The flying men of Yungas valley

[naaman fletcher]

In Bolivia's jungles and steep cliffs the Yungas people do not walk. They fly. On ropes. Like birds. Faster than astronauts.

These 'birds' are known as cocaleros, or coca harvesters. They use ropes to swing across the narrow valleys, suspended from ancient rusting pulleys.

It takes all of 30 seconds from one side to the other. By foot it would have taken more than an hour.

"This must be about six or seven years old. Before then there was nothing. Nothing," Synthe, a harvester, says.

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/2011/05/20115811409577464.html

It's kind of annoying the way that every sentence is its own paragraph at al-jazeera, one can't excerpt very much.