Peter Chrzanowski gives us a sneak preview of his web page article that will be published soon on his web pages. For those who just eagerly follow Peter’s activities, here it is.
AFTER flying Miraflores in Lima and enjoying the great hospitality at Casa Andina, Private Collection, we boarded the bus and made our way south to the Chilean border with Peru. The bus ride was comfortable but still long and exhausting, all 32 hours of it or so. We followed the Pan American Highway all the way south of Lima through ever changing desert landscape made up of mountains, sand dunes and Martian like landscape which at times was quite unreal and spectacular, to say the least. I drove this highway with my parents on our VW South American Odyssey to Tierra Del Fuego from Canada in 1972, and many memories came back . Wow, has it been 38 years since then., time flies, does it not sometimes ?!!
The buses in South America are really quite luxurious . There is lots of leg room and they actually recline almost into beds. The ride took us until the border town of Tacna, past the lines of Nazca and turnoff to Arequipa. Then in Tacna after the 25 hour leg or so of the trip came the real chaos as we had to cross the border to Arica, on the Chilean side. This was a taxi ride actually included in our bus ticket. The transfer itself was quite chaotic with lots of pushing and shoving Peruvian style, but we somehow managed to get all our paragliders and bags and catch a bus just leaving for Iquique. It was 5pm or so when we left Arica and travelled south again on a bus for the next six hours or so, arriving in Iquique by 11pm. We were greeted by Philippe our Swiss host and proprietor of www.altazor.cl , an incredible flight park south of town. He really has done quite a job setting up a complex of shipping containers converted to sleeping accommodations. They are painted white and do not even heat up that much with the scorching desert heat. Each has windows and doors put in and are outfitted with comfy beds. There is a full kitchen, several fridges, good running hot water and a jovial atmosphere with pilots visiting from all over the world. On my first day I must have met at least half a dozen paragliders that I either knew or were friends of friends. This is no surprise as our AIRHEAD community worldwide does not exceed probably more than 200,000 flyers, and that would be tops- I described impervious blogs how I have not yet encountered a tighter knit cult sport community as in paragliding anywhere, whether it be skiing, backcountry or downhill, climbing, mountain biking or other non motorized sports I take part in.
But it is the flying which really sets Iquique apart from everything else, it is simply incredible. In the morning we bus it for a dollar and a half to launch, or catch a shuttle for 3 bucks. Sometimes we can just chip in and rent one of Philippes great 4×4 Delica Mitsubishi, diesel vans for as little as $60 a day. The conditions get rather strong from noon on and I am still working on getting my reverse launches down packed for those winds when my Alpine forwards can not quite handle it. From here, or Alto Hospicio one can do nice XC cross country flights north and south until a mountain causes rotor and it is not safe any more. Iquique is a big city of 200,000 inhabitants or so and looks like a colony on the moon or Mars , with a few modern skyscrapers jutting out of a mish mash of urban sprawl. It is quite the sight. If one gets high enough above launch and flies north, then hangs a left , you basically fly right over the center of the city and land on the beach. There is a nice grassy oasis park there shaded by palm trees to pack up ones glider as well.
In the afternoon, we take a rest write blogs and emails in the shade of an office or awnings set up around our Altazor home, then by 4 30pm head out to soar the sand dunes at Pilique . Now this place is really magic. You start by kiting your glider at sea level and walking it in reverse towards this sand dune. Part of the way up you feel the hot wind on your back and when it feels right, you reverse launch and fly soaring the little dune above you which is only maybe 20 metres high. Then, as you keep getting height from the sea breeze, the thermals kick in and you make your way up the bigger mountainside crisscrossing a rocky slope and a huge sand slope which goes right up to 2000ft or so above the ocean and often to cloudbase , when there are clouds that is, and that is rare in Iquique. Sometimes the Bolivian fronts come in with a few wisps now and then from the west.
As the sun goes down the setting gets even more surreal as the dunes take on various colors ranging from yellow, to bright orange and red. We fly till 9pm or so awhen the sun sets and gets cooler , to 20 degrees or so with a soothing cool breeze off the Pacific. I still cannot believe how great the flying is here, it really does not seem real at all. I have been taking turns flying my Advance, Sigma 6 in the mornings and saving my SKY Atis for the afternoons when we have to kite it up the hill and it gets worn from the sand. I have not flown my Atis for a year or so and I still appreciate its great manoeuvrability. Although one day I overturned it a bit sharply into a negative helicopter like spin which gave me quite the scare. But hey,m this is paragliding and things happen fast sometimes. I came out of the spin fairly low above the sand and did not have to throw my reserve parachute which I still hope I will NEVER have to do.
The other day we packed two delica vans full of our new friends from Germany, Sweden, the US with our regular Canadian – Polish Contingent, made up of Pawel, his son Philip, Maciek and Camil and drove on a camping trip to two incredible flying sites about 200km north of here.
Camil is Pawel’s cousin on an adventure of his life. He has been visiting Vancouver working and learning English last year and was talked into joining us. He comes from a small rural community of 40 or so agricultural farms in Poland. He had his own adventure getting here as the Airline screwed out and sold him a ticket to Santiago through the US. Since Polish Citizens still need visas to get into the former land of milk and honey (I say former because the US is going down fast economically thanks to the Bush warlord regime, they can’t just listen to their commander and chief and just go shopping for Xmas anymore. It just won’t work) . So poor 19 year old Camil got shafted real good by US customs in Toronto and refused entry to America en route to Santiago, Chile. Luckily ahe met a Polish airport worker (avoided being tasered, he, he ) and with his help raised hell, overnighted in TO and had his ticket changed GRATIS on a direct flight the next day to Chile, luckily it all went smooth. Camil is very helpful and in full awe of our Airhead escapades here. Pawel takes him on tandems and he is groundhandling every day getting ready for his first solo flight in the dunes. He is quite taken by it all and we sometimes have some good laughs at his amazement to this whole escapade.
Last night our good Iranian- Canadian friend payman just arrived keen to fly as ever and we had some incredible soaring and thermal sessions with him already. He also did his firs SAT, an aerial acrobatic manoeuvre and is filming everything wildly with his new helmet cam set up. The nights are spent cooking, drinking with friends, watching footage and stills and we are really usually quite so beat by flying several hours in the afternoon, combined with hot sun to do anything else. Although one night Philippe did take us to a great restaurant for seafood dinner with drinks, it was an upscale place and dinner and drinks were under $15 each! Life is good and cheap in Iquique.
Oh, getting back to that incredible camping trip, I must say it was very special and I have been on a few. We took the Pan American Highway north about 200 km, then turned right off the desert altiplano of sorts and crossed the barren desert again towards the Pacific. Suddenly below us appeared this most incredible view of Ocean cliffs and formations resembling Baja California. It was a little too strong for me to launch here this afternoon but I filmed and enjoyed the view while many of the the air monkeys played along the high cliff side separating us from the sea. This was a great site but several times when people got low they had to land down by the ocean, find a beach then either walk an hour and a half back up, or across to a quaint little fishing town. The afternoons are spent soaring another sandy site and walking our gliders up hill as near Iquique. We camped out around a raging fire (a few of us in our beloved paragliders for bedding in true AIRHEAD style ) as there was lots of driftwood around to my surprise and enjoyed a very star filled sky. I really love the desert and make many trips to the Baja for that reason, but this place , well, I can not find words to describe it´s sheers beauty. I actually had a great talk about this special feeling with Danusa a Brazilian pilot of 12 years visiting from Curitiba Brasil. Danusa works for a marketing firm for an oil company back home and flies a lot between contracts. She joined our international crew. She was a Brazilian paraglide champion at 17 and started flying at 15. She is also friends with Ary who was kind enough to supply some gear to us from SOL paragliders of Brasil. Another interesting anecdote is that where she comes from is a huge polish population , the 3rd largest in the world after Warsaw and Chicago. I still remember driving our faithful VW through there , back in 72 and seeing blond kids selling berries by the road. When we stopped, we found they were speaking Polish to each other, quite charming indeed !!!??
Pawel by the way, met a flying friend here from Japan with whom he and Philip flew in Nepal last year together. He is an awesome acro pilot , but quite the scary driver as we found out in the dunes and screamed Kamikaze at him out of sheer terror as we thought the van would roll off the sidehill one afternoon on his crazy approach to the dunes.
Anyway, it is December 23rd and Summer Solstice or the longest day was here yesterday on this side of the equator. I had a glorious flight , several hours again and got to fly to the dowtown beach for my first time today. It was awesome as I passed by the modern skyscrapers en route, quite near and waved to the people tanning on their high rise balconies. It sure was different from flying at home in Pemberton, which we still agree on as being one of the best spots to fly in the whole world, by those that have been there on those special days, especially when it glasses of or magic lift in the evening August rays.
I´m just taking all this in and learning as I go. I hope to turn part of our own house into a flight park of sorts along with an adventure film school, so places like this are such an inspiration to see how the business part and logistics are all so well run by Philippe, our host.
I am co coordinating our second part of this journey in Peru after the 28th, when we leave Iquique for flying the Andes and organizing that FLY IN and Accuracy contest in Peru . Hopefully Mtjas, our friend in Slovania can get FAI accreditation for all participating airheads
More reports and pics coming soon as ever on www.explorex.net