Eliza and I have begun to follow our instincts on things. The mud volcano was a highlight on the trip, something that we had gotten a good feeling about when we read about it in the book, and defied our expectations. So when we heard about the excellent conditions for paragliding around the city we decided, why not? The night before we tried to take it easy but were pulled into a pool game with some Colobians, drank a fair amount of the anise flavored drink they love here and I gave a pretty unwanted talk about safe sex practices to some of my fellow hostellers. I got to bed at 130, liza went out for a little while longer with some of our friends and when she got home decided that it would be a good idea to not go to sleep at all.
we left around 7am and were in a jolly mood, singing and listening to salsa music. As we mounted the cliffs that surround Medellin li started to get a little nervous. We were with three Australian guys we had met and they were all really hung over. I was the only one who got even a decent amount of sleep (130 to 5) and was in a tired talkative mood. We climbed another cliff by foot and lay down on the astroturf feeling grass. I volunteered to be the first one to go. It was really exciting, i thought i would finally conquer my fear of heights and flying, but as we took to the air I realized that this was not the situation one conquers long held fears with. I was up there with my flyer Antonio completely terrified. He kept going higher and higher and I cant speak much Spanish so was saying circa de los montaños por favor! I saw liza go up and also saw her land pretty roughly on a little strip and have her feet put above her head and decided that after 10 minutes it wasnt going to get any better, that i was scared and didnt need to be up there any longer. We landed, i kissed the ground and lay down feeling sick. turns out that the side to side swaying motion has that effect on a lot of people. Liza had felt sick in the air and when she told her flyer he just dropped them down and tried to keep her from fainting. There will be some funny pictures of the 5 of us looking green in the face when we finally get them developed.
Do I regret going? not really. It was outside of my comfort zone and I dont plan on doing it again but the views were priceless and it was definitely an experience. Next time when there are butterflies in my gut Ill be a little more wary of following it.
No comments:
Post a Comment