December 15 – Fly Site

Kasa Guane, Bucaramanga, Colombia was fairly quiet. A few rabble-rousers created some unwanted noise around 10pm. The fan at full-throttle helped attenuate much of the noise. Overall, the experience was not bad.

I spent the morning up-dating the blog site and soon Kathleen came down stairs for breakfast. We were told that later in the day we would take a ride up to the Fly Site which is where Richi has another hostel and teaches paragliding. The Fly Site hostel was said to be out of town and actually looked over the city of Bucaramanga and Florida Blanco. We were all for spending time out of town.

We went back to the market we had visited the night before and stocked up on food as we were going to spend a few nights at the Fly Site Hostel. They had monster avacados and mango. We then went out for lunch and found a place that served hamburgers. Yeah, well I’ll say they made hamburgers. Jeepers, we both got these humongous burgers. Kathleen saved much of her two patties for the spaghetti we were going to have one of the nights at the Fly Site.

By late afternoon we were off to the Fly Site. We were going to be staying at the hostel with Mark and Arnot. Mark sold his house and art exposition business in the States and had been living all over Latin America since 2002. Arnot was from France and was just living abroad because he’s young and energetic. Both Arnot and Mark were taking paragliding lessons at the Fly Site. We arrived at the hostel and sure enough, we took a liking to the view and quiet surroundings. No sooner was Arnot out of the truck, he was strapping on his harness for a flight. The winds were great.

Kathleen and I spent the rest of the afternoon watching Mark and a gentleman from Spain learn how to control the paraglider. As the sun went down, so did the winds. End of paragliding for the day.

We enjoyed a relaxing evening by a camp fire until . . . yep, if you were going to say load music began, you would be correct. A house up the road from the Fly Site struck-up a live band around 8:30pm.

We sat by the fire and watched firework shows in Bucaramanga and Florida Blanco. We could also hear other bands playing throughout the city. Kathleen, Mark, and myself turned in for the night. Arnot stumbled in from town some time later.