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CA Travels Day 13 – Zip Lines
Posted by Dave Hill | Filed under general
The group split for a day because me and Claire wanted a more adventurous day. We saw a poster in the hostel for a day of zip lining, snorkelling in caves, and sky-cycling, but we didn’t know what that was yet.
Zip line splash
When we arrived we were pretty disappointed to see a big commercial park full of American families with young children. Our hopes of adrenaline fuelled adventures faded fast, it was Mexico’s answer to Center Parcs. We rode on the back of a truck down a bumpy trail to the sound of disgruntled middle class American parents, and arrived at a clearing with lockers which would be our base for the day.
I don’t want to sound ungrateful, we had a really fun day playing in the jungle! It just wasn’t as raw and as genuine an experience as we’d have liked. The first thing to do was the sky cycling, where you hang under a steel cable on a chair, with some pedals attached to a pulley so you can cycle along through the jungle. We went up into the trees and down into a cave, it was pretty cool.
Sky cycle
We zip lined through the trees, and down into a pool in an underground cave. We rappelled too, which is basically abseiling through a hole in the jungle floor into the cave, and also snorkelled in it. Snorkelling was the most genuine experience of the day, swimming through small spaces and exploring the stalagmite and stalactite formations in the cenotes near Tulum. The final thing we did was this newly opened zip line rollercoaster, where you attach your harness to a pulley on a steel track and dip and swoop through the trees, finishing on a water slide into a cave pool. It was a rough ride leaving a few bruises, and loads of fun.
Me and Claire had to split from the group early to catch a bus, and got the best ride of the day. They called for a guy to drive us back to reception, and the pair of us stood on a trailer dragged by a buggy down a little used jungle track. It was really bumpy and overgrown, and hanging on was a bit of a challenge.
The rest of the day was spent travelling back to Chetumal, which would set us in the right direction for the next part of our journey.
We didn’t have a camera with us that day, so the pictures are of internet strangers doing the same thing!
