yopenguin

Note I am posting for events back in Peace Corps. Got to get caught up after all.
So this past Sunday, close to Easter 2006, I went paragliding with some friends. This took place around an hour from Huaraz. The details are fuzzy, but basically we went up to a lodge in the mountains and decided one day to take advantage of the Sunday special. I believe the cost was around $60 rather than $80. We were already up there on Saturday for Susannah’s birthday so taking the time to do it the following day would be no problem at all.

There were a total of 5 of us. Our instructor, Alex, was the owner of the lodge (really nice Brit); a helper, can’t remember his name but also a Brit; Seth, my Peace Corps buddy from San Diego; Angela, Seth’s girlfriend; and myself. Angela had gone paragliding once before while both Seth and I were newbies.

To give a brief description of paragliding, for those who have no clue what it is, it is something I was pretty off on. Apparently you have a parachute laid out behind you. You then run down the mountain to get the wind to catch the parachute. When you get enough air and lift from the parachute you then jump to start paragliding. Now I assumed that I would be jumping off a cliff to start paragliding. This totally did not happen. What we had was a mountain slope about 10 to 15 degrees. We didn’t get off the ground more than 30 feet.

Anyways, the learning curb although quite low requires some practice. One, the resistance from the parachute is actually quite large. Yes you can say that I am quite weak when it comes to leg muscles, just look at my calves. Anyways, you take a quick lunge which lifts the parachute behind you to almost above your head. Two, you run down the mountain to gain momentum and lift with your parachute. When you feel the wind really holding the parachute you jump and sit into the harness that holds the parachute and then you are off paragliding. Seems simple right? Wrong, it takes some practice to run into the wind so that the parachute comes up perpendicular to you. It is imperative that you run directly into the wind and then under the parachute because if you don’t part of the parachute will turn and eventually collapse. Another problem is that you have to run at the right time against the wind. If you don’t have enough wind you won’t get the lift to glide. If you have too much turbulent wind you will fly very erratically if at all and can even get thrown into the ground.

The ground we were running on was a mountain. Therefore, there were bushes, rocks, and uneven ground. With obstacles on the ground and me looking in the air, needless to say, I bit it a couple times. The biggest one was when I was running, but not directly into the wind. My parachute was turning counterclockwise. Alex seeing that I was almost up in the air tried to help me by pushing me left. Maybe if I was strong enough I could have handled the push better. Instead, the push threw me into the ground. The wind picked up and I was dragged on the ground for a while. Bruises and blood to show for that successful run.

All in all, I had 2 great flights. If I had another day to practice, I probably could have gotten a couple more in. The first one I got up on, I flew for like 20 seconds. It was a great feeling. I cut it short by accident since I didn’t know how to control my flight. I braked too hard and I dropped like a rock. I was only like 5 feet from the ground so it wasn’t too bad. The second time I flew I was up for around 30 seconds. This time again I stopped prematurely. I was afraid I was going to run into a tree and ended up turning too hard. No surprise I crashed to the ground.

Truly a fun experience but I still think sky diving is more fun than paragliding, at least where I paraglided.