This weekend was a good one. On friday we went into a group of mountains overlooking a lake I cannot remember the name of. The coolest thing was on the way there, though, when we stopped at an awesome mini-church overlooking the mountains. It was apparently built by a very old architect who only used rocks and searched for years to find ones that fit perfectly. When he built the church, he did not use any glue or cement or nada. Now, there is some cement in certain places because people are theifs and theifs steal rocks. But it was a beautiful little building nonetheless and inside it was buried the architect himself, a grave fit for a king!
Then we stopped at a little mini-zoo which had cages containing monkeys, parrot-like birds and some other animals. One of the monkeys had escaped from his cage, and chased around one of the girls in our group because she had a popsicle. Fearing some sort of rabid monkey disease, she relented and threw the popsicle to the monkey and it then perched itself in front of the caged monkeys and gobbled up the popsicle. Proof that punks exist amongst all animalkind.
When we got to these mountains, we hiked around and there were many great views and also some awesome plants. One plant was a very soft circular plant that had the softest and yet still firm leaves I have seen. It was toilet paper of the gods. I took a piece of a dead one, because here, toilet paper is precious. There is none in most public buildings.
Saturday was the bes day yet, though. After getting up early to search for a cellphone with mi mama, I went with about 15 other students up into the mountains to go paragliding. I had no idea what exactly paragliding was and I was picturing some sort of Wright-brothers-like contraption as we were driving up the snakelike road. Paragliding, though is more like flying underneath a parachute controlled by cords extending down to the pilot's hands. I have put a video up that will do the experience much better justice than this description, but even that is far from sufficient. You will just have to do it someday. It only cost 50 dollars here!
Anyway, we were up in the air for what I think was around 30 minutes (we being the guide "Gonzalo" and I). At one point he decided to some "tricks" and he rotated us outward and this reminded me of highsiding on a sailboat, only instead of being a foot above the water you are a kilometer above the mountains. I imagine it would be pretty awesome to be a bird, and I thought about this phenomenal disney scene a couple times in the air. After landing, a van took us back down the mountains and, still dizzy from the paraglide and getting more dizzy from the 270 degree turns our van was taking, I stuck my head out the window to impersonate the birds in another way. Along with the photos from the paraglide, there is a cool photo of this that one of our our chouffers was kind enough to take.
Then last night my 2 roommates and I went with our mama to a fiesta for her cousin. If you can imagine a typical latin american party, this was it: Piñata, Balloons, Salsa music, etc. But once again I have rambled, so thanks for reading and ciao for now!
If men were meant to fly they would have been born with wings!
ReplyDelete