Tony and I took a bird’s-eye tour of the Monteverde cloud forest earlier this week with The Original Canopy Tour. We ziplined through old growth and secondary growth forest with a small group and two guides, Tuca and Pedro. The course criss-crossed the private reserve of the Cloud Forest Lodge, and the ziplines offered incredible views of the treetops and the ocean off in the distance.

Geared up and rarin’ to go!

While we waited at one platform, Tuca pointed to a sloth in a nearby tree, right next to the zipline. He showed us how to stop at the tree to get a good look at the sloth before zipping the rest of the way. He even took our phones and snapped a few sloth pics for us.

The longest zipline was 800 meters, or nearly half a mile! Tuca stacked our phones and filmed the journey as he zipped to the other end ahead of us. I was so nervous he would drop our phones, but he must have done this a million times. Look how long it took to get to the other side!

On one line, several of us (including Tony and me) braked too early and didn’t quite make it to the end. We had to turn around, reach overhead, and pull ourselves to the platform hand over hand, like a monkey.

One scary but exhilarating highlight of the day was a 150-foot rappel down from a platform to the base of a massive ficus tree. Turns out the tree was hollow with rope steps constructed inside, so we scrambled up to the top of the tree and then out onto a rope ladder to crawl back to the top platform.

Me rappelling down.

Tony climbing back up.

Another even scarier feature of the tour was the Tarzan swing. We climbed some very high rickety steps, clipped onto a rope, and then jumped off. How insane is that? I swear, the videos don’t capture how high up we were. Tuka said, “Jump on 3, OK?” Then he counted to two and pushed me. Yes, I screamed liked a lunatic, but it was actually fun after the first terrifying drop.

Proof that we really did it!