the
beach or participating in extended happy hours filled
with rum punches, vodka, wine and a wide variety of junk food.
Life can be rough when it's time to dial it back a notch or
two.
We arrived in Jolly Harbour, Antigua on December 22
after a nineteen hour sail overnight from St. Maarten. The sail was
uneventful (a good thing - no flying fish or killer cruise ships) and for the
most part, the wind cooperated. Picture 1 shows the expansive customs and
immigration office in Jolly Harbour. That's Don to the left,
sitting at the table diligently filling out forms in triplicate.
We decided to treat ourselves to twelve nights in
the Jolly Harbour Marina for the holidays - it was our first time on a dock
since Crown Bay, St. Thomas exactly one month prior. We were well
behaved the first several days working hard to rid the boat of the
salt crust acquired while sailing from St. Maarten and generally getting
the boat in shape for company (my sister Margy and her husband Rick joined
us in Jolly Harbour, staying at a nearby resort from the 27th through
the 3rd). Our Christmas was quiet - a day at the beach followed by dinner
at the local Italian restaurant. Yes, Italian. And yes, it was
pretty good - who says you can't have pasta in the Caribbean
for Christmas? Margy and Rick arrived on the 27th and we slipped into full
vacation mode for the next seven days.
The first major activity involved a rainforest,
climbing gear, a lot of enthusiasm from Anne and Margy, significantly less
enthusiasm from Don, and pure dread from Rick. While reviewing the
potential Antigua tourist activities on the web prior to Margy and
Rick's arrival, I came across the Antigua Rainforest Canopy Tour website
and decided it would make a marvelous Christmas present for Margy and Rick
(and besides, I really wanted to go). The tour consisted of nine 'zip
lines' - cables strung from rainforest tree to rainforest tree back and forth
across a ravine with a creek running through it several hundred feet
below. After the zip lines was a 'leap of faith' (according to the
brochure, 'a controlled decent 36 feet from a tree house to the rainforest
floor), and last, a 'rope challenge course'. On the 29th,
we arrived at the rainforest in our various states of anticipation after a
pleasant ride with our taxi driver Michael. Our group of four
joined a larger group of about sixteen, were fitted with our gear, and
given an extremely short safety briefing by one of the young rangers that
spoke with a lilting Caribbean accent such that we could catch about one word
out of every three. Margy and Rick in full gear are shown in Picture
2. Note the aura of dread surrounding Rick.
Feeling fully prepared, we climbed the many stairs
to the first zip line take-off platform attached to one of the trees. Each
zip line had two cables strung one above the other and the harnesses we had
on were attached to pulleys (including a safety line) that rode
on the cables. We quickly determined that the trick was not in take-off or
the zip ride itself, but in the landing. You had a choice of zooming into
the landing platform on the next tree at full ramming speed, or
using one of your hands to slow yourself down as you approached the landing
by squeezing down on the cable behind you a little bit (we were wearing
gloves). The trick was not to slow yourself down too much before
reaching the landing platform. If you lost momentum before reaching the
platform, you would stop and slide backwards until you reached the center of
the cable where you would bounce around, hanging a couple of
hundred feet above ground until you turned yourself around and manhandled your
way back up the cable to the landing platform by pulling yourself hand over hand
up the cable.
First zip line: Margy goes first - no
problem, with a hand up from one of the rangers, she lands just fine.
Next up, Rick - zips across, approaches the landing, the ranger reaches
out, Rick slows down, comes to a stop. Oh no! Rick slides
backwards in slow motion down the cable and comes to a halt, bouncing
slightly, in the middle. The ranger yells, 'Turn yourself
around! Put your hand in front of the pulley to turn yourself
around!". As Rick told us later, the problem he had with this instruction
was that the only part of the safety briefing he had heard clearly was
not to put your hand in front of the pulley because you could lose your
fingers. This is true only when you are moving forward, but in the heat of
the moment, Rick was very reluctant to put his fingers in danger by placing them
in front of the pulley to turn himself around. After a bit of
back and forth between the stranded (and unhappy) Rick and the ranger, against
his better judgment, Rick put his hand in front of the pulley, turned himself
around and pulled himself hand over hand back up the cable to the landing
platform. Shew! He made it. I was next, and there was no way I
wanted to get stranded in the middle, so I opted for ramming speed
and landed on the platform with some help from the ranger, as did
Don.
We all made it through the rest of the zip lines
with no further incident and moved on to the 'leap of faith'. This was
no big deal as the rangers simply lowered us from a tree house to the
forest floor on a rope. The worst part was the initial step off
the tree house platform - hence the name, 'leap of faith'.
On to the rope challenge course.
This was a series of rope bridges strung between trees, each bridge
unique, and all requiring some degree of balance, coordination and a little bit
of strength. These bridges were not suspended that far off the ground and
at the start of the course, there was a stairway down to the forest floor and a
path leading to the end which bypassed the course above. Rick,
having been a good sport thus far, opted out and went for the bypass. He
was then relegated to canopy tour photographer and got some good pictures of the
three of us making our not very graceful way through the course.
Picture three shows Don and I working our way across one of the
bridges. Note the extreme look of concentration on both our faces.
This was the toughest duty we'd dealt with in
a while.
In the end, it was all worth it. Although the
rainforest was not as grandiose as we had envisioned, the little bit we dared to
look at as we zipped across the cables was very pretty. No monkeys,
pythons, dinosaur-era birds or parrots though. Regardless, we had earned
our beer/vodka/rum/wine so we proceeded to the Gazebo Bar (named 'The Foredeck',
but we preferred to call it the Gazebo Bar because that's what it was....a
gazebo with a bar in it) back at the marina. Picture four shows
Margy, Rick and Don enjoying the Gazebo Bar. There we stayed for more
than a while, chatting with the bartender and the other boaters and
vacationers. We met one of the owners of the 'Life is Good' t-shirt and
clothing line. A very down-to-earth guy. It seems he lives his motto
in that he was sporting a well-worn Life is Good t-shirt and was
definitely having a good time.
More on our Antigua adventures with Margy and Rick
later.
Anne
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