www.CostaRicaTicas.com

I'm interested in Canopy tours and other rainforest tours, on foot and/or by boat. What guided tours can you reccomend that involve seeing the rainforest up close and personal?
My first CR trip is Jan 24-28.
Niko
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Asian women are still women.

IMO, all canopy tours are the same. No matter what company you go with, you'll be zipping through the rainforest. Very little difference, as far as I can tell. The prices vary and some will give you lunch, etc.

The other fun activity, although not in the rainforest but up in the mountains usually, is the ATV tour. Riding those things is cool. They are pretty fast. I did it in Jaco on my first trip. But be careful, they are not toys and they are pretty fast. I almost fell off a cliff on mine. (read my trip report from June 05 if interested in the details)

CRT VIP's get a discount for an ATV tour. Check the discount section of the board for details.

I did the Poas zip line tour. There were 2 ponds full of trout at the restaurant. You were able to catch your fish and the restaurant cooks it up for you. But if your on a tour you don't have time to lounge. It's a have to do trip for the first timers. IMO, once is enough. Bring rain gear. It rained like hell on the last couple of runs.

If you rely, want to see a primary rainforest and all the wildlife that goes with it.
I would recommend and over night trip to Tortuguero. There is nothing like waking up in the middle of the Jungle.


Here is a post I made last spring https://costaricaticas.com/phpBB2/viewto ... highlight=

TIP go in dry season

I have a somewhat different take from the others. First of all, I disagree that all canopy tours are the same. They're usually very similar however. They can vary greatly in terms of number of platforms, number of lines, height, length and speed of lines, how far into the woods you hike, how far from SJ you have to drive, how scenic they are, whether lunch is included, whether transportation is included, price etc. etc. Except for all those things, then yes, all canopy tours are the same. But Orange is essentially right that they ALL basically just come down to flying very fast through the forest canopy suspended from a cable.

My 2nd point is don't go expecting to see much wildlife while you're up in the trees. I haven't been to Tortuguero so that place might be a little different, but think about it. All that hooping and hollering that normally goes with zip-lines will scare most wildlife out of the area anyway (you might see a little while walking to the zip-line area if you don't have too noisy a group). OTOH, you can still get great views of the vegetaton and surrounding scenery, but even that is tempered by the fact that most platforms are surrounded by the vegetation and while you're on the cables that extend out into the open you'll be focused more on safety and that platform ahead of you than the surrounding scenery. Canopy Tours are better decribed as zip-line tours or adrenaline-rushes. If you want to really see canopy wildlife then go on a aerial tram tour or suspended bridges tour, which are more sedate, done more slowly and can be done with real naturalists guides rather than just essentially cable safety specialists.

Third point is most zip line tours are surprisingly short. A big part of the tour time is just getting out to where the offer the tour. I don't know about the zip-line tour on Poas that toad was talking about (though I'd like to hear more because I thought that troutfishing story was pretty cool), but most of these tours are MUCH further away from SJ. A full day tour from SJ typically only really has an hour or 2 of canopy time. That's why I generally prefer to go on them when I'm out touring the country than when I'm using SJ as my base. For example, if you're staying in Monteverde, Arenal etc. the zip line tours are right there and can be done in a couple of hours leaving more time to do other things during the day. There are also sometimes cost savings if you can drive to them or pass by them in your travels than when you pay for the ones that include transportation all the way from SJ. The Zip-line tours in the Jaco area are good examples of this. The Original Canopy Tour at Mahogany Park is only $45 for walk-ins but $75 from SJ (however that also includes lunch and a tour of the park). Chiclet's near Jaco charges $5 for pickup from Jaco and only $22 from SJ which might make you think that wouldn't be a bad way to get to Jaco until you consider they charge $60 (yikes) for the tour itself. The ones in Arenal, Monteverde cost only $40-45, which is high as you should ever pay unless you also get transportation.

Even if your tour is next door to where you're staying the actual cable time is shorter than even a couple of hours. Much depends on the number of platforms, lines and, not the least, the number of other people on the tour with you. Each cable run lasts at most 20 seconds and typically there aren't much more than 20 lines, if that. Most of your time will be spent walking out and up to the platforms, putting on your harness and waiting for others in the group to make their runs.

I may make it sound like I'm down on zip-line tours, but I'm not completely. I agree with toad that is a must-do for first-timers but something you might not want to do again. As it happens, I have done these tours again and again, multiple times and in multiple places. They can certainly be fun and something different to try. But for my money, after you've tried it once, I think there are much better things to do. The ATV tour is one possibility. I already mentioned tram and bridge tours for the true naturalists out there. But I'd put whitewater rafting right at the top. Actual river time can also be short (~3 hours) relative to how long you'll be gone but that is nearly all action packed. And it has a lot of repeat value. The 10th time you go is as much fun as the first.

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Some quick follow-up. I checked into toad's Poas canopy tour. The link is http://www.colinasdelpoas.com/ingles/canopy.htm. The rates are $45 for just the canopy tour, $67 with pickup in SJ (that also includes lunch) and $80 if you also go for a morning visit to nearby Poas Volcano, which may be the best way to go despite the higher cost (ie really make a day of it). They pick-up at the Amon Plaza at 7AM and return around 2:30-3PM (time up in the platforms is still only 1.5-2hrs). They didn't mention if or how much they charge to use their rods for troutfishing. Maybe they throw that in or at worst I can't see them charging more than a couple of bucks for it.

This was back in 2005 of August I went. They had kayaks and fishing tackle available. One pond was for fishing the other was for raising.

I was told the name and location of one where you descend from a mountainside in a sense and are traveling pretty fast. The guy that told me was talking about it like it's a roller coaster. I remember him describing it as multiple runs at relatively steep angles. It sounded way more fun than the typical zip line tour I had heard about to that point. Unfortunately I forgot the name and location.

Many of them operate that way. In fact many zip lines don't even really start in trees up at the canopy but from elveated ground that you hike up to (the hike up is the trade-off). The speed of the line is a function of several variables not the least of which is the height differential between the start and end of the cable.

But that also has to be seen as a calculation that also incorporates the length of the cable as well. Obviously you're limited how much drop off you can have if the cable is short. Whats more, if the cable is short you may not get up to full potential speed before you have to start to break for the end. Ideally, you want something that is not only fast but lasts something more than 5 seconds, so length is at least as important as drop-off if not more so.

But if the cable is long and the drop off is great that still doesn't necessarily translate into a faster line. The ratio between the two is also important. For example, the last cable at SkyTrek in Monteverde has a big drop but acheives that by being extremely long, perhaps the longest in CR. The length of that cable is something they boast about all the time, but the cable itself turns out to be pretty slow. Look up catenary in the dictionary. It is the curve that results from a suspended line. It may curve down rapidly at the start but eventually curves back up. The result is that it is not uncommon for riders to run out of speed EARLY on that last cable and have to pull themselves in hand over hand.

But that brings in a third variable besides length and drop-off that can make a zip-line tour more thrilling. There is also vertical height between the cable and the forest floor. If you start off from the ground, you probably won't be travelling at as great a height (unless you cross a gorge or something).

And finally, there is the number of platforms and lines. You could have a tour with the fastest line in the world but if that tour only had a half dozen lines or so, I'd feel extremely ripped off.

The best zip-line tours I've been on have many different platforms and lines with varying combinations of length, drop-off vertical height, etc. Also some of the newer and better run zip-line outfits have better designed braking systems and/or more space at the end of the cables so you don't have to worry as much about crashing into one of your fellow tour participants or the tree trunk or post the cable is attached to.

I miss under stood the question you are right. I thought we were talking rainforest tours. I guess I need to pay better attention

You understood the original question correctly. If you look back you'll see he asked about both "Canopy tours and other rainforest tours" My point was that one should be careful about lumping those two different type tours together. Tortuguero is a great place to see the rainforest (and mangroves) on foot or by boat or kayak. One can also see the rainforest from a entirely different angle in the canopy on the various trams and bridge tours. But the zip-line variety of canopy tours that most people think of when they think of canopy tours are much more adventure rides than they have anything really to do with either the rainforest or wildlife.

Hey guys, just back to the states. Dug into my older paperwork from the last trip and found the web address of the outfit that has the trout ponds. Click on the link below to check it out: PURA VIDA!

http://www.colinasdelpoas.com/ingles/index.htm

Damn, Toad, I'm gonna have to start making my posts shorter. I provided that link over 2 days ago. You just didn't see it at the bottom of my post.

Sorry bout that. Jet lag gots the best of me Prolijo.

Toad, don't apologize. Anything that might make his posts shorter is a good thing!