Mel Gibson Gal

Nicked by a Zip Line in Costa Rica:
"Nicked by a Zip Line in Costa Rica (Apocalypto :Lipstick Jungle

Traveling to another country rearranges my atoms, especially on the trip home. As Allen and I make our way back to San Francisco from San Jose, Costa Rica, 30,000 feet in the air, I review my time in Central America and I decide the adventure nicked me, like a scratch on an otherwise worn table.

We did everything everyone does in Costa Rica. We ate mounds of gallo pinto (rice mixed with black beans,) drank guaro (liquor from sugar cane,) hiked up tropical slopes, traipsed into rain and cloud forests, kayaked into the bayous of Mangroves, rafted down the class three Balsa River peppered with huge rocks that insisted on hanging us up, and for hours bumped over desperately poor roads.

But it was the zip line that nicked me.

We bused forty minutes out of Manuel Antonio into a Palm Grove where we jammed and jived for another forty-five minutes until we reached the camp where we were to suit up for the zip line. The routine requires that first you are belted into a harness that is guided between your legs and around your waist. Next you're outfitted with heavy-duty working gloves and a helmet that makes you look like an insect. The idea is, with your hands gripping the clamp line, you careen through the jungle canopy on a wire at speeds that sometimes reach forty-five miles an hour. The set up is as follows: two hundred feet up, wires are stretched between giant trees and the strand over which you zip can reach four to five hundred feet to a half mile.

Okay, I decide. This is good. Right? Exciting, exhilarating. A healthy injection of adrenalin into every nook and cranny that makes up my body as well as my psyche. If I fall from a platform I'll be dead. If an arm gets hung up in a passing vine it will be torn out of the socket. If I merely mess my panties I'll be forever humiliated.

Okay, let's go.

The zip line guides are young, muscular, funny, kind and confident. Two accompany you on your journey. One zips over the line to be there to meet you and help you mount the platform once you've zipped. The other assists you position your trolley on the wire in preparation for your zip.

I'm on the platform, standing on my tip toes as Julio jams the trolley on to the line. He turns me toward the jungle. "Ready?"

"Let her rip."

I'm flying through the canopy. Giant leaves wave as I wing down the line. What I'm about to describe happens in the matter of seconds because fear time runs differently from normal time. Fear time slows things down to the point that I have the opportunity to detect a buzz from a gargantuan insect that follows me. Though I'm holding on for dear life, I risk a glance at what I'm positive will be a sickly-green creature with thick, dripping mucus from its mouth about to devour me. I look right, then left. No alien creature, not even a creature of this world and I realize it's the sound of the wire under the stress of my weight and speed.

And then I feel two strong arms pulling me onto the platform. I did it! I zipped. Okay. Let's go back to the hotel and lie by the pool, have a guaro sour, read pop novels and cruise into the sunset.

"Sorry, lady," says Julio in his lilting Costa Rican accent. "Ah, si, you have nine more lines to do. Did I tell you that you are about to repel off a platform and drop two hundred feet down a rope. Oh, yeah, lady, did I mention the Tarzan swing where you fling yourself into space and you will shriek in terror? Pura Vida!"

I zipped, I repelled, I flung, I shrieked and I loved every minute. However, later when I sat on the rustic porch of a jungle restaurant, palms rustling their green fans softly, and I nibbled a portabello sandwich and sipped a beer, I noticed I was on the brink of tears. I think the emotion came from a prayer that whispered up my spine. It went something like this: Thank you for imbuing me with enough juice to get me on the line. Thank you for letting me survive so I'll see my children and grandchildren again. Thank you for not nicking me so deeply so I'm left with just enough memory of joy of the experience to allow me to overcome my next fear. Which is: I'm going to make a movie.