Last Weekend in Canoa

Friends and family, sorry that it has been so long since our last post but as you will see we’ve been busy.

Our last weekend in Canoa was amazing. The festivals for the Ecuadorian Memorial Day (November 2nd & 3rd) brought many Ecuadorian tourists to town. The parties weren’t as big as they were our first time there during National Independence Day, but there was still a definite buzz around.

We took a short walk to the cemetery on Day of the Dead. The holiday is celebrated differently in all of Latin America. In Canoa it seemed mainly to be a time of remembrance and respect for those who have passed away. Everyone in the town went up to their family’s grave sites to pay their respects. Many laid flowers and gave the tombstones a fresh coat of paint. There was music playing and some sort of service was held in the cemetery for everyone. The general mood was upbeat though some were crying unrestrained.

I found this tradition to be a wonderful way to honor deceased loved ones. I have always struggled with visiting grave sites. It is something that I’ve always wanted to do but never really known what anniversary is “best”. Having a day dedicated to all of your lost friends and family takes the uncertainty and quasi-pressure out of the rest of the year. More importantly though, the entire community is there to support each other. It was definatly an authentic cultural experience. We did feel like intruders a bit though, so we left rather quickly.

The best part of the weekend was finally doing something that I’d been thinking about since we first came to the coast. It so happens that in addition to being a great surf spot, Canoa has near perfect conditions for hang-gliding and paragliding. So on Sunday Liz and I prepared ourselves for a paragliding flight with Greg, the local expert from Kentucky (on a side note, thick southern accents and Spanish make a hilarious combination).

The winds were too strong for much of the weekend, but Sunday afternoon everything came together and we headed up to the launch site so that we could jump off of a cliff. Liz went up first. Greg gave her quick instructions on what to do for the take off, then he lifted the wing into the air and they simply ran towards down the launch strip. Within ten feet, well before the cliff edge, they were airborne. They flew off so fast that there was no time to be concerned. Greg took her on what seemed a pretty standard tandem flight. Each time they passed overhead Liz had a wonderfully content and slightly stunned look on her face. After twenty minutes or so they came down in a perfectly controlled landing about fifteen feet from where they took off. She had a huge smile on her face and was truly at a loss for words.

I was on deck next so after some celebration and resetting of the gear I was strapped into the harness. Greg told me my responsibilities for takeoff which amounted to pulling my feet up and putting the seat under myself. Just like Liz, we were up in the air nearly before I realized it.

I’ve parachuted once before and while I really enjoyed it after the chute had opened, the freefall was not really my cup of tea. Para-gliding didn’t have any of the nail biting, can’t breath, heart in your throat experience. It is really a tranquil feeling. From the moment we were off the ground everything went smooth and still even though we were flying at around twenty five mph. Greg took me on the same standard route, flying over the launch site to gain altitude and then flying out to open space and spiraling into a dive. Everything was startlingly comfortable, the only real feeling was pushing down into the seat while we were spinning.

Not too long into our flight we spotted a peregrine falcon that nested in the area. She was flying no more than twenty feet from us and we could see that she was carrying a mouse in her talons, a treat to see for sure. Then we noticed another falcon just before it went into a dive. We didn’t think much of it until we realized that it was diving at the falcon with the mouse. For at least five minutes the two showed off amazing acrobatics respectively trying to steal and protect the meal. Greg displayed quite a bit of flying skill also in making sure that we had the best seats for an awesome show of nature. Greg has been flying for eight years and this was the first time he had seem something like this. I think he got even more excited than me. It was easy to see why he is still flying after many years.

Conversation was easy with Greg while in the air since I was basically positioned between his legs and the sound of the wind was negated because we were going with it. Not long after witnessing the falcons duel I confessed that I’d been thinking of taking his certification class sometime in the future if I enjoyed the flight as much as I though I would. This really excited him and his attitude changed a little at that moment. He immediately wanted to give the controls to me. While I was more comfortable being a passenger than I’d expected the thought of controlling the wing that was keeping me from falling was more than I had prepared for. A little panic set in right then but I reached up at his insisting and grabbed hold of the control ropes (or brakes). I could feel the delicate pressure on the brakes as the wind shifted slightly and a lack of confidence swept through me and I forced Greg to take back the controls. Greg knew just what to do. He assured me that there was very little I could do that would endanger us and demonstrated by taking his hands off the brakes and resting them on my shoulders so that neither of us were controlling the wing. Without direction the wing went into a sort of auto-pilot and soared as smoothly as ever with the wind. That did the trick. I took hold of the brakes and began my first flying lesson.

Gentle pressure on the right steered us right and vice versa, when that wasn’t enough we leaned our bodies into the turn and banked into a steep curve. The movement around a balance point really reminded me of fast cornering on a bike. I took us back and forth in front of the cliff, gaining altitude on the north side and then speeding towards the south out into free space with the ground some 500 feet below us. Flying the wing was intuitive and after a little while I decided to challenge myself by flying over a point on the ground further out from the cliff than we’d been thus far. Part way there Greg called for a turn back towards the cliff, but when I told him my intention he didn’t object. Once we were over the point I had chosen Greg coaxed me into the sharpest turn we had pulled yet because we needed to get back to the updraft of the cliff before loosing much more altitude. I got us back to the cliff and the wind took over taking us up again. Greg directed me over minor changes in the cliff face where we caught even stronger updrafts. The feeling was liberating, moving freely in space limited only by imagination and skill. The right time might still be a few years away but I can hardly wait to learn to fly.

We spent our last few days packing and going for a great bike ride, marred only by the cows blocking our return path for a little while. We never did make it to the Hill of Suffering, though the vision is probably better than reality. We found on a newer map that the town at the top is called Suffering, which would make it the hill’s namesake and not the label of a killer climb. After another round of intense weight and space savings we managed to get everything into our backpacks, only to find out when we put them in our travel bags that they were nearly the same size just packed differently.