To anyone that reads this- YOU MUST GO PARAGLIDING AT SOME POINT. IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCES I HAVE EVER HAD. My parents were happy to first learn of my paragliding adventure when I had safely returned to my hostel but I wouldn't trade it for anything else in Mendoza. If you’re scared of heights, its a completely different feeling.. I promise. A group of students we went with where terrified and afterwards, I asked them if it was a once in a lifetime experience and one girl said, “oh no, there is no way I am not experiencing that again”. I could not express the feeling better myself.
When we arrived in Mendoza, Kathryn ran into one of her friends she had met here during her last visit who is a paragliding instructor. Feeling invincible, I saw no reason not to go and when I asked Kathryn if she would go with me, she was just as excited. So while Benjamin went rock climbing today, we called up the paragliding company and asked if they had any room in their truck to take us. Since we had slept in, we called a little late, and they said yes if we could be outside in 5 minutes. The rush definitely added to the thrill of it, I didn’t know exactly how paragliding was done but I had heard that it was an incredible experience and this trip I’m really open to trying anything so I was so excited.
We picked up 4 other students from another hostel and set off towards the mountains. They were pretty nervous but since I didn’t have a clue what paragliding even entailed (I didn’t know if it was zip-lining or what.. maybe I would have thought again if I had known I’d have to run off a cliff), I wasn’t the slightest bit nervous. After half an hour we got to this camp site where Kathryn and I waited an hour for the others to go. The views were unbelievable, but the heat was too so we waited in the car most of the time. We saw everyone land and the girls who had been really nervous could NOT stop gushing about how amazing it was. I was so ready. We got in the car with the instructors and cranked up the music, it was another half an hour ride up to the highest point of the mountain we were jumping off of. It is hard to relay how scary that car ride could have been.. I don’t understand why I had complete trust in our instructor driving, probably because he had this amazing positive energy radiating off of him, but the roads carved into the mountain were tiny, and there while we were circling around the mountain, there were a lot of turns that needed pushes with the acceleration. Seeing the rocks fall off the mountain as we drove by, you could definitely not see where they were landing. It reminded me of driving in Greece, when I was 12 I visited the islands with my mom. We had a guide who was drinking beers at nine in the morning as he drove a white van full of 9 terrified women up these mighty cliffs. This truck was instead full of four enthusiastic instructors, us and two other visitors, listening to Black Eyed Peas and dancing to get rid of any nervous energy.
The first thing that caught my attention when we arrived to the mountain top were the views. I lost all words. And then found them to ask someone to take a picture of Kathryn and I. It hit me what we were actually doing when we were paired up with instructors. Mine was Raul, such a sweet guy who told me he had been paragliding for 12 years. Once he started putting belts and a helmet on me, I started getting scared. He told me we had to wait for the wind to pick up and then we would have to run off the cliff. He stressed that it was important not to stop running once we were in the air and to sit down once he told me to. Kathryn was really nervous and when I saw her jump off, I started shaking. I turned to Raul and said (not in a steady voice), “I’m really nervous..” and he said, “me too..”. Not helpful! They had been saying that in the car and laughing but at that moment it was hard to relax. He kept kicking the dirt to see how high it would pick up and we had to wait a few minutes for another gust. By then, I’m not sure what happened but seeing Kathryn in the air, I was completely fine. Thank goodness the anxiety only lasted a minute before I went off because I wouldn’t have wished any other experience than the one I had. We started running and it was such a thrill.
Up in the air, I once again was completely speechless. The view of the Andes could not be replicated by anything. Just imagine flying with no boundaries, just a helmet and a kite.. nothing can compare. We jumped off at 1,800 meters and flew up around 150 more once we jumped. There was nothing scary about it, if anything it was completely the opposite because you feel so free up in the sky that all of your anxiety leaves and you just.. fly. And admire what you see.
Raul was making sure I was okay every few minutes and every time all I could reply was how much I was loving it. He said, “you can scream if you want” and it felt soo good. I screamed as loud as I could and was laughing at the same time.. He said the people in Chile could definitely hear me hahah. Another reason I probably felt so comfortable was because Raul was so nice, he noticed that I kept turning to see the Andes and would turn us so that I had the best view of them and said that the view of me in front of the Andes was his favorite. Out of the five pairs paragliding, we landed last with around a half an hour flight, which was significant because the flight usually lasts for fifteen minutes, but the day that we went the instructors said the weather was perfect. Raul was so happy he said he was going to print out the pictures of the two of us in the air and write on the back of them, “the best flight of the spring of 2010” and sent me a message on facebook that said, "alexa raul, the best paragliding team en mendoza" and then wrote on my wall something similar.
gracias alexa por tu muy buena onda" - Raul
On the way back to the hostel we stopped by an outdoor bar and all shared a beer and alfajones, this delicious type of cookie that can be found everywhere in Argentina that is generally two cookies with dulce de leche or chocolate in the middle.
One of the best things I’ve ever done. Highly recommended to anyone, anywhere. And if you ever visit Mendoza, get in touch with me and I’ll put you in touch with Raul and his instructors. It'll be worth it.
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