Flying at Colima

For a moment, I thought I was in Europe. So good is the La Cumbre paragliding launch site at Colima. Artificial turf covers a large level area and then slopes sharply down the hill.

Photo taken from TurismoColima.com and shows the full landscape of the temple and the launch site.

The above photo is from the Colima Tourism website. Another website provides a bit more information: A large portion of the hill has been declared "a zone of ecological protection, with the purpose of increasing the vegetal and animal species that live there."

And humorously, "On Sundays and holidays can be observed intrepid flying men who audaciously jump in gliders from the highest part of this promontory."

The chapel was started in 1954 and finished in 1961. Unfortunately, it has fallen into disrepair and the white sides shown in the photo above are now covered in graffiti.

I was still recovering from my hard landing in Tenancingo so have lots of photos of Andrew flying this site. It actually worked out well for one of us to drive retrieve as it was a long way around from the main LZ as well as other LZs. Although the local pilots have a good system that we could have tapped into if needed. They all meet at one of the hotels near the outskirts of the city, get a taxi to launch, and usually someone lands within a 20 minute walk in order to go back and get a vehicle.

We were fortunate enough to arrive in Colima mid-day on Friday so we had time to check out the main LZ. On Saturday, there were several pilots flying and they were very friendly and welcoming so we were able to chat with them for a bit and get a good briefing of the site. And let them go first to show where the thermals are.  :-)

Andrew landed at the main LZ the first day, as did the majority of pilots because the wind was mostly that direction. When I picked him up, we gave a couple other pilots a ride back into the city to get vehicles to retrieve their friends. Building up some good will!

On Sunday, Andrew had a great flight and headed cross country towards Colima with several other pilots and landed within walking distance of the city.

Over the weekend, we'd seen many locals hiking up the road. It's about 3 km on cobblestone road. Although there are a few paths that provide shortcuts, they looked very steep and not worth the effort. On Monday, deciding we needed to get some exercise (and also as a test for my leg), we hiked up.

Hiking up to launch.

Checking wind speed.

Andrew launched as the lone pilot but, as I walked/ran back down, a few other pilots were just on their way up. We again gave one of them a ride back into town after they'd landed.

The following day, after visiting the zoo, we went back up again but it was too windy to fly. We would definitely come back to this great flying site!

Andrew's blog post about flying at Colima.