Running Off A Mountain

Second highlight of my time in Medellin was paragliding over the city. Paragliding is where you are strapped to a parachute and fly around for a while. When I thought of paragliding, I always thought that since you were in a parachute you would take off from someplace with a really high elevation and then float down and land at a lower elevation, but the wind conditions in Medellin allow you to take off and land at the same spot.The wind conditions in Medellin make it one of the best places to go paragliding in South America and people come from all over to try it out here.

Me and and a couple Swedish girls from the hostel had to take a 2 hour bus ride up to the top of one of the mountains overlooking Medellin to get to the take off point. I´ll admit, I was a little nervous before setting off (running off a mountain isn´t something I do every day) but everything turned out great. The ride was very smooth and I was in the air for the tandem flight over Medellin for about 45 minutes. The only downside to the paragliding is that while we were waiting to get everything set up, we got tons of sand flea bites on our feet and ankles and they have been itching like crazy ever since. Oh well.

Great day in the mountains with some great people.


More pictures of paragliding in Medellin can be found on my Picassa photo site: http://picasaweb.google.com/jmellgren