Chicamocha Canyon — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

This is an impressive canyon, no matter how you look at the stats. It is 6600 feet deep (the Grand Canyon is about a mile) and 141 miles long (Grand Canyon is 277 miles long).

It is about a 5 1/2 hr drive NE of Villa de Leyva. We actually stayed in a beautiful village about an hour and a half away, Barichara, that I will write about next time. Besides just wanting to see this awesome place for its views…

… I wanted to fly over it!

Yep - paragliding. Steve and I had done hang gliding at Georgia’s Lookout Mountain, but this was WAY more cool! The winds are so good here that you can takeoff and land at the same spot.

After a relatively brief briefing ;), our names were called one by one to go flying!

I don’t have pictures of all the steps to take off, but I’ll explain a little, then have a short video.

You step into a harness that is in front of the pilot (attached of course!), and they tighten the straps for you while also putting on your helmet. You are instructed to face into the wind, while the pilot initially faces away from you, readying the parachute. As the wind catches it, he flips around, clips onto your harness, and you’re supposed to run to the edge of the cliff!

As you could see, that guy didn’t even have to run, they just got immediate liftoff.

A little bit of explanation here — Steve didn’t go with me. Two reasons - we were told it was a 2 hr van ride on curvy mountain roads just to get there (turned out to only be 1 hr), and we were both concerned that with his queasy stomach on roller coasters and motion sickness, it might not be pretty for either he or his pilot.

We were a big group flying that day - at least 20 people, so they had 5 pilots up. A flight was 20 - 25 minutes long.

My name was called! I really wasn’t scared… just excited. This was the first picture I took after getting airborne -

you can kinda get a sense of how high we flew by spotting the 2 tiny parachutes up against the clouds in the center of this picture

Interestingly, there was a couple from London that stayed at the same B&B as us in Villa de Leyva, and they flew the day before I did. I got some good info from them, like it was quite safe to take my big camera up with me (just had the strap around my neck), as well as handling a GoPro.

we didn’t usually fly near others, I just thought this was a neat shot

As I note every time, be sure and open the email in a browser so you can see (and hear) the videos -

At one point, vultures were soaring with us, but we were higher!

The expanse was breathtaking -

At our highest point, the pilot showed me the altimeter on his watch and it was over 2000 meters. The whole flight was actually very smooth and comfortable, sitting in the harness. The sudden drops or rises due to air pockets or thermals were a little unnerving, but not bad, nor frequent.

I think I was essentially grinning ear to ear the whole time.

The pilot then gave me the controls!

Now for the landing… see that bright green rectangle on the hilltop in the middle of the next picture? That’s our astroturf landing site.