• Costa Rican zip line tours
• DIY zip lines

Sky High

Enter the Costa Rican rain forest and you'll find lush trees filtering the sunlight, brightly colored scarlet macaws flying overhead, monkeys shuttling from branch to branch, and, off in the distance, a middle-aged man in Bermuda shorts waving at a group of people on a small platform while flying effortlessly between two giant trees.

Wait, what?

Zip-line tours of the canopy (the unbroken expanse of trees that covers the rain forest) are the latest eco-friendly adrenaline rush. "It's pretty incredible that you basically get to see the rain forest from midair," says New York screenwriter Jeff Cox, who strapped himself into a harness on a recent trip to Guanacaste. "You're so wrapped up in the view that you almost forget that you're hooked on to a cable stretched between two trees suspended hundreds of feet in the air."

Currently, there are over a dozen zip-line tours offered in different parts of Costa Rica.Tours last 2 to 3 hours, depending on the size of your group. First, you're outfitted with a climbing harness, gloves, and a helmet. Next, you climb up a series of rope ladders to the first platform. When you get there, one of your many tour guides clips your harness to a pulley, then sends you rocketing down the cable to the next platform. Another guide is waiting there to help you stop, unhook, and climb the ladder to the next platform. As you're flying through the forest, all you hear is the zing noise of the line, and the rest of the world seems to disappear.

When Florida social worker Shannon Armstrong rode a zip line through the Monteverde rain forest in 2004, the line was up so high in the mountains, she zoomed through layers of clouds. "It was like nothing I've ever experienced before and probably never will again," she says. "I seriously thought I was going to hear angels."

Not going to Costa Rica anytime soon? You can always just find two really sturdy trees in your backyard and buy an at-home zip line. The rush may not be as major, but you'll at least see the neighborhood from a whole new point of view . . . and a smile or two is guaranteed.

 

Posted on June 12, 2006