“Izquierda! izquierda! Otra izquierda! No frena! No frena! DIOS MIO!” (“Left! Left! Other left! Don’t brake! Don’t Brake! MY GOD!”) Mariano exclaimed through the radio to Rafa as he pulled harder on the right brake line which sealed his fate as his Paraglider disappeared into the trees 10 meters below our launch zone, followed shortly after by a the sounds of cracking of branches and an eerie silence. A few seconds later Mariano’s voice came through the radio again “Rafa, are you ok?”. As the radio’s are setup for only one way communication the affirmative response came as a yell from the trees below. Expecting we would have to mount a rescue mission to retrieve him Mariano’s next response came as a shock “Rafa try and get down, we will get the paraglider later, Brendon, prepare to launch”.
This was day 3 of training and we were off the training hills and starting to fly from a 400m cliff to the landing strip below. With only 5 meters in front of us to inflate the paraglider, get in position, run and start flying or risk ending up in the forest, the margin for error was very low as Rafa learned the hard way.
Commando style we entered the forest after lunch in search of the missing paraglider. It had made it quite deep into the forest canopy and was resting 8 meters above the ground. After a bit of strategizing we started to saw through the 25cm diameter tree which seemed to be holding the majority of the glider.
An hour and a few fallen trees later and the glider was down and ready to be flown again, well not quite..
