When we were heading to Santa Elena (Piedechinche), we knew where to stay for a long time already, namely since our time in Costa Rica. That’s where we met Adam, a paraglider from Sweden who is working in Norway and spends half of the year in Colombia. His girlfriend Valentina is running an AirBnB in town, so staying with them was an obvious choice. In particular, because I’ve got a new vario (flight computer) sent there after mine died a few weeks back.
The weather was (again) a bit of a mixed bag. We could do some nice paragliding but also had some days with weak conditions and rainy weather. That gave me time to continue working on my Paraquip iOS App. Specifically, I worked on making a concept called ยปwing loadยซ easier to understand via data visualization and by providing guidance. That was quite interesting because it involved a lot of research, including talking to a wing designer at Nova.
To get going in the morning, we treated ourselves to a great coffee from the small coffee farm of Valentina’s brother. And for our usual muesli breakfast, I very much enjoyed using the refrigerated passion fruit that I mixed with some sugar, more fruit, oatmeal, crunch, linseeds, and plant-based milk. Katy usually skipped the passion fruit for whatever reason ๐คทโโ๏ธ When the weather was favorable, Adam, Katy, and I drove up toward the takeoff, usually in a taxi. We then hiked for another 30 minutes up the mountain road before reaching the green, spacious, and well-maintained launch site. Even though we were outside the main season, there were usually a bunch of other pilots, including a few we already met in Roldanillo.
Every day, flying in Piedechinche was different. One day we needed to be content with heading straight down to land. On other days I could head out into the valley and fly a nice triangle together with Adam and land in Santa Elena. Yet another day, only the mountain ridge was thermally active, so we flew along it as far as we could. Overdevelopment (i.e. large clouds forming) and thunderstorms were often a factor. More than once I flew away from them as fast as possible when they were forming during the flight. One day we took off right when the first thunder was rumbling. In the Alps that would have been a no-go but with the local weather system that still gave us enough time to land safely before strong winds & rain hit the landing. While the XC-flying opportunities were a bit more limited than in Roldanillo, the flying was more relaxed with fewer power lines, a dedicated landing site, and a more vibrant paragliding community that often met at the landing in the afternoon.
One place we somehow gravitated towards during our stay was the Patisseri a bit outside of town. It offered great Colombian coffee, fruit drinks, sweets, and other dishes (small pizzas for example) and we could sit outside in the shade. The atmosphere was nice and best of all there was a landing opportunity right around the corner where I touched down two or three times. One time after landing I unfortunately let my glider settle on a bush full of thorns. Even worse, it wasn’t even a real bush but a pile of thorny branches that were collected from the field. It took a good amount of time to retrieve the glider without damaging it. Katy helped me after getting there and having a good laugh. The cold drinks at Patisseri afterward tasted even better after this ordeal.
During one of the frequent water outages, Adam and I got into a chat about how it is to live in Colombia compared to just traveling the country. As a tourist, you usually only see the nice surface, but he shared that underneath things are quite messy. Mafia structures are very much (still) present and take advantage of people making good business by pressuring them into paying “taxes”. Neighbors are paid or pressured into surveilling each other. Generally, people are seemingly often trying to get a little edge, e.g. construction workers stealing small amounts of building materials for their private construction. And if you are doing above average, you need to fear getting sabotaged. This supposedly also explains why there is so little differentiation between shops and restaurants and why the service is often mediocre. No one wants to risk getting punished for their success. It’s also not the only time we hear about Mafia structures. A tandem pilot in Ecuador shall share similar stories with us later on.
We very much enjoyed our time with Adam and Valentina. We are grateful for their hospitality, flying together, and the great coffee. Moving on, we expected a bus trip between 8 to 10 hours from Cali to the Ecuadorian border. At the ticket booth, though, we were informed the trip could take a whopping 25 hours because of a landslide a few months back that is still affecting traffic. In the end, it took us 16 hours with the result that we reached Ipiales in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the taxi driver took good care of us and the hotel let us still check in. After a short and very cold night and a long hot shower, we visited the church Las Lajas before moving on to Ecuador. One funny thing we did is taking the full-size but very slow cable car for the last stretch to the church. While the views were really nice it was just ridiculously oversized ๐
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