I never encountered anyone with this kind of trouble back in the old TCB tbh. Probably too much out of the box thinking here.
Like Xrayez says, it's pretty clear where the landscape has been altered, the map isn't coloured in a subtle manner. Look at the top side, it's pink. But on 7 different spots, the colour is completely different with a very abrupt change. These are clearly the intended spots then.
edit: what Statik says.
If you want to be creative and think "but there's a little bit of red there, so he might possibly mean this" then you're going against this simple train of thought, so:
In response to a question by Alien: you have have your rope aimed horizontally at the start of the turn where you do the tricks, just as it's the case with any other rope themed challenge.