The Travel Within: Paragliding in San Gil

Finally, I have time to write something about my beloved Colombia, especially starting from my favourite town San Gil.

San Gil is only a little town with around 30,000people, my guidebook Footprint even only has 8 lines about it. So usually, backpackers don't stop by here. And there is only one backpacker hostel in the whole place, others are all small hotels. However, there are lots of adventure sports to offer. Including rafting(up to grade 5), kayaking, paragliding, caving, rappelling, hydrospeed, bungee jumping and horseriding etc.

During my stay of 5weeks, the first and the only adventure sport I did was paragliding.

We set off with a group of 8 people plus 3 paragliding guides, including a lovely French girl, Julie, who wanted to take this chance to overcome her acrophobia.

Because Colombia is always infamous for its 'dangerous', so its tourism industry is not as developed as other South American countries. Thus, it is able to preserve lots of nature. That is also one of the reasons why I love this country so much.

Especially in San Gil, a town over 1000metres, and near the mountain range, the scenery is spectacular. The more expensive choice of paragliding is to fly over the biggest canyon in Bucaramanga. Even though I chose the cheaper one, I could still see this impressive canyon when we flew up about 400metres.

We waited for a long time to start, as the wind was too strong. Later on, we still started even though the wind was just a little bit weaker. To balance for the strong wind, they put 20kg weight of water on my back and on my lap! Still, my first 'flight' failed due to the unstable wind, I and my guide fell down helplessly and my forearm was scratched.

It took three men(one had fallen down on the ground already) to lift our parachute up for the first time. From my point of view on the parachute, I remembered it was just like a movie that we were set off for an important moon-exploring mission! But I forgot why Sarah(the red one) was running with them also.

Then we tried to slide down a slope and rose back again, it was successful this time! Soon we were rising up to the blue sky, overlooking all the forests and canyon.

The second time. We were sliding down the slope. I was really worried that it would just go down down down...

Yo! We rose back!

Gradually flying toward the canyon.

The Bucaramanga canyon could be seen from the sky.

The shadow of my parachute.

I love the greenery.

Actually, paragliding is not scary at all. It was just like sitting on the chair in the plane and looking out of the window. However, unluckily, despite the fact that I never had motion sickness, this time I felt terribly bad. I believe that was because I didn't have enough rest the day before, so I was pretty tired. Moreover, the 'swaying' when we set off from the sloping made it worse.

Despite all that, I enjoyed the 'flight' and it was an forgettable memory.

A panoramic view of the landscape. (Pay attention to the beautiful canyon)

Besides, the acrophobia of the French girl was also a drama. Till we set off in the van, she was already very nervous and her face was terribly white, though she insisted to smile. Before the departure of the parachute, she was confused and seemed to be suffered a lot. But she was very brave that she didn't wait until the last one to fly. Actually, she was the second one. After the flight, I saw she was totally relieved as she said it was not scary. She even did bumjee jump the next day! Wasn't she crazy? Even I don't have acrophobia, I don't want to do bumjee jump, but she was incredibly brave!

Julie was very nervous before the departure.