Accordions, Exhaust, and--oh yes, FLYING

So Sunday was paragliding--not to be confused with parasailing, skydiving, or ...that other one where you´re basically strapped face down to a giant kite. You know when you see a hawk or a seagull just floating around on the wind currents without flapping a wing once? Picture that, but 2 humans strapped together, under a tissue-thin parachute, held up by strings thinner than shoestrings. All in rainbow colors of course.

To begin this stomach churning episode, we took a 40 minute bus ride up and up and up and up. Up past tobacco feilds, tobacco drying sheds, the odd white brahman bull or two, more drying sheds, and the occaisional unattended toddler. Sometimes overtaking cargo trucks, often times being overtaken ourselves by the odd taxi or one of the hundreds of motorcycles--but always speeding. That´s what they do here--speed like they´ve just escaped from hell, pass without a care, and often times make it on time and without a scratch. (Sometimes they don´t make it, but we won´t get into that, as I have quite a few more bus rides in my future.) All in all, it´s better if you don´t pay attention to the front of the bus or the traffic around you. Just enjoy the view and very odd selection of music the driver has picked for you that day.

Before we finally arrive at our final destination--a grassy knoll on the top of a REAL BIG hill, Taylor turns to me and says, "Are we really doing this? What did we sign up for again?"

So at last we´ve made it to the tippity top of this teenage mountain. There are locals there, as well as a tiny snack shack. Seeing these locals is partly comforting and partly unsettling. Are they here to have fun too? Or are they here to watch the silly touristas like middle-Americans watch Nascar? Are they anticipating a crash?! That--I´ll never know for sure, but the locals did go up for rides. And of course they did so with extreme cool. One pair lands, swaps diaper-butt backpack with their friend, hands them the questionably thin helmet, and BAM takeoff. Just like that. Flying like an eagle, no big deal.

Upon arrival, they ask us our weight. I have no idea what my weight is in kilos, so while we are discussing the finer points of pound to kilo exchange rates, ("Is it times two? Or divided by two? This one time at the Frankfurt airport...") one of the adventura guys comes over and says the heavier people go when the wind is stronger (as the wind buffets our hair, faces, words away into the wind...) Thirty seconds later, a different staff guy comes over and points to me. "You first."

Thankfully I am not afforded the time necessary to consider the implications of this development. He puts a bmx helmet on my head (the bargain kind, without any padding of note,) and slings a large backpack looking contraption over my shoulders, barely tightening the straps.

After a little untangling, (okay, about 7 minutes of stomach churning anticipation,) he attaches himself to my diaper-butt backpack harness and flips the chute up with a few aides, and suddenly, we are floating. We start rising, and are soon a hundred feet above our takeoff point. He lets us rise a little further, then turns us into the wind, swinging us out over the vast expanse of the valley floor, many hundreds of feet below.

Now, at this point my body is in full blown revolt. I am basically hyperventilating to stave off the motion sickness that is threatening to decorate the lush Colombian countryside and fill the Chicamocha canyon with my fruit-and-questionable-pastry breakfast. My guide speaks about as much English as I do Spanish. Our conversation goes a little like this-

Guide-"WoooHOOOOO"

Kara- (Extreme heavy breathing)

Guide- "Crazy fly? You crazy fly?"

Kara- "NO. My stomach..."

Guide- "Ohh. Tu stomacho. Estas bien?"

Kara- (More heavy breathing) "Uhh. Mm. Si. Okay."

Aside from the nausea, death-gripped hands, and fight-or-flight symptoms, it was incredible. Suspended hundreds of feet in the air using only the power of the wind. Spread out below me was the chunky and abundant landscape typical to Colombia. Far off in the distance was the gaping maw of the Chicamocha canyon, and somewhere east of it the Andes hid behind brilliant clouds. In addition to a few other paragliders, we had some birds of prey as company. And, oh yes, the clouds. When you feel like you could actually reach out and touch cloud formation, while floating midair, you are probably pretty high up.

Later, watching from the safety of solid ground, I learned what ´crazy flying´entails--corkscrews toward the forest canopy, g-force turns, and horizontal chute-cuts through the turbulent air. My guide still did, despite my stomacho, maneuver some serious turns in the air whilist singing like a madman. "La-la-LA-lala," some vaguely familiar Italian opera tune... Crazy, crazy man.

Taylor did the corkscrews, but paid for it through the stomach for the next 24 hours. Crazy, crazy chica.

Now don´t get it twisted--it was amazing, beautiful, peaceful and a once in a lifetime experience, but I am unsure if I will ever do it again. Thinking about it still gives my stomach a turn. Pictures coming, someday.

Hasta la proxima vez.