Flying through the jungle canopy at 50mph
After a hectic first day in La Fortuna, checking out the Arenal scenery and wildlife from ground level it was time to take to the air and see the jungle from above.
One of the famous ways to see the Arenal jungle is to fly through the rain forest canopy on a series of zip wires. There are two options, the first involves 12 zip wires, but we opted for the 7 extreme zip wires, which seemed to offer a much more intense fun experience, and we get bored easily with the hanging around as you may have noticed.
The whole experience is really well organised, with a lot of care and explanation when assembling the safety harness. I had a bit of a problem as my Go Pro camera chest harness interfered with the safety harness. The guys were really helpful and provided an adapted helmet with a GoPro fitting so I could film the event.
Heading to the forest
Then the brave souls all piled into a huge trolley and were pulled up through the forest by a tractor, with more wildlife spotted on either side as we went along, but there wasn’t much to see other than a little deer which was no big deal but Wooksie did spot one of the venomous brown vipers, that live in dead leaves – not nice.
For our Extreme group, we got dropped at a huge tower that looked like an abandoned electricity pylon, so our first 10 mins were spent climbing up steps loaded down with harnesses and helmets. It was sweltering at the top and it seemed and eternity before we got underway.
First zip wire
In the video, Wooksie is first on to the wire, she loves a bit of altitude and speed, and she is sent off into the jungle at speeds that reach about 60kph, so nothing like the 150kph that we did in Snowdonia last year. As you can see from this video, I followed next and was despatched to my destiny.
In this video you can see the La Fortuna waterfall on the right, which is the same waterfall where we went swimming yesterday and had a 500 step climb back up. So, flying majestically over the top was quite an experience and less stressful than that climb.
After what felt like a clumsy landing, we were all climbing again up through the forest, loaded down with harnesses, to gain more height for the next zip wire. This run is the longest of the wires at 1000m, as this run picks up momentum it gets increasingly difficult to stay straight on the line and not rotate when it hits the maximum speed of about 70kph.
Longest zip wire in Costa Rica
In the video you can see me touching the wire to stop the rotation in the special glove. This rotation was partly caused by me moving my head to get better shots for the camera, the result was losing a bit of speed and as you can see, I didn’t quite make it to the landing zone, so had to monkey crawl the last 50m to the landing zone to avoid being rescued.
After losing momentum on the 2nd run, I wasn’t going to get caught again so on the third run I kept everything straight, but unfortunately didn’t see the brake instruction from the guide and blew into the end zone too fast and now have a scar on my shin to prove it, unfortunately, the camera moved on the helmet and so you can only see sky on the way down so I haven’t included It the remaining 4 more rides were basically more of the same so we won’t bore you with more videos.
Tour of La Fortuna
Then it was back to the hotel for the big event of the day, catching up with our youngest daughter who has been travelling through central America, from Peru in the south to Mexico in the north, since the first week of May. We weren’t too sure what state she would be in.
As normally, we need not have worried as she was having a wonderful time. She is with a group that has travelled down from Mexico and finishes in San Jose at the weekend. We had always planned to meet up, but our schedules crossed so we had a great opportunity to meet her friends and have a fine evening in a bar sharing stories of our adventures.
Hotel Secreto La Fortuna
The first hotel we stayed in, called the Secreto La Fortuna, was tucked in near the town centre and had its own resident sloth sitting in a tree above reception. The visitors are all paying fortunes to see these creatures, it is $50 to go to the Sloth Sanctuary tour, but there are plenty living in the trees around the hotels, it is just knowing where to look for the fury bundles.
We spent the last day chilling and preparing for the next long drive down to the Pacific coast. For our last night stayed at another eco hotel called Lomas Volcan, which is built at the foot of the volcano. It was an amazing place with self-contained huts and swimming pool heated by the hot springs to a temperature similar to a hot tub, it is quite a weird experience. The hotel is in the jungle and its own jungle trail. After another heavy hike through the jungle there were no more animals to be found, though I might have spotted a toucan, but the vegetation is spectacular for people who have an interest in that sort of thing.
