We booked into one of the best hotel rooms on our trip, one that made you feel like you were some big head honcho. Well it made me feel like it, not sure about El; a big space with shutters on the windows and big old doors to the room, it was a fantastic room.
We hung around on Sunday and for once it really felt like a Sunday and we had no choice but to hang around. Remember in England when nothing, and I mean nothing, is open: it was just like that. We walked around and tried to get some purchasing opportunities in but were stopped at every stage. It the end we had to kick back and watch the main plaza from a restaurant balcony and watch the slow Sunday life go by, quite nice as it turns out.
At a height of 2800 metres we felt a bit better than at other places that are over 4000 metres, maybe that is why after a lot of talk of having a few "rest" days we decided to book ourselves on a paragliding jump in the morning and a 4 hour dirtbike tour in the afternoon, or maybe the altitude really was affecting us.
The Paragliding was amazing and with the top standards of Bolivia's heath and safety were made even more "exciting". Mum you may not want to read this, I've always wanted to write that.
Why am I going first...hey
We started with an "exciting" trip to the launch pad, and hour along a mountain range, that was made really cool as the guide spoke really good English and kept pointing out local plants and trees and hamster-like creatures that the locals eat, plus I could have a good chat about Bolivia and its people and politics.
El and I flipped a coin and she won, so she went first. She looked a bit nervous, so I gave her all the encouragement that I could, "Don't worry it does not look that far down" and "its not too high a cliff you are running off, you will only break a leg" etc., etc.
She ran when the instructor told her too, but at the last minute the wind changed and she was dropped down to the ground from about a metre up and slid along the earth for a few seconds before taking off proper. After reviewing the video she came within half a metre of some nasty sharp rocks...the force is still stong with this one, but she still managed to rip her jeans and get a graze on her knee.
After a nasty take off she had a fantastic flight and said that it was very relaxing flight and was quite funny to land in a field next to a few pigs.
My take-off was a little different, video to follow. I did not even get a chance to run at the cliff face, mmmm shame. The wind changed again and the bloody thing just took off vertically. Elenaor was joking with the instructor that after her take off he said "Oops" and I told him that I wanted no such oops on my take off.
Well as soon as we took off I was thinking to myself "this is cool we can just glide from here", but as soon as I thought that the bloody guide says "Oops" but with a note of panic in his voice, uh oh, I thought.
We managed to clear the edge of the mountain after a lot of shouts of "move to the right" "move to the left" and I though that it was going to be all cool from now on when I realised that we were not going down, quite the opposite we were going up. The instructor had me take control of the parachute while he did something that reduces the surface area of the canopy, so that finally we started to come down, I did start to enjoy the flight then, with the occasional shout of Thank God!
When we finally landed, the guide and I had a manly hug and he kept on saying that flight was "Rock and Roll". He explained in half-English and Spanish that if we went over the other side of the mountain it would have been dangerous and the canopy would have collapsed, so I'm glad that did not happen. The bonus of all this is that as the Instructor said the next flight I take I will be saying is this all !! Where is the rock and roll baby!!!
The afternoon was quite cool, El took the back of the guide's bike and I had my own and we rode into the countryside around Sucre where El took a few hours lessons and I took off down a nice road for an hour or so. It started to look a bit grim so we headed back to town and it started to rain, its was at this point that El's guide - a Sucre motocross champion - while not looking where he was going, nearly ran into a pile of gravel that is there for the bikes to do stunts on and FELL OVER, what a berk.. I had a massive heart attack when I could no longer see them in my mirrors.
Both were OK and suffered mirror cuts, but El got an identical cut to her right knee to go with her left one that she got paragliding, and quite a few bruises, I think that after the shock wore off that she was quite proud of herself for being so hard core and freestyle, I certainly was! But she doesn't really want to go on the back of a motorbike anymore after 2 falls from them as a pillion.
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