After the heat of Dominical beach, the lower temperature in the mountains was very welcome. Rivas is a little village at an altitude of 750m and part of a mountain range that peaks at the highest mountain of Costa Rica, Cerro Chirripó, at 3800m. The closest city is San Isidro.
We went to Rivas with Alex, a Costa Rican tandem pilot that we met in Dominical. Driving the car was Timo Schuhmacher, a German rally driver, sorry, exceptional paragliding, test, and tandem pilot. At Alex’s place, we felt very welcomed and at ease having a nice room with a little balcony and a wonderful view all for ourselves. On the horizon, we could see the ridge between the valley and the coast, where we were flying before. In the end, we stayed there for a full week.
Adding to our well-being was the breakfast, which varied every day. We got served different kinds of egg dishes, Gallo Pinto (rice and beans, seasoned very deliciously with culantro), pancakes, fresh fruit, tortillas (kind of little corn-based pancakes), and toast. Also having a lot of different pilots around, from the US, Netherlands, and Columbia, having dinner together at the property, or going out and trying different restaurants was very joyful. The first evening there was even a little karaoke party and with only a little peer pressure we performed a (German) song.
We quickly established a daily routine. Getting up at 6:50h, having breakfast at around 7:30h, taking one of the cars with tandem passengers up at 9:30h, and taking off between 11:30h and 12:30h. We often waited for quite a while until the first clouds started to form and a few local pilots or tandems took off. After landing, we ran some errands, had lunch, and went up to the apartment again, usually catching some kind of lift. Afterward, we had plenty of time in the afternoon to spend in the pool, stretching, practicing Spanish, writing blog posts, editing photos, playing cards, or reading. Most of the time we spent reading.
That’s at least when our flights went as planned. Which they rarely did. In particular, Simon, attempting to fly longer routes, rarely landed back in Rivas. Once he went down in a fairly remote village called Berlín and was lucky that two guys passed by, one of them an Uber driver who had his day off. He picked Simon up with his moped, drove him to his car to switch vehicles, and then all the way back to Rivas. The day later he wasn’t as lucky and it took him more than 4 hours waiting for and being on buses to get back. That’s part of the game, though.
Rivas is a genuinely nice place for paragliding and we very much enjoyed it. It’s referred to as the XC flying Eldorado of Costa Rica. For that part, we were a bit brought down to earth, though. As mentioned above, we often didn’t reach our destinations and sometimes even needed to settle with flights as short as 40 minutes (less than we expected from us). That might have been our performance, the weather conditions, missing luck, or a mix of all of those.
One challenge for us was the combination of mountain-flying along ridges and in the flats based on clouds. The latter we haven’t done much yet and the thermals felt very unpredictable and bubbly to us. The cloud base was often quite low and the northerly trade winds from the Caribbean coast (apparently stronger than usual this year) could be felt in higher altitudes (1800/1900m). Landings also weren’t always easy, in constrained space and with strong thermals going through. So despite the great landscape, and nice flights with (mostly) safe and happy takeoffs and landings we couldn’t help but be a bit frustrated. We tried to regard it as training, though, and still very much enjoyed our stay.
Everything we’ve learned about paragliding in Rivas we summarized in our site guide. Have a look 🙂
On our last day, we went with Alex to Dominical, where we planned to catch a bus to Caldera. We didn’t intend to fly. Because of a detour we reached the takeoff first, though, and couldn’t resist. The only issue was that we got our entire luggage with us. We could have left it in the car but that would have made us less flexible. So we accepted the challenge to fly it all down with our paragliders.
And we did it! We had to squeeze a lot of stuff into our harnesses. Additionally, we both had our bags with clothes. Simon put it onto his lap within his pod harness and I attached it to my belt and put it under my jacket. The flight was not so comfortable, so we mainly made some height and flew down to the beach. But it felt like quite an accomplishment for us to carry all we had with us for a year with our gliders. Let’s see, maybe this turns out useful another time.
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