The guides at Aerial Trek keep the atmosphere light, coaching guests through this "extreme" adventure with humor and self-assurance. Your fear will dissolve like candy floss, and whet your appetite for more.
- Fly like Peter Pan (suspended by a harness like Cathy Rigby)
- Guides are encouraging and sensitive to nervous beginners, and more than happy to zipline in tandem
- One of the more unique activities on Barbados; more challenging than sunbathing or water sports
- Course has a Swiss Family Robinson treehouse feel; who doesn't love the Swiss Family Robinson?
- Complimentary drinks provided following the trek (water and soda)
- Expensive
- Total time spent actually ziplining is no more than a couple of minutes
- Large groups mean longer wait times (but more opportunity to savor the experience)
- Not for young kids: you must be at least age 13 to zipline
- Address: Walkes Spring Plantation, Jack-in-the-Box Gully, St. Thomas, Barbados
- Admission: US$85
- Hours: 9:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Tour takes about an hour total, depending on group size
- Phone: 246-234-8082
- E-mail: aerialtrek@caribsurf.com
Too late now, I grabbed the rope with my left hand and clutched the steel line above me. The guide put his hand on my back; I released my footing, and swung free. Then I was flying, twisting in the wind, grinning, trying to grasp the leaves of trees as I careened. I was weightless. Light as a child. The world's most spoiled child, in the world's coolest treehouse.
The hardest part of ziplining is getting comfortable in your harness; the rest is a breeze.
Seven cables traverse eight platforms that wend their way through the Bajan forest at the Aerial Trek Zipline Adventure site. Thick rope is tied to the giant trees from which the cables are suspended. The wooden platforms you stand on are handcrafted but sturdy, though they have an unnerving tendency to sway slightly with your group's shifting weight.
The guides, however, are smiling, and their good cheer and camaraderie is infectious. It helps that the course eases you into the zipline experience, starting with a short traverse between the first two platforms before working up to longer passages.
It's like riding a roller coaster: once you get past that first time, the real fear dissolves. By platform three, you've given up braking on the line altogether until the very end (and then, just for the sake of the guide poised to catch you). Caution quickly gives way to hurtling through the lower canopy as fast as you can.
