New Canopy Zipline Tour Off to Inauspicious Start

MANAGUA – After months of anticipationand hype, a new canopy ziplinetour traversing the Tiscapa volcaniclagoon in the capital is off to an inauspiciousbeginning.The Tiscapa canopy tour, Nicaragua’sthird zipline tour, is the first to be built inManagua, and is part of a larger plan toclean up the Tiscapa lagoon and turn thearea into a downtown tourist attraction.So far, so bad.During the tour’s grand opening June4, attended by the national media andhundreds of curious onlookers, 40-yearoldSilvia Lanuza, subcommander ofManagua’s firefighters, lost control of herspeed and crashed into the far platform,fracturing both legs and injuring her back.The tour was then closed until lastSunday, when former revolutionary heroand Sandinista congressman TomásBorge, 74, attempted to show the countrythat the tour was safe by strapping into aharness and traversing the ziplines.Borge, president of the NationalAssembly’s Tourism Commission, bravely– albeit visibly nervously – told the pressand onlookers that he was not afraid ofthe canopy tour; that it was nothing afterhaving been imprisoned and tortured foreight months by then-President AnastasioSomoza in 1978.But when Borge mounted the zipline,he apparently rode the brake so hard thathe lost all momentum and got stuck in themiddle of the zipline, dangling suspendedover the middle of the lagoon. Tour operatorsrepelled out and rescued the startledformer comandante, who was not injured.