A Canopy Tour is defined as a journey among a forest’s treetops. Platforms are suspended on the trees or placed near a canyon or river and steel cables are later attached to each platform. Once all the platforms are connected, the journey begins and one is able to slide from one platform to the next while taking in a spectacular and different view of the forest.

Although Canopy Tours have been operating in Costa Rica for over 10 years, this method has been used for over decades by mountain climbers, armies and remote communities who needed to find shorter and time efficient means of transfer.

In the past, hunters would use elevated or suspended platforms on trees in order to wait for their pray to come close to their decoy and shoot them down. Today, this method is still used by biologists and other professions so that they can wait for their target only this time not to shoot them down but to study and photograph them from a close yet safe distance.

In remote places with very limited access, when a river overflows it can be a real problem for those trying to get back home from a long trip or a simply a days work. The local communities from places which often present this problem have placed cables from one side of the river to the other so that they can safely pass over the river. The difference between the activity of these communities and ours is that they use a basket in which they climb in and slide on the cables over the river.

Expert mountain climbers use ropes or cables to move from one point to the next during their long climbs. Mountain climbing techniques comes close to what we do except that the ropes tend to be level and they have to use the strength of their arms to move. In Canopy Tours, the strength or engine that moves the person is sheer gravity.

The pulley used in Costa Rican Canopy Tours is similar in design to those used by Costa Rican banana companies to transport the bananas from the plantations to the processing plant.

A combination of all the before mentioned plus the curiosity of many men and women to explore new means of adventure gave way to this popular in Costa Rica which has lately expanded to places such as Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Mexico and Peru.