Zip lining in Belize: a Bird’s Eye View of the Rainforest Canopy

Belize City - A snap shot

Belize City, located on a peninsula that is the furthest Eastern point in the country, is said to have been built on a foundation of “rum bottles, logwood chips and loose coral.”  Founded in the early 1700s by the pirate Baymen of St. George’s Caye, Belize City now has a population of over 70,000 people. 

Although Belize City gives up ground to the Caribbean each year, and the government moved inland to avoid the pattern of natural disasters that strike there, it is still a bustling city filled to the brim with both residents and tourists. While one can get there by flying into the airport ten miles outside the city of Ladyville not far from downtown Belize, many tourists find their way to Belize through transatlantic cruises, as Belize City is an important port and stopping place for cruise ships. Perhaps the biggest draw to Belize is that at least fifty percent of the country is covered by dense jungle. Largely rainforest under the protection of the government, these forests remain mostly unexplored and filled with tropical foliage and animals ranging from crocodiles to jaguars and armadillos. Hosting over four thousand species of flowers and five hundred species of birds, Belize is a wildlife wonderland. With unprecedented beauty and thousands of different species of flora and fauna, visitors might have trouble planning just how to go about seeing it all. Luckily, companies like the Black Orchid Resort have already thought of this and offer guests the chance to take their cues from the winged residents of the rainforest and fly through the canopy.

Pulleys and Zip lines and Helmets - Oh My

Zip lining, also called a canopy adventure, is a tree-based aerial trekking course. While wearing helmets as well as harnesses that safely attach them to a cable, participants use natural gravity to propel themselves from platform to platform through the rainforest canopy high above the ground. Zip lining, while perhaps more of a thrill ride than what it was intended to be when first invented, started as a form of conveyance that began out of necessity. Residents and workers in areas like remote regions of China, the Costa Rican rainforest and the Australian Outback often needed to quickly transport people and supplies across impassable areas like canyons or rivers. To do this, they would create a form of gravity-fueled transport using pulleys that would thread cables between two points.

Popular especially in countries with large rain forests or canyons, zip lining can now be found all over the world in correlation with busy tourist-filled cities. Part of the reason for its popularity is the way participants get around within the Zip line course. By setting the pulleys at different levels throughout the canopy, participants do not need a lot of upper body strength or to be especially fit. This is advantageous not only for participants who might not have ever had a chance to see the rainforest from a bird’s eye view, but it also allows companies to make a profit from an activity that is neither expensive to produce nor intrusive to the environment through which participants zip line.

In Belize we have the Longest Zip Line course in Central America. We have 12 platforms through the pristine jungle in the Mayflower Bocawina National Forest. The longest zip line run is 2,300 feet long and is considered the longest in Belize. We also offer night zip lining. Hear the noises of the night as you zip through the jungle with our experienced guides. And it’s even more spectacular during a full moon! 

World’s Biggest Zip lines

Now that zip lining has taken off as both a sport and a tourist attraction throughout the world, there have of course been some extreme examples built in order to achieve certain world records. The Eye of the Jaguar is the longest zip line in the world. Constructed from a single cable, participants reach an astounding speed of 110 kilometers per hour. This zip line is located 45 minutes north of Cusco, in Peru, and is 2, 130 meters or 1.3 miles long. On the other side of the Atlantic in Snowdonia, Wales, there is a zip line that reaches speeds of over 100 miles per hour, and travels 500 feet above the mountain lake at Penrhyn Quarry for almost a mile. It is exactly 1,600 meters or just under a mile long.

Fly Through Belize

If you’ve never zip lined before, but have a desire to experience the rainforest and aren’t quite sure what that might mean — consider flying through the canopy absorbing all that nature has to offer. You won’t be disappointed, and odds are you’ll remember your adventure for the rest of your life.

contributor, Susan Gibbons