ZIP LINE adventure

Sky Trek aka Zip Line Adventure

After seeing an episode of the new Hawaii 50 a month or two ago, I wondered if I really wanted to zip line. Don’t get me wrong, I WANTED to do it, but heights are really not my comfort zone. The t.v. show made my anxiety a bit worse, because a father and daughter were having a wonderful zipline experience in a Hawaiian jungle and some really bad guys set a charge on one of the cables and the daughter plunged to her death. Now that I’ve done it, I have some other questions that weren’t answered. How did they get the rest of the people down without the cable? How did they find her body so quickly? But that is tv and a really morbid bunch of questions. On to our adventure.

We arrived at the zip line area early, so our tour guide arranged for us to go to a butterfly exhibit which was interesting.




Then it was finally our time to go.


We had to sign a waiver saying we were physically fit enough to do the zip line (at least I think that is what it said) and then we were put into our harnesses and handed a metal device that was very heavy on which we would later zip . We were rigged out with helmets and given heavy duty work gloves, which didn’t fit, but no matter. We waited –lots of this experience was wait, wait, wait, since only one person can be on the cable at a time and we were a group of 25.We ascended the mountain in a metal cage with seats, I’m guessing it is a ski lift thing, but never having skied, who knows. It wasn’t the ski lift I see on the phone commercial, but this was called a ski lift, so that’s good enough for me.



The trip up the mountain was very quiet (all the sounds of civilization were below us) and lovely and oh, yes, have I mentioned rainy. We brought rain gear as instructed, but the weather when we “suited up” was hot and clear, so we put our gear in the lockets provided. Both a good and bad thing.

At the top of the mountain, we waited for our group to assemble. We had 16 from our tour, but were joined by two families with children of various ages. This made our group 25 people. As in most tourist places here, we were given juice before beginning. And it was, as usual, yummy (Of all the juice we’ve been served, there has only been one I haven’t liked.)

We waited till all our “helpers” Juan, Juan Carlos, Ricardo and Katy were assembled and ready to go. This particular zip line is made up of 8 “legs”. The first two are short, and not particularly fast and are labeled as practice runs. The others are long and fast, more about that later.

We were given instructions what to expect, how to position ourselves, how to slow down, why not to slow down. Not nearly enough information for me, but I listened very intently.

One of the families had young boys who were not heavy enough to go alone. Think of your physics, if something heavy zips down a line it will go fast. Something light might not have enough weight to make it all the way. The youngest boy was about 8 and wanted to go alone, but one of the crew went with him most of the time.. The teenage girl was terrified and someone went with her almost each time.

The practice runs were okay and exciting. When we got to the long runs (1440 ft, and 1550 ft) the fog came down, as did the pouring rain. Do they call the ballgame on account of rain? In this country if things stopped because of rain, nothing would ever happen. We went on. The most terrifying part of this was zipping into fog so thick that I couldn’t see where the cable was going. I could see the cable I was on, but only for about 2 feet, then it was like flying into a cotton ball. Since we couldn’t see, the crew at the next platform, shook the cable when they heard/felt you coming and that was the signal to uncurl your body to make stopping easier. As you slammed onto the platform, the crew had ropes to slow you down and stop you. After the fact, some of our tour group who hadn’t zip lined asked about brakes on the zip line. Trust me there were NO brakes. The zip liner can spread out his legs to slow a bit and if he has the presence of mind, can juggle the mechanism that he is holding on to, but that is not recommended. If a person tries to slow down, their momentum might not carry them to the next platform. This happened to a person in our group. And this was covered in our beginning instructions. There is a way to rescue yourself, but it didn’t sound pleasant and was rather physically taxing. Anyway, No BRAKES.

After two runs into the abyss (fog), not knowing where you are going or how soon you’ll get the the platform, or just what will fall out of the sky on you, or if you’ll hit a tree (the last two --not going to happen, but hard to convince your brain of that), the fog lifted somewhat. Also we were getting lower, down below the cloud cover. The rain stopped, but we were soaked to the skin, so the rain stopping was of no concern. We were already drenched. I might mention when you are zipping in a pelting rain, if the clouds had allowed me to see, I couldn’t have because my glasses were smeared with rain.

I'm adding a video from the company that runs Sky Trek Arenal. THESE FOLKS in the video ARE NOT FROM OUR GROUP, BUT IT APPROXIMATES WHAT WE DID, except that we had thick fog. Enjoy!




When we could see, the experience was not so much frightening as thrilling and exciting. On the fastest leg of the run, the brochure says, we were going 50 mph (N was probably going faster because of his weight) On the others, from 40-45 mph)

The last zip was a short one where each person’s picture was taken. We “un-geared” and went to collect our stiff out of the lockers—nice warm dry jackets felt sooo good.

Would I do this again? Doubtful Am I glad I did it? Absolutely!
Would I encourage others? Depends on the person.
I’ve been there, done that, and I wish I’d gotten the t shirt. We did get pictures, tho.