Costa Rica

My first time in Costa Rica I went zip lining, which is the thing to do there. Costa Rica has some awesome rain forests and they have schools for training people on how to zip line and repel and do all that cool stuff when you need to learn how to get really really high in giant trees to do things like study the ecosystem of the canopy of a rainforest. Well these places also do tours for fun so regular people who aren’t scientists can just play and go sliding down the lines from tree to tree.

It was a little daunting at first when I saw how high up we were. It’s defiantly not something you want to do if you’re afraid of heights. I went with a bunch of the crew and they hiked us over to the edge of a mountain and up to this tree stand. The first line, looked really long, but later I realized it was short. We were rigged up with harnesses and they hooked these little pulley looking wheels to the wire cable said lean back and then let you go. It was like flying. You’re just whizzing by with nothing under your feet, but a long drop. Then there was one of the staff on the other end to apply a break with another rope so you wouldn’t slam into the next tree. Then you’d climb across a metal grading to another tree and do the whole thing over again.

It was great fun and definitely a unique experience. At the place I went to, they had the second longest zip line in the world (700 meters long) and I got to go down it. There’s a picture of the line attached. You can see the cable off to the side and then it just disappears into the distance. Yea, I went down that.

That didn’t scare me as much as repelling though. I’ve always thought of repelling as bouncing off the side of a mountain as you go down quickly on a rope, but it can also be sliding strait down a rope, which is what I did. They looped the rope around this figure eight metal thingy for the repelling. One end was attached to the top of a very tall tree and the other went down to the ground and the only thing holding you in the middle was this little metal figure eight thingy and your own hand. Grip tight and you go slow. Grip loosely and you go fast. The woman at the bottom kept saying ‘loosen your grip, you’ll go faster.’ I was just like ‘that’s okay, I like going slow.’ That one made my heart pound, it was awesome.

Katie