I have always thought that being high above the ground is one of the most exhilarating feelings in the world. I was the kid who climbed up so high in the trees that the branches were almost too thin to hold me. One of my top bucket list items is to jump out of an airplane.

Naturally, when we found out that there is an epic zip-line on our island, I was excited to try it out! Both Ben and I had been waiting all semester for a chance to try it out. We finally went with my family when they came to visit over Christmas. 

The scariest thing about the zipline is the amount of freedom you get. There’s a quick training at the beginning and people along the way to make sure you know what you’re doing, but you get to strap and unstrap your own harness to the  cables and go as fast as you want. In the U.S., they make you sign your life away and still have extra safety straps and all sorts of things to make sure you don’t stub your toe and sue them. Here, you can’t really sue anyone. So you get the extra freedom and less assurance of a pain-free experience.

I’ll take the freedom any day.

That’s one thing I love about Saint Martin: fewer guardrails. You can climb all over Fort Amsterdam and practically hang off the cliff, if you want to. They don’t care if you touch the 300-year-old walls and they assume you’ll be smart enough to not walk off the edge.

It adds a little more adventure to life.