Steve doing a good ground skimming flight...The grey feet protruding from the shell of a very large mountain tortoise, pulled forward with a determined stride. In true Samaritan spirit we stopped. This guy was about to cross the N2! Thankfully another kind hearted gentleman who had the same idea, stopped, picked up the large tortoise and carried it across the road. You know people don’t look and drive over them - this guy would have rolled a car!
Steve, from the UK was most impressed. Christopher and I chuckled at the old hat idea of tortoises (amongst other things!) crossing the road in South Africa. I of course thought of that determined stride of the tortoise and how the sure forward pull relates to a hang gliding take off.
Christopher and Steve are doing some refresher training in the art of hang gliding. Today was their second day and our progress has been outstanding. A huge contributing factor was the sea mist – unpredicted but so very welcomed – that moved in to cool of the searing heat from the sun. We could continue our running and flights from the dunes. Conditions where really excellent and Steve kept on mentioning words like ‘brilliant’ or ‘perfect’ and actions like shaking the head with dumb struck smiles were very frequent. We even had a large pod of dolphins come by which just added to the flavour of the whole experience. Wilderness really is a top notch spot for learning (or refreshing!) your hang gliding skills.
Here are some pics of the training and also a video link http://youtu.be/l2fRW9uebZ4 of one of Christopher’s flights. He has been having trouble with landings. As you can see he has improved a lot.
This is Christopher preparing to launch...
Wish you were here!
:)
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