People do strange things, don’t they? For some odd reason, human beings enjoy balancing on stuff. Surfing, for example, is just balancing on a piece of foam. Slacklining is just balancing on something stretched between two other somethings. Some people slackline on lawns, others slackline over canyons, and still others, like the man in this video, slackline below the lighthouse at Nazaré.
The guy in question, according to the Youtube description, is a 28-year-old Brazilian named Emerson Machado, who, we’re assuming, has no relation to Rob. He’s part of a group of slackliners called the Western Riders who installed a line to the Guilhim Rock beneath the famous lighthouse.
The group put the line in just before the massive swell hit Nazaré. “It’s calculated risk,” said one of the Western Riders. “We are not crazy like it may seems at first sight. In reality, everything was planned to the very minor details. Over the years we’ve performed walks in many locations before—including Nazaré—and we take this very seriously. Over the course of two days, we’ve performed dozens of walks between the cliff and the rock in Nazaré. No one was ever injured during that time; it’s relatively safe when performed by an experienced crew working together with planning and caution.”
