Soaring with the eagles – or should that be not eagles

We were picked up from our hostel ½ hour early much to our shock, as we were still eating lunch counting on the normal, tardy practices that much of our trip has demonstrated.  As our vehicle wound it’s way up the hairpins along the hill facing the upper suburbs. (Iquique ran out of space along the coast and so has many of it’s suburbs separated by a 500m high escarpment – according to my pilot anyway.  Ellen’s pilot said it was a separate town). We got to have a much better view of the city in the daylight, bands of houses/apartments were painted one bright colour or another, one swathe green another blue, but for some reason all the roofs were the same desert brown iron roof.  Reaching the top of the escarpment we bundled out and were assigned our pilots, while they readied the chutes we had a bit more of a look at the lower part of Iquique.  Strapped into our seats and attached to our pilots we were ready. Ellen took off first, no running required just up up and away, while my pilot fiddled a bit longer and when it came for take off we went up, but only just my feet barely brushed the ground even on tip toes but I was being instructed to run.  “HOW?” with what little grip I managed to get us moving forward enough to launch into the air.

This experience of paragliding was very different to our previous one, where before we raced down to the bottom as quick as possible (so the next person could hand over money) we instead spent time competing with the birds for the thermals.  There were two species of eagle sharing the thermals but they were heavily out numbered by another species that our guides informed us where “not eagles” but as neither Ellen or I can find an image of the birds they shall have to remain anonymous.  We followed the escarpment along finding different patches that allowed our pilots to spin and gain us the altitude to glide over the city to the beach.

As my pilot and I crossed the beach to start our decent I was lucky enough to spot some seals playing in the ocean.  Landing was a breeze but one of the pilot’s dogs was there to greet us noisily and there was a moment where it looked like we would be landing on the dog’s back!  It was a wonderful experience but we decided that it wasn’t as exciting as we may have hoped so it is now off our list of skills to acquire.