Chulos
The vortex of chulos swarming in lazy circles just ahead know how to find the thermals. In front of me the urban horizon of Bucaramanga, Colombia is almost black with a vortex their dark feathery forms, a gnat-like congregation of diving and swooping. The rise of air they ride upon is the same that lifts the clouds. This is how the atmosphere balances itself out on a warm day- warm air bubbling up from the ground like a lava lamp. To me it is all invisible, but the birds know. This is what provides lift, this is the stuff paraglider pilots dream about. This is what I've traveled across the world to find, why I'm suspeneded mid-air underneath my wing this morning. I steer myself straight ahead in to the swarming fray.
“Commit to it,” instructs Russell over the radio on my shoulder. “Get ready for a left 360, lean in to it. You´ll feel some turbulence, you´ll feel it trying to push you out. Lean against it and follow the birds. That´s where you´ll find the lift.” Russell is another born and raised Alaskanlike me who has found himself living in Colombia and working as a paragliding instructor for the last four years. The improbability makes me ponder where I might find myself four years in the future.
A sudden jerk on the left risers of my harness feels like it should knock me out of my seat. I´ve hit the edge of the thermal. I pendulum back and forth in it´s wake, seeking my balance and trying to steer myself back in to it. I look up and see the swarm now above me, I am underneath it. No more turbulence. The birds keep going up, behind me now. “You missed it,” explains Russell. Head for the landing zone.” The lava lamp bubble has risen without me in it..
A minute later I touch down in a grassy field, nearly grazing the mane of a young colt with my boots just before I land. It gallops back to it´s mother as my glider comes to a rest on the ground. For nearly a week it’s been like this, nothing but pianos (the local pilots´ term for a flight down to the landing zone with no lift) for me, but not on account of the weather. There’s plenty of lift out there, just none that I’ve been able to really lock in to. When I hit turbulence it just knocks me off balance and I breeze past feeling discombobulated. With an unpowered craft like a paraglider if you´re not going up, you´re going down- and there´s only so much elevation to lose before you touch down. Only so much time to find a thermal before you have to head to the landing zone.
Landing Zone
As I pack up my glider I watch several other pilots glide down on their five-minute piano flights underneath the circling chulos as well. At least I´m not the only one. Cèsar pulls up the shuttle van (the word “Parapente” writ large across it), we exchange fist bumps and que tals as everyone else now landed folds up their wings as well. Shortly we´ll all head back up the hill to the launch site at Las Aguilas to try again.
Twenty minutes later I´m back in the air headed towards another swarm of chulos. I follow behind Matt, another more experienced pilot visiting from Oregon and brace myself for the first bumpy air. I see his wing tilt upwards and begin to rise in a spiral. I follow suit and steer myself in to a 360, feeling the risers on the side of my harness again jerk up suddenly. This time I lean against the turbulence and feel the whoosh as I rise skywards. The birds swoop past my feet and I wonder if they could become tangled in my risers.
The thermal rollercoasters me up for a dozen or so spirals, a sensation like continuously steering a race car around a banked curve. My chest heaves from the vertigo. I’m finally starting to figure it out: when you feel turbulence, lean against it- that’s where you’ll find the best lift. At the outer periphery of a thermal is a zone of air swirling and thrashing about that tosses you about, but don’t just sit there and take it- lean against it, coring the outside of it like an apple peeler around an apple.
Suddenly I can see everything. I´ve climbed over a thousand feet in just a few minutes. The distant skyline of the city is toy-like, the launch site is a small green dot. I can see the checkerboard of tomato and pepper fields sprinkled among the new condominum developments up in the hills, I can see the throbbing artery of the freeway leading up in to the mountains. I scream like a little kid, unsure if it´s more fear or excitement.
The chulos have dispersed by now in search of the next thermal and I feel my altitude gain slowing to a halt. I scan the horizon for the next circling flock, spot one and steer towards it. Matt has aimed a different direction towards a more distant flock. My glider gradually descends until I´m over the top of the birds and again I feel the turbulence. Lean against it, commit to it. Several 360s later I´ve lost the birds but I´m still going up. The sky is bigger, the world below smaller.
The basics of thermaling are simple: follow the birds, lean against the turbulence, repeat.
Forty minutes later I touch down back at the launch site for my first ever top-landing. The field is empty and no one is watching so I succumb to my weak knees and kiss the ground. The sky is beginning to thicken like whipped cream into towering cummulus clouds, this will probably be my last flight for the day. The sky will soon be “over-developed” and threatening rain. I pack up my glider and walk next door to the hostel to make lunch.
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| Happy Landing in the evening with Colombia Paragliding owner Richi and fellow pilots |
At the fly-site hostel next door I share a house with an international crowd. (Although, I have a tent outside. I sleep better that way). Three Norwegians, a Brit, one from Hong Kong, one from Belgium, one other American. The thumb tack-speckled world map on the wall shows past visitors from every far flung corner of the world. English is the language spoken here. Everyone speaks some degree of Spanish too, but English comes more naturally as not only I, but indeed the whole world has grown up listening to rock & roll over the airwaves and and swimming in the flood of Hollywood´s spew. I can´t get used to speaking English here, it irritates me that my Spanish is progressing little. I speak my mediocre Spanish with Colombians of course, but I don´t live with Colombians here apart from Sarita, a local woman who graces the hostel during the day with a warm and motherly presence and does much of the housework that we visitors have demonstrated ourselves incapable of. Several years ago while volunteering as an English-language tutor in Fairbanks, Alaska I marvelled at some of my students who had often been in the United States for years and still spoke almost no English. In my time here so far I am beginning to understand just how easily this can happen. I realize that my irritation with the language stems from preconceptions I have about how my experience should be. My previous visit to South America was as an exchange student in Argentina, a situation where not learning the language would be an option for only the most recluse and stubborn of individuals. But this time is a different experience, I tell myself. As a traveler I should expect to find myself along the Gringo Trail from time to time, with good reason: that´s where the cool stuff is. I should enjoy the camaraderie of other adventurers here who are passionate about flying and travel, which I do.
Sarita
After lunch, rain begins to spatter the window as we all knew it would. Flying is done for the day and people start making other plans. Marius, a tall and sharp looking Norwegian invites me along to go downtown with the rest of the Northerners´contingent that evening. My outdated copy of South America on a Shoestring says that no visit to Colombia is complete without at least one all night Rumba, and though my taste for clubbing is equal to that of drinking raw vinegar I say sure. Several hours later I´m in the back seat of a taxi with Hövard and Ludvig, two more Norwegians who are cracking up at the fact Marius´s thick provincial Norwegian accent sounds just as funny in Spanish as he chats with the cab driver in the front seat.
We´re headed for La Zona Rosa. Every city of Latin America has one and I hate them all. Young people dressed to the nines strut and preen, the same three songs that lull me to sleep on weekends at 120 decibels from the club next door to the hostel blare from neon-lit entrances. We ask a dark-haired guy lounging outside a club dangling a cigarette from his lips and sporting a mostly unbuttoned shirt where they sell liqour around here. He points us five blocks down the street. Marius buys a large bottle of rum and the cashier hands us four small plastic shot glasses, like the ones that come with Pepto-Bismol. We set out in search of a nearby park. A quiet and well-lit set of benches present themselves. A pair of policemen mill around under street lamp not too far away, we decide this is a safe spot. We toast our first round to nothing. I almost spit it out upon first taste but swallow instead. As we talk I eventually tell them that they don´t need to all speak in English just because I´m here. Yes, we do, they say.
At some later point in the night we´re on the topic of mandatory military service. In many countries this is law, but not so in the U.S. “Correct me if I´m wrong,” poses Marius, “but as I understand it the genius of the American military system is that it serves dual purposes. One, of course is to provide ready troops, yes. But by being a voluntary, paid mercenary service of sorts it also recruits those men with aggressive behaviors that would not be welcomed in society at large and thus finds an acceptable place for them. Am I right?” I´m not quite sober enough to explain what I think.
The bottle is empty. We wander back to the Zona Rosa through sidewalks choked with partying college kids at 11 pm on a Thursday. “Tengo cocaine!” shouts a figure at us from a dark corner. We make our way through the crowd and several times lose a stumbling Hövard in the press. A group of fellow youth we befriend en route to the clubs (¡Hay que ver las niñas! they tell us) show us the way to their preferred venue, ¡Dash!. (I haven´t seen any clubs with names in Spanish yet). We elbow our way up the stairs through a hive of bounce and sweat and sparkle to a group of their friends crowded around a table. I can´t actually see the table because I´m not quite aggressive enough with my elbowing, but I don´t really want to. Claustrophobia (or discophobia) overwhelms me in about five seconds and I make my way back outside to a seat on a brick wall by the entrance. Out here a stream of well-dressed youth flows past on the way to the next party.
Everyone out here is beautiful. That´s the stereotype, right? Colombia- cocaine and kidnappings and beautiful people might be the summary of a D- sixth grade geography report. The beautiful people part is true. As for the other stereotypes, Pablo Escobar and his type are out of power for now but certainly not out of memory. A below-the-fold newspaper story written in a positive slant tells us that the number of political-related violent acts is down from the last four-year election cycle, from 129 to 110. (The small print explains that within that count, however, the number of murders has been consistent). As a visitor here it is easy to forget that a low-level war of sorts between the government and various criminal and rebel groups still flares up daily. For the tourist it is no more unsafe here than other nearby countries, but for politicians and the wealthy I get the impression that their lives are ones of vigilance.
I watch the hustle of partiers swarm past but I´m not really interested. I cast my attention towards a woman a few steps down the sidewalk selling various and sundry items from a large wooden crate. The sidewalks of Colombia are full of these women (and men). She sells cigarettes one at a time, chicle and chupitas and various snacks, a few long-stemmed roses. After a time a man on a bicycle shouldering a large duffel bag pulls up alongside her stand. He stops to lower the bag, unzips it and allows the woman to have a look inside. She pulls out several items- more cigarettes, potato chips, baseball caps. The pair are quickly joined by another man wearing a blaze-orange vest advertising Minutos (you can buy cell phone time by the minute from him by switching out SIM cards) who is selling nearly identical wares just a few steps further down the sidewalk. The three of them enter a heated discussion that I can hear none of for the throb of techno behind me, but arms are being waved and spittle is flying. The crowd of starched collars and lip gloss and plastic surgery still swells past but it is the minutiae of the local economy that fascinates me tonight.
A younger woman appears out of the crowd and approaches the bartering trio. She stands aside from them and listens in on the exchange with a genuine sort of interest, as if she was listening for more than just the opportunity to buy more cigarettes and candy herself. She has the attractive and dark features of every Colombian woman, is modestly dressed and clearly not out to rumba herself tonight. That must be what it is that I find attractive- she´s seemingly the only other person my age not swept up in the distractions at hand. She must be an observer of some sort, I think. A sociology student at the university- her thesis is something like, “Territorial self-preservation strategies of independent actors in informal economies,” she´s out doing fieldwork tonight. I´m watching their posse. She sees me watching so I look away. I cross and then uncross my legs and then look back. She looks back towards me and we have the briefest of eye contact. I look away again. We both look back up curiously at each other at the same time and my chest heaves a little like it did when I was cresting the top a thermal earlier that day.
And it is at this moment that Alfonso arrives, one of the guys we´d met earlier who escorted us to this club to meet their niña friends. He shouts directly in to my ear so I can hear, everyone was wondering where I was since I disappeared! he says. He has brought out beers for the both of us and I toast to his generosity. We sit together on the vibrating brick wall outside the club and finish our drinks, both of us bored with the place at our backs. My eye-contact friend has resumed observing the bartering trio. I finish the beer and the bottle accidentally slips through my fingers to shatter down on the sidewalk. I hop down off my seat and begin collecting the shards but Alfonso stops me and tosses the glass I´ve collected back down under the crush of stilettos and leather shoes where it belongs.
I hop back up on to my post and the girl is gone. I scan the horizon of swarming black hair and eventually spot her across the street setting up shop herself, now sporting another bright Minutos vest. So, she´s probably not a student. She´s looking the other way now. She´s not too busy really. I consider getting up and going over to strike up a hey-I´m-a-clueless-foreigner conversation. Lean against the turbulence. But I don´t. I must have decided at some point long ago that anyone I might be attracted to couldn´t possibly be interested in anything I have to offer. But what is there to lose, really? Ego? Just a little turbulence, really- I can feel it pushing me out of the lift. Don´t let it push you out. I remember once giving a friend a pep talk that summed up said if the only thing standing in the way of your true intentions is fear and ego, push them aside. The only road blocks are the ones we create for ourselves. But tonight I can´t take my own advice.
Suddenly I see another young woman with Hövard grabbed firmly by the wrist, literally dragging him through the crowd parting in their wake. Ludvig is following behind looking quite entertained and slightly concerned. The girl sees my fellow-gringo-friend self watching them go past and pauses for a moment to reassure us in English: “You no worry! I good person. You no worry! I take good care of him, he safe with me.” They disappear around the corner, Hövard struggling to keep up with her velocity.
The other two Norwegians join me up on the wall to observe the morass. “You´re right,” says Marius in response to nothing. “This is the best place to be, outside. This is where I´ve done some of my best drinking.”
I look across the street again to where my eye-contact friend was standing several minutes ago and there is nothing, my friend has disappeared in to the night. I had my chance and didn´t take it. I´ve drifted past my opportunity. The turbulence was admittedly minor, but it was real, I had felt it and didn´t lean against it. In accepting turbulence there is a feeling of risk, real or not. But it is this risk that we all must confront. It is in these decisions that we achieve the only things of any value, it is the only way to gain elevation. Or at least just practice Spanish.
Ludvig is clearly done and had a bit much for the night. He looks pensively out at the crowd. “Why do we like to look at people...” he states, rather than asks. The night is over and soon we hail a taxi, Hövard will hopefully find his way back home one his own. There will be another ride to the sky tomorrow, we hope, another thermal to lift us out of here.
