South of Cuenca, we headed to Loja, a small city without much interest for the average tourist other than nice markets and an overall feeling of tranquility. We walked around the market enjoying the colorfull fruit stalls and the regional food and drink specialities, including a weird aloe vera based drink that is supposed to cure all illnesses.
Fresh coffee
In Loja we had the contact of a paragliding pilot, Ramiro. We met him for a chat and some drinks. Straight away he insisted to offer us everything, caring to offer us the best experience of his country. Regarding the paragliding options in Loja, Ramiro told us that it wasn't quite the season but that him and other folks from the club were going to a "paragliding festival" for the week end, to which he invited us. He also offered us to stay at his place on the Friday night. Really we felt very lucky to have met such a kind guy!
After our stay at Ramiro's we headed to Marcabeli, a town at about 3hours drive west from Loja which enjoy a warmer climate and better paragliding conditions altogether.
A little bit of music to listen to while reading:
Loja paragliding team
Arriving in Marcabeli we joined the local pilot and organiser of the "paragliding festival", Annibal a charismatic pilot speaking with a loud voice and a lot of enthusisasm. What we didn't know was that Annibal's plan was to combine the openning of a new paragliding site, that he developped, with a local livestock festival. His idea was to get the pilots to land in the middle of the festival to provide some show to this feria. The landing field configuration was such (surrounded by electric cables) that the show has been more than complete with some pilot landing in the cables, but luckily more thrills than damage.
Annibal explaining the flight plan
The setting was a lot of fun! Loads of Ecuadorian cow boys and some impressive cattle around.
We got a little flight with some good thermal. The only issue was the lack of good landing options and the fact that, I think, the take off was a little bit lee side. Anyway I managed to get some good altitude and flew over the fair to do some acro before landing without problem in the middle of the festival. Before I had the chance to take off my equipment, I was in for a 20min photo session.
View from take off
Marcabeli
Photo session
Then it was time to enjoy the festival. It was so much fun to hear the presenter shouting in his mic all the time "Please welcome the professsionnnnalllls paragliding pilot from France". We got offered a lot of beers and aguardiente and danced on the local live artists.
Geo coming to land
Cumbia girls from Loja
The team
The next day the weather wasn't good for flying, so we enjoyed some more of the feria. With the highlight of the day: the rodeo. It reminded me so much of the town festivals in the south of France a mix between local music, cattle farming, motorbikes, and obviously a lot of drinking.
We had an amazing week end with some interesting flying and a dive into some of the Ecuadorian popular culture. A massive thanks to Ramiro and all the paragliding crew that hosted us like kings!!!
We quickly left from the surfer's town of Montanita. Its atmosphere of crazy parties drugs and alcool was a bit too much for us. One good night with our travelling friends Omar and Dario was enough.
After a 6 hours bus journey throught the Caja national park, which reminded me of some part of Scotland, we reached Cuenca. It was great to be back in the mountains at 2500m of elevation. Cuenca is a very relaxed town with interesting museums and above all good food.
Cuenca centre
Although Cuenca is the third city of Ecuador in term of populaion the city centre as a village feel. There isn't this much to do but this relaxed way of life kept us there for three days.
One of the days we managed to get a quick flight in the nearby town of Paute. We managed to dodge the drops and soar the high up mountain for a while.
Leaving from the pacific coast full of beautiful images, salt and mosquito bites we made our way towards Sucre, a little village a little bit inland close to Portoviejo, the capital of the Manabi province.
Sucre is a very relaxed "pueblo" where there is not much to do appart of going to the market to enjoy a Batido (a sort of yogurt smoothie) and have a beer on the main square at night. Our drive to go to this place was once again paragliding.
Sucre's main square
Close to Sucre there is the flying spot of La Silla (The Chair) a flat plateau used to take off in nearly all wind directions with a flat valley in front and some mountains a bit further making for some good cross country opportunities. This is the second cross country site of Ecuador after the flat land spot of Bototillo near Guayaquil.
Take off
Take off from above
The first day we met up with a local pilot Jamil, as usual super friendly. He took us up to the take off. The day seemed to be working, we could already see a few birds thermalling. We letted Jamil take off with his tandem and got ready with some Buena Vista Social Club going strong out of our portative speaker.
Getting ready
Jamil went down to land quite quickly followed by Geo while I managed to get a few thermals and go for a little bimble around. After a while I found myself super low and fought in broken lift to stay up. I finally managed to find a strong thermal that got me up from 80m to above take off. It seems that these low saves are starting to be one of my specialities. After a while playing above take off the day started to get going for real and I went for some distance in the direction of Portoviejo. After about 10km I could see the moist air coming from the sea and the strong see breeze with it, making the way towards Portoviejo a dead end. So I took the decision to come back towards take off. The sky was beautiful and I could hear in the radio some local pilots in flight achieving what appeared to be a great flight. I then found out that they made the Ecuadorian distance record on that day with a 114km flight from Guayaquil to the Manabi province where we were flying.
Back over take off I had lot of height and Jamil was exhorting me to do a few manoeuvres to get down rapidly to join him for a beer (they already had a few with Geo following me in the car). So I practice some stalls and bakwards flying as well as a few SATs. It was a lot of fun. Track from the flight
Sucre from the air
The valley with take off on the right
The second day was very frio (cold) so we went for a chillout day with a little walk and some internet catch up.
It is funny to hear the weather description here close to the Ecuador. There is no weather front, stable, unstable days or wave clouds it is only Caliente (hot, good for flying) or Frio (cold not good for flying).
Typical house
Banana plants
At night after enjoying some aguardiente (strong liquor from cane) on the main square and hearing a little more about the Sucre hip hop scene we headed up to a traditional ball. It was great! It is a shame that we don't have any photos of it. But color lights and good cumbia made up for a great night of dancing.
Hip Hop
The next day we headed to take off . The day seemed alright but not that good. Anyway we waited for the good moment and went for it. Geo quickly found a thermal and I followed him. Gaining some good altitude I crossed the valley to start the distance flight and Geo followed me after a while with more altitude. It seemed that he was getting better than me! I'm not gonna deny it, it got a bit on my nerves and I made a few bad decisions. Half an hour after Geo was only a point floating high above the mountains while I was at about 50m above the ground ready to land. After fighting once again super low I made my way up to cloud base and got back into my flight. The second part of the flight was really enjoyable cruising over the more mountaineous areas discovering some great landscapes.
Cloud surfing
At tree level but the birds are there!
Eventually the sea breeze came in and I started to make my way south tired of fighting against the wind. There I was going above fairly big mountain ranges with no retreive options, which is always more exciting.
It was funny to hear some Cumbia, crossing one of these remotes valleys at 1400m of altitude. People definitely live with music.
I finally landed in the middle of the banana plantations. I thought I was alone, but when I turned around I saw a group of people watching me taking a piss. The good news is that they had swimming trunks, which meant river and a swim!
Packing crew
Landing
Reward
Finally I managed a 38km flight with some great views. Just a little bit more than Geo who got his record flight with some impressive skills!
The track is here
After this great day we headed up for a crazy night in Montanita (5hours of bus), the famous surfer resort. This was a full day!
Coming down from the Andes to the Pacific coast was quite a shock. In 2 hours time the bus took us from the arid andean plateau through cloud forest all the way down to the hot and humid valley. This was for the landscape, but the same was also true for the people diversity. It was really like enterring a whole new country. In fact Ecuador is very much defined by this peole and landscape mosaic that is very rich in spite of its small size.
The village of Canoa attracted us not only for the cheap cocktails and delicious "ceviche de camarones" but also because it has a flying spot overlooking the pacific ocean. We enjoyed a nice soaring flight along the coast with the many soaring birds.
Hiking to take off
Playing over the ocean
The Galapagos are not that far
The ridge
Canoa
Beach Landing
For the next few days we found a couch surfing opportunity in a magical place situated a bit further north along the coast. The place located in the middle of nature and overlooking pristine beaches was owned by Mauro an Ecuadorian guy from Quito that came to the coast to develop an eco-lodge project. The lodge was still in construction and therefore there was no water nor electricity yet which was pretty nice to fully disconect from the backpacker atmosphere.
View from the lodge
The lodge structure, entirely in bamboo, was super impressive.
One of the buildings
Breakfast
Mauro was keen for us to assess the potential for a paragliding site around his place. But the terrain and vegetation seemed to be too complex to get it to work.
View from the potential take off
Our days at Mauro's were pretty quiet, we helped Mauro with the garden and went for some swims and nice strolls along the beach.
The only population on this beach was a little fishermen village. There the life was definitely going at a very slow pace between fishing and hamoc time.
We've been surprised to find a school in this tiny village. Alba a Spanish girl working there as a teacher invited us for a visit. It hapenned to be an independent school which concept is to teach the children with situations of their daily lives. For example learn about the species around them, calculate the time of the tide or doing some cooking lessons. The school architecture was really cool with most of the rooms directly openned to the sea. The library section was also very impressive with a ton of books on many different subjects.
