There are many activities to enjoy while traveling in Hawaii. You can go surfing. You can drive the Road to Hana. Even if you can’t swim, you can still enjoy the water (check out my Hawaii snorkeling video for that). Another activity you can enjoy is ziplining and it’s something that has been on my bucket list for some time. It just seems like so much fun.
And so, when we went to Maui last fall, we decided to book a zipline tour with the folks at Kapalua Adventures. It was located (I’ll explain why I say “was” and not “is” in a moment) a short drive north from our hotel at Napili Shores. One of the lines on the tour even gave us a bird’s eye view of a pristine bamboo forest. And yes, even though we are quite high off the ground and we are traveling at quite the pace, a zipline tour is perfectly safe when operated by licensed professionals.
The thing about going on a zipline tour is that you actually spend very little time on the ziplines themselves. While the entire tour lasted a couple of hours, we were only traveling on each zipline for 30 to 45 seconds and there were only about five ziplines. The majority of the time is really spent waiting for your fellow tour companions and walking from tower to tower. That being said, it’s still a lot of fun and I highly recommend it.
Unfortunately, according to the Adventure Maui website:
“2/7/2013 – We regret to announce that effective immediately and until further notice, Kapalua Adventures has ceased operations of their zipline course. We recommend guests staying on the west side of Maui (Lahaina, Kaanapali, Napili, and Kapalua) book a tour at the Kaanapali Zipline instead.”
I’m not really sure why they closed up shop; they were the #2 recommended activity on TripAdvisor. My guess is that, in order to reach the zipline site, we had to take a short bus ride through a protected area. It’s possible that they lost that privilege, but I can’t say for certain.
There is a zipline company in Whistler that I’d like to check out, since that would be quite the different experience, flying through an old growth forest. I also hear that ziplining in Costa Rica is a lot of fun. Have you tried it? What did you think?
I have always wanted to so a zipline. I have seen many different tours on the Teavel channel and now you have given it the Kwan thumbs up. That means sometime in the next few years I will be zipping somewhere. 🙂
Ziplining can be pricey and, as I mentioned, you’ll be spending more time waiting and walking rather than zipping, but it’s still a blast.
I’m a roller coaster junkie and naturally I love zipline too!
There was a jungle zipline adventure tour in Phuket (Flying Hanuman dot com), unfortunately I didn’t try it out when I was there last December.