Hi all!
I know I posted a blog a couple of days ago, but there was something I left out, and I decided to write another one.
As some of you know, a few of my teammates and I went paragliding the other day when we were provided a day off. Every since they mentioned it as a possibility, I thought about what my parents had told me when I was little. “If your friends were going to jump off a cliff, would you do it too?” in reference to “don’t do everything your friends do. It’s not always good for you.” Well, when in Colombia…you jump off a cliff with your friends on your day off. There were many adventures that day, but I’m going to start with our adventure with getting there.
The day started off kind of early. We were told that we should be there anytime around 9:30, so we left around quarter to 9 for the what was supposed to be 35 minute drive to the mountain. Well…it was NOT a 35 minute drive like it was supposed to be. We got into the Uber and told the driver where we were supposed to go. She seemed very confident with where it was, and things went seamlessly, at least for the first hour in the car. When the time approached 2 hours, we were all kind of like, “um, where is this person taking us. Does she even know where we’re going?” At about the 2 hour mark, she stopped and asked some people for help. That’s when I learned a little something about the culture. People in Colombia, at least the people we encountered are very willing to help you figure out where to go if you’re asking for directions. No one, however, gave us correct directions. Eventually we tried a different mapping system that told us that we had gone DOUBLE the distance we were supposed to go. We had to drive over an hour back towards home and we finally found it, but the Uber adventure turned out to be over a 3 hour ride to get to a place 35 minutes from where we’re staying. It was a nice way to see the country, because to us, Colombia looks a lot like the house we’ve been staying in for the last 2 weeks and that’s where we’ve spent most of our time. It’s nice to see something that isn’t super close to the house. So, the Uber ride was an adventure in and of itself.
The next adventure was jumping off a cliff. You know, no big deal, right? However, we had to CLIMB the hill that we were supposed to jump from. We looked up at it and said, “Alright, let’s go!” As we made the trek up to the hill, we took a second to collect ourselves (and our breath), and look at the view. It was breathtaking (pun intended). It was absolutely beautiful and totally worth the hike up. Well, we weren’t even up to the top yet, and we thought that if it’s this beautiful in the middle of the hike, then it has to be even more beautiful at the top. As we made it up to the top, we could see the whole city! It was absolutely amazing how beautiful it was to look at.
When we reached the top, we got really excited. Two of my teammates, Grace and Kate, were with me, and they were off first. It was awesome to watch them have such a good time. My pilot still had not arrived yet, as he had a gust of wind take him to somewhere in the city (yikes.) I started to rethink the idea of jumping off a cliff, but you know, it’s all part of the adventure, right? I’m up here, I’m going to do this and I’m going to have fun. By the time Kate and Grace came back 20 or so minutes after they took off, my pilot had still not arrived, so we just sat for about another half hour and waited for him. Eventually he got to where we were, and as we took off, I was SUPER excited…for about the first 10 seconds of the flight, and then I got extremely motion sick and almost threw up on the pilot. I kept trying to ask him to take me back down, but I didn’t have the knowledge of how to say it in Spanish, and he didn’t understand me in English. I tried EVERYTHING to go back early. I think the Lord knew that I was going to be sick if I didn’t get my head out of the clouds soon, and I think He gave me the words to speak in Spanish to tell him, “I need to land NOW!!!” We landed, and not 5 seconds after landing did I get unhooked and I just laid on the ground for about 15 minutes before I could even sit up, let alone stand up and walk down the hill. All I wanted was to do was go to sleep. It felt like a huge mountain to climb even though I was climbing DOWN just to get to the bottom of it, and then take a half hour cab ride back to the house, but before we could do that, we had to wait a half hour for it. I had enough, and I laid down on a table that was close by and waited there. Once we got home, I think I slept for about 3 hours and still woke up woozy.
Even after all of the “adventures” and the unwanted side effects of the adventure, I would still never take any of it back. The 3 hour Uber ride allowed me to get closer to the 3 other teammates I was with, it allowed me to see the other parts of Colombia including a super long, but really awesome tunnel that we drove through. The hike up allowed us to see a city from a different perspective, and even getting motion sick, while it was definitely not fun, I wouldn’t have been able to experience that with my team if I had done it later. What a blessing that day was, even if I was super sick at the end of it. It’s all part of the adventures. What I’ve learned though, is that from now on, maybe I’ll keep my feet on the ground and my head out of the clouds.
Before the adventure
So not excited. My instructor is pretty happy, though! Thanks for capturing a not so flattering moment.
