Feet forward, rock back and let gravity take its course. Photo / Helena Jinx
Feet forward, rock back and let gravity take its course. Photo / Helena Jinx
In search of adventure, Tess Nichol is soon hurtling through the treetops, upside down on a wire.
Fiji is synonymous with white sand, crystal clear water and blue skies; in a word, Fiji is relaxation.
So why am I hurtling through canopy upside down in a harness in Momi and not sipping a cocktail on the beach?
I'm upside down because I promised Mike, my ebullient zipline guide, that I would be brave enough to try an upside-downy on at least one of Zip Fiji's 16 zips.
And I'm 400m up a limestone cliff because I've managed to sneak on to a "boys-only" trip to Fiji to see what the island has to offer people who want a bit of adventure in this slice of paradise.
Momi's zipline tour is one of three in Fiji and the biggest by far.
The network of 16 zips took 10 months to build, Mike tells me; a small team of men had to haul the materials through the forest without the help of machinery.
On this humid Fijian afternoon just walking up the steps to get to the next zip's platform has me drenched in sweat, so the thought of lugging bags of concrete is almost unimaginable.
If the men who built the course are anything like Zip Fiji's guides, though, it's easy to see how they managed it.
Mike and his team are full of cheeky energy and good humour and their enthusiasm for what they do makes an already fun experience even more entertaining.
Each "zip" is a suspended wire running at various angles from one platform to another. A guide clips a set of carabiners on your harness to a pulley on the zip and away you go.
For a fast zip, you free-fall, to control your speed you squeeze on the zip's lines with a leather-gloved hand.
It's not as scary as it seems to flip yourself upside down either - just rock back, thrust your feet forward and gravity does the rest. Just make sure you've got a tight grip on your phone; it's a long way down to the forest floor.
A few zips is all it takes to get high enough to see pretty stunning views of the coast near Momi.
The author with Mike, a staff member at Zipline Fiji. Photo / Tess Nichol
It's hard to know where to look when you're zipping along the wire because there's so much to take in. The sparkling coastline, surrounding tree tops and the lush forested hillside below fly past all too quickly, before your attention needs to turn to the quickly approaching platform.
Failing to slow down in time means body-slamming your guide, which will make you feel bad because what kind of thanks is that for such a fun afternoon?
Zip Fiji also offers abseiling and caving, and the zipline tour includes a tour of a limestone cave which, according to one of the guides, used to be home to a Fijian tribe in cannibal times.
He shows us the area where enemies were killed, and another where they were eaten.
These days, the cave is inhabited only by swallows, who roost in their thousands in the crevices of the cave walls but venturing down into its dark recesses is still a bit spooky.
"I'm glad I can just live in a Grey Lynn flat," I think as the guide explains the people who lived here didn't even light up the cave because smoke from fires would betray their location to enemies.
We finish off our afternoon back at the base of the hill with a delicious homemade curry and a drink of Coke. I'm still buzzing.
Mike gives me a hug (brave of him as I am still very sweaty) and asks me if I enjoyed myself. I promise him I did and, yes, I will tell my friends to come.
So here I am keeping that promise: Should you find yourself in Fiji wanting more than another lazy afternoon on the beach, hook up with the ziplining crew.
