Costa Rica - Ziplining in the Monteverde Cloud Forest

Wallis Raekelboom
Dec 13, 2016
2 min read

On our third day of our Costa Rican roadtrip, we ended up in the Monteverde Cloud Forest. We woke up early and at 7:30 am, we were on our way to the Monteverde Extremo Park for an exciting morning of ziplining. I'm going to be honest, I was probably freaking Mout more in my head than the entire group put together (and we were like 30 people, so you can imagine). I hadn't ziplined since I was a child, and the cables were definitely much longer this time. The canopy tour that we booked ($50 per person) has cables of more than 3400 feet long (1.04 km) and 600 feet high (183m). But after taking one go on the first zipline, my inner Indiana Jones had come out again (actually, after looking at the video, I should probably say my inner tarzan..) and I was ready for the 13 other cables. The tour consisted of one tarzan swing (see video), one rappel (where you go down), two superman ziplines (where you zipline through the air in a 'superman' position - check my instagram for the video) and 10 regular ziplines. Monteverde has many ziplining companies but I would definitely recommend Extremo Park! They are very professional, and the entire experience felt very safe and secure. They also offer other activities such as bungee jumping, extreme swings and buggy tours. Check out their website for more information.

In the afternoon, we decided to go on a hike in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. It contains approximately 10 trails and includes a waterfall, a hanging bridge and magnificent viewpoints. Entrance to the park is $20 for adults and $10 for students (with valid student ID). Our legs were at the end of their lives after two days of intense hiking and ziplining (since we had to climb all the way back up after each zipline), but luckily, the trails had all kinds of lengths and difficulties, so we picked trails that had limited uphill hiking.

Five minutes after we took off, a long black snake crossed our path right before our feet (still haven't figured out the species). I have to admit, not everyone was as excited as I was to see the snake, and it was therefore decided that I should lead the hike in case more snakes would appear. We (unfortunately) did not spot any more snakes, but we encountered many bird species and coatis along our hike and flora was breathtaking (see pictures below). For more information on the Cloud Forest Reserve, click here.