Day 20 11/15/2021
Odometer – 26,340- 26,429 89 Miles Today (3,729 Miles Total)
Valle De Bravo – Mexico City
Valle De Bravo…My god is this place gorgeous! I was googling places to skydive along the way on my trip and paragliding came up. I clicked on it and apparantely Valle De bravo is a world class spot for paragliding so I decided to make it a destination on the trip and here I am! I pulled into town last night, got some dinner, caught up on the website and went to bed. The town is on a huge lake surrounded by mountains. The town is pretty much on a mountain as well and the ride up to the hostel was pretty challenging as it was a very very steep cobblestone street all the way up to it. If I had to stop for some reason like for traffic I would have been screwed with this heavy bike but made it without dropping the bike once!
I got up early today packed up the bike, got some breakfast and rode down into town. I met up with Raul from ProflyV who I spoke to last night about renting gear and he had all my gear set up which was awesome. I parked my bike, threw my luggage from my bike into his shop on the main strip, jumped in his van and off we went to the top of the mountain. He had two tandem paragliding passengers as well so they told me about some nice spots to check out on my way south in Mexico. On the drive up I mentioned I skydive for work and Raul told me he did two solo jumps in Canada recently and was working to get licensed. After another minute of talking I found out two people I know did his solo jumps for him in BC Canada! Such a small world this is especially in the skydiving and paragliding community. Raul doesn’t know me at all and for him to throw me some gear without asking any questions was pretty solid of him to do. I told him I called up my buddy who taught me how to paraglide on the drive up the mountain to make sure I wasn’t getting in over my head. I told Raul my Buddys name, Cliff Ryder…and of course he knows him! He starts telling me how he met him in Brazil maybe 15 years ago or more. They did a 120 mile cross country paragliding flight across Brazil and just landed somewhere, got a hotel and got a car ride back to where the flight started. Pretty wild stuff!
One thing I absolutely love about the Skydiving and Paragliding community is you feel right at home with these people anywhere in there world and there is always someone there that you have a mutual friend with.
We got up to the mountain and what a view it was. Last time I went paragliding was in Slovenia when I was on my last trip and my friends that were traveling the world over there. (literally bought a van in Norway and they’re in the process of driving it to Asia) They took me up this insane mountain where I think you would launch on the mountain in Slovenia and land in Austria or Italy. It was an insane view. Anyway, two years later and my nerves were definitely kicking in. We opened up the canopy, I threw the harness on, clipped in, got the glider over my head, ran for my life and off I was flying over Valle De Bravo! There wasn’t much winds yet so it was a straight flight down to the landing area. I packed up and jumped in another van full of guys that offered me a ride back up. Took my a few tries to get the canopy over my head this time since the winds picked up and off I went! The winds were much stronger this time which means there are thermals which will let me go up in altitude unlike skydiving parachutes. I was cruising around next to the mountain going above it and just keeping an eye on the birds soaring under me since they know where the thermals are so they don’t have to flap their wings to fly! I stayed with the birds for about 15-20 minutes and then lost the thermals and made my way down to the little landing area on the beach. I waited for Raul to land, said bye to him and I headed off to Mexico City to meet up with my friend Jacki who was flying in to see me for three nights!
I had a quick ride into the city taking the highway toll roads. Once I got there and unloaded my bike we shot right out restaurant hopping to all the places everyone sent me recommendations too! We ate at a few places , went to a rooftop bar to have a beer and called it a night. Mexico City is not what I expected at all. Christina recommended a neighborhood for us to stay at and it was so quiet I couldn’t believe it. Barely anyone on the streets, so clean and quiet.
