Roaming Numeral

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For one reason or another, zip lining and Costa Rica have been inextricably linked in my mind- of course I was going to take the opportunity to give the activity a try while I was visiting the country!

Since I was on a longer tour with GAdventures, my tour guide was able to arrange the activity in Monteverde on my behalf. Luckily just about every person in our group had also opted in for this activity- it’s always a better adventure with friends!

Our group was picked up from our hotel and we each paid 61.50 USD for a Zip Line Canopy Tour with 100% Aventura Adventure Park upon arrival. This price includes 9 zip lines, 2 superman zip lines (where you zip across the treetops facing downward), 1 hammock bridge, 1 rappel, and 1 mega Tarzan swing.

Lockers are available for storing important items while in the park. It wouldn’t do to lose your wallet while zipping through the forest!

Once we were all paid and checked in, the Aventura crew fitted us each with a harness, gloves, and a helmet before we were brought to a separate area for a brief safety meeting. I was surprised to learn that we would have to manually slow ourselves down by squeezing our gloved hand on the metal wire.

The team emphasized that we were not to place our hand in front of the mechanism that allowed us to slide, since we could seriously hurt ourselves.

Of course, on the very first zip line, I panicked, dropped the wire, and briefly had my hand in the wrong position- earning myself a stern talking to. It was just too much responsibility for me!

The first several zip lines were relatively short, which allowed everyone to get some practice in, though, since we were in a larger group, there did tend to be some crowding between the lines since only one person could cross at a time.

As we went on, we began to spread out a bit more since some people were speedier than others. I found the rapelling section to move particularly slowly since everyone needed to psych themselves up for the drop. I promise it isn’t as scary as it looks!

By the time we made it to the Superman sections, I was just happy to learn that I wouldn’t be responsible for my own breaking system- I never seemed to get better at that!

Despite being face down, I actually preferred this style of zip line- and not just because I had to worry about keeping my hand on the line. I thought the view was super cool- and one of the lines was the longest in Central America- so I had plenty of time to admire it. I imagine that this is how birds see the world.

Oddly enough, I was too slow on both of these lines and ended up stranded about a hundred feet out on the first one- the poor crew member had to come rescue me! This must happen a fair amount- the crew member zipped right over to me, made sure I was okay, and then grabbed me with his legs and monkey crawled along to line to pull me back to land.

While sometimes light weight people can be stranded on the zip lines due to their lesser momentum, in this case I think it was actually the hood of my windbreaker acting like a parachute to slow me down. Who would have thought!

There is a brief ATV trip between the two Superman lines- luckily my two friends bullied the driver into waiting for my rescue so I wouldn’t be waiting for a ride alone.

Once we finished the zip line, the last event was the Tarzan Mega Swing- a 148 foot tall rope swing. Although I’m all for doing anything once, I must admit I did chicken out on this one. It was so tall and my neck had been bothering me all day; I didn’t want to exacerbate the issue by giving myself whiplash! Or at least that’s what I told myself to justify bailing out.

Since neither myself or my three companions were jumping, we removed our harnesses and gear after the last zip line and hiked down to the bottom of the Tarzan Swing so we could watch the rest of our friends make their jumps. The company only allows five people at the bottom at a time for safety reasons, so we climbed back up after only a few jumps, but everyone looked like they were having fun!

Once we reconvened at the main building, we were able to purchase photos of our adventure that had been snapped throughout the day. Since there were so many of us, they offered us a deal that we happily accepted- it worked out to something like 5USD per person.

All in all, this tour took about two hours including transportation, safety checks, and gear fittings. I think it was pretty fairly priced- there were a lot of activities provided in that time, and I felt that everyone was very professional. Still, I’m not sure that I’d go again. I really wasn’t a fan of having to manually slow myself dawn- it was pretty uncomfortable and I spent a lot of energy focusing on doing that correctly, rather than experiencing the sensation of flying through the forest. Maybe I’m just not a fan of zip lining!

I’m sure having control over your own speed is an attractive option to some people! If you’d like to check out this exact tour, you can find it here.

Perhaps in the future, I’ll give zip lining another try at a park that has an automatic breaking system, but I think I’ll be keeping my feet firmly on the ground for the foreseeable future.

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