Colombia 2024
The ‘Encanto de Colombia’ Paragliding Tour!

Pilots,

Are you tired of the annual winter flying doldrums? Want to change that up for some tropical warmth and potentially hours and hours of airtime? Are you ready?

Join us this winter for an adventure filled paragliding tour on the Central Andes Mountains of Colombia!

If the above sounds similar to our Costa Rica tours, you are right! You could think of our Colombia tour as a ‘next level’ or ‘level up’ tour in almost every way! We will be flying high in the Andes mountains of Central Colombia with launch elevations up to 7000′ high and LZ’s may be restricted and range in elevation from 1500′ to as much as 6000′ high. This also requires more pre-requisite skills from our tour group, so we are requiring P-3+ level certification or a ‘pass’ from us due to our knowledge of your current skill set.

Our Colombia tour will focus on improving your mountain and XC flying skills, coupled with helping you to establish thoughtful (and successful) decision making practices. We will cover topics such as: mountain thermalling, reading multi-valley systems/winds, analysis of solar angles, reading clouds and making efficient valley crossings. Most evenings will provide an opportunity for a ground school session, re-capping the days events, successes and points of decision, along with how to improve those decisions and planning for the next days flying.

Just as in Costa Rica, and perhaps even more so, Colombia has a LOT more to offer than just exceptional paragliding! We have been struggling with the question: “How can we take people to Colombia and not show them ‘this’?!?” You can count on us surveying the group to see what kind of extra-paragliding activities are the most interesting. Waterfalls, Medellin city tours (so far, Medellin may be our favorite big city in the world!), coffee and cacao tours, and so much more.

There will be amazing flying for sure, but seriously the question “how can you visit Colombia without seeing this, or that?!?” is prominent in our minds. Colombia. You’ll understand when get there.

Ample flying, tropical adventures, making new friends, and having an awesome time are what we aim for. Hopefully, everyone will become as ‘Encantado con el Encanto de Colombia’ as we are. The country, the mountains, and the people are amazing!

Maru has been a professional paragliding pilot for more than 27 years. Certified as an APPI instructor and tandem pilot, she also is the leader of Excursions con Sentido (Travels with Meaning), AirHome Paragliding School, and is a highly qualified Adventure Tourism guide.

While she has the credentials, she also has that great spark of energy that makes everything fun. Chasing her down the mountain range going XC, or following her to the local coffee shop will always be a fun adventure.

We first met her in Costa Rica in 2019, where she was working with our local friend there in putting on the Jaco Airfest. Huge event with huge players. From the family Rodrigues to most of the SAT team. Of all the people we met that year, Maru, and her good friend David, were the ones to convince us that Colombia would be our next adventure destination. We are happy to be returning to their home country and a chance to see our now good friends again! (Unfortunately, David won’t be able to join us for the full tour, but we’re hoping he’ll drop in for some of it! 🙂 )

This year we’ve hired a dedicated 16 passenger “Adventure Bus” that will be with us every day for drop offs and retrieves. Not only will it be great to have a retrieve ride ‘coming soon’, it will also give Brad, Maren and Maru all the opportunity to be in the air helping and trying to show you any lift we can find!
It also means that if we bomb out before you guys, it’s because we were all trying to find better lift for you all. (…Yeah, that was it… 😉 )

Important things to note:

Covid: Given our shared lodging and transportation environment, we will be requesting that all tour participants to be ‘Up-to date’ with their Covid vaccine series as defined by the CDC. We don’t make this request lightly, and do it for the safety and comfort of all of our tour participants.

Additionally: Our tours should not be considered ‘site’ seeing tours, nor are they ‘party’ tours. There will be lots of ‘sight-seeing’, but the majority of our flying/training will happen at two primary flying sites. This gives the opportunity to build on the prior days experience. Go farther, with more confidence every day!