The ultimate school run: Children ride 40mph ZIP WIRE a quarter of a mile high to get to classes each day

More than 1,300ft above the roaring Rio Negro in Colombia, nine-year-old Daisy Mora prepares to throw herself over the abyss.

Hair-raising commute: Villagers hook themselves to steel wires and slide half
a mile at 40mph to get to the nearest town

Attaching herself to an old and rusted pulley system she drops over the edge before plummeting at 40mph along a zip wire to the opposite bank half a mile away - a vertigo-inducing journey she has to take every day to get to school.

For the handful of families living in the area, 40 miles southeast of the capital Bogota, the 12 steel cables that connect one side of the valley to the other are their only access to the outside world.

German explorer Alexander von Humboldt was the first Westerner to observe the unusual rope system in 1804.

They were traditionally made of hemp, but steels cables were installed with the advent of logging in the surrounding rainforest. When this was made illegal settlers turned their hand to farming and cattle raising.

Today, the cables are still the only transport available to those living in the area.

Farmers use them to transport goods to and from the closest town and, for children like Daisy and her five-year-old brother Jamid, it is how they get to school.

Jamid is too young to safely ride the wire on his own, so she has to carry him with her in a jute bag, controlling their speed with a wooden fork.

Photographer and author Christoph Otto, who took these amazing pictures, suspended himself above the valley on one of the cables to capture people making the remarkable journey

School run: Nine-year-old Daisy Mora makes the trip every day to get to lessons,

with her five-year-old brother riding in a cloth bag