Mad_Mat,

Zip lines, WOW!!  Excellent idea...at least in ONE direction, for most portages!!  My Costa Rican experience suggests an answer might be possible for the reverse up-hill route as well, however.  If we can only learn to train the howling critters, how about a dial-up phone service such as:  1-800-Portage-Monkey??  Several of the ones I saw yesterday would be big enough to do the job.  They could probably find a few short cuts not available to the likes of you & me, too.  On the other hand, the "down-side" is that they make so much howling noise, the moose, deer, & other wildlife would seldom come around.

Hey, so there I am this morning, out in the sparkling blue Pacific cove just below the veranda in our back yard.  I'm doing about a half-mile to three-quarter mile swim to the rocky point at the end of the cove in lieu of other local exercise options (I suck as a swimmer, so this is a REAL work-out for ME).  I'm taking in the scenery: watching the local vendor take sea kayaks off his truck; gazing over at the wide-spreading big-boughed trees with hanging vines; looking seaward where this fancy katamaran has been moored all week long; basically just soaking it all in.  Anyway, I'm doing some kind of a modified back-stroke & making slow progress & staring up at a powder blue sky.  Suddenly, three very large "birds" of distinctly sharp angles & long beaks (not far-removed from Pterodactyls on their family tree) start circling directly above me.  I swear I thought I was seeing a little pointy spot on the top of their heads that would have confirmed an ancestry closely linked to those in "Jurassic Park".  Hmmmm...now that I think about it, THIS IS where they filmed Jurassic Park.  Yessiree, it was disconcerting for a little bit but "reason" soon got hold of me.  So, I just kept back-stroking along.  Before long, this "predator-pack" flew off into some gum trees up on the cliff, where they scared several other strange large birds - all red - which, in turn, produced one heck of a "macaw, macaw" cacophony as they fluttered away.

Time to wake up the boys & enjoy our last full day here.

Adios,

Jimbo