With less than two months until my sabbatical ends and I am due to start back at work in the UK, I decided to run off a high cliff this morning. Unfortunately, I was strapped into a paraglider, and survived.
I don´t like heights. I have never liked heights, and I probably never will like heights. The only reason I did a parachute jump a few years ago was because the friend I was with at the time would have ridiculed me for the rest of my life if I had chickened out. The only reason I did some paragliding today was because it was cheap as chips (around GBP 25), and because I knew that the views across Medellìn and the surrounding mountainside would be absolutely spectacular.
The views from 400 metres above where we ran off the side of a cliff high in the Colombian mountains (and about 2000 metres above Medellìn) were indeed absolutely spectacular. As waterfalls cascaded far below us, we caught thermals above large birds that were apparently the cousins of condors, and wached planes landing at Medellin airport in the distance.
- 'Relajate.' my instructor Jaime told me several times, as my hands gripped with whiteknuckles around the straps that stopped me plummeting to my death. For some peculiar reason, I was relatively calm and relaxed when we were gliding about 300 metres above the ground, but I started getting nervous when we ascended to 400 metres, as if that extra 100 metres could mean all the difference between life and death should I fall. Either way, I was definitely glad that I opted to wear the same pair of underpants as yesterday when I got up this morning, as it meant I had an extra pair to change into when I got back down to ground.
Now that I have done a parachute jump and paragliding, I have no intention of ever dangling unnecessarily in the air again. I will need to think up a ground-level based alternative to not having to go back to work when my Sabbatical ends in January.
