Day 1 Tour 1

The day dawned bright and looked good.

Breakfast was a hoagie style sandwich with chicken or pork cutlets and red onions with some light vinegrette sauce.  Odd, but I finished mine knowing I'd be hungry very soon if I didn't. The 6:45 breakfast was a good call, despite the grogginess we all seemed to share. It made the difference between flying and not today for our group. 

Some had bright new wings to fly.

Some knew how to apply sunscreen!

We all launched and had a great first day of flying, but a group showing up behind us was met with wind 'over the back' making it unlaunchable. 

After a brief morning chat we took to the sky. Lots of blue today, steong climbs and higher than usual cloudbase for so early. I flew to 7,700 feet after launching from about 5,000 feet. Nice. 

Pell and I had a nice tandem together. 

The day seemed too good to be true. 

We flew well as a group but there were no clouds to mark lifting air out on the flats, so we stayed in the mountains until the increasing wind over the back forced us to take a chance for the flats after all. The flats remained with blue skies and no clouds. It was getting windier out of the North (down valley) and the weak thermals we found we're drifting pilots into a hard to retrieve area. Ultimately we all landed mostly together, except two pilots made it a bit farther and one of them (Juho) made it to the next town down wind of Roldanillo. Well done!

Pell and I had a less than soft landing due to switchy winds in our landing spot but were no worse for wear and later found out that we weren't the only ones that had a hard time with that landing zone. Gotta watch out for sure. 

Flacko and Cipriano were there in just minutes to pick us up. We stopped for some rotisserie chicken and fresh smoothies back in town. 

Our pilot meeting was held before (and after) dinner tonight as we couldn't do it the night before due to late arrivals who would have missed it. We still have two more late arrivals tonight, so they will have some catching up to do for sure. 

Lots of happy pilots today. Another early start tomorrow. 

Hasta mañana,

Martín