I’d seen waterfalls before, but never like this. I was sliding down a wire some 50 feet (15 m) in the air, sailing through the treetops at 30 miles an hour (48 km/h). Somewhere off to the left of me was a blur of white and the roar of thundering falls. But the waterfall would have to wait. All my attention was focused on the rapidly approaching tree and trying to remember how to brake.

Welcome to canopying, an increasingly popular (if slightly insane) sports activity in Chile’s Lake District. Located 650 miles (1,046 km) south of the capital Santiago, the Lake District is an area of lush green valleys, towering cone-shaped volcanoes and emerald lakes — all at the base of the snowcapped Andes Mountains. Much of the district looks like the German and Swiss Alps. It can sound that way too, since many of the original settlers were from Germany and still speak the language.

Riding a zipline above the trees in Parque Nacional Vicente Pérez Rosales is an exhilarating experience.

I was in the middle of Parque Nacional Vicente Pérez Rosales, Chile’s first national park, established in 1926. And I was terrified. Canopying involves wearing an alpine mountaineering harness attached to two little pulleys that are placed on wires strung between trees, 40 to 50 feet (12-15 m) in the air. The term “canopying” comes from the fact that you are in the “canopy” of the trees — high in the highest branches.

You sit down in your harness, dangle from the wire, and gravity takes it course, sliding you down the wire for about a quarter mile (400 m), over streams and through treetops to the next “station,” a wood platform built high on a tree. To break your speed, you squeeze on a piece of leather cupped in your hand around the wire. It’s primitive, but effective.

Canopying between eight stations takes one to two hours and requires, as one British participant put it, “more bloody courage than anyone has ever exhibited without getting a medal.” As the brochures say, it offers “a good quota of adrenaline.” But it’s also an exhilarating way to see the countryside.

And what countryside southern Chile has to offer.

A string bean of a nation, Chile stretches about 2,880 miles (4,635 km) from north to south, but is no more than 277 miles (445 km) wide at any point. It’s like taking a land mass just slightly larger than Texas and rolling it into a thin pencil that is nearly four times as long as California. Running down the entire eastern side of Chile and separating it from Bolivia and Argentina are the great Andes Mountains.