Glad

So, I went paragliding two days ago! What? Yes.

Every year around Easter weekend, there is a paragliding festival in the Eastern Region. I didn’t go last year and decided I should do it this year to expand horizons etc etc etc so I did Peggy, another guy and I leftKumasiin the morning and got to Nkawkaw in the early afternoon. Nkawkaw is at the base of the ridge that we jumped from and from there we took a taxi up to the top. When we got there, there were a lot of people, a tent with some chairs underneath it and a steep takeoff lawn. And a cliff. That you jump off of. It was actually, very surprisingly, not total chaos and we were able to put our names on a list. They said that we would have to wait a couple hours, but by hanging out by the sign up tent and thanks to people signing up and then leaving too soon, we got bumped up and were able to go in the early afternoon! This is how it happened. You and your pilot (it was tandem) stood on the lawn while the other people set out the parachute (all the paragliding people were Americans that came in for the festival). Then, when the pilot told you to run, you just ran and the chute caught the wind and then you ran over the cliff and you were off! It was really beautiful – the sun was on the trees and we were 2400 feet up! It was actually really comfortable too. The harness turned into a seat and it felt just like one of those swing rides at carnivals. My pilot’s name was Nick and he was a really nice guy. We talked about Ghana and his paragliding  experience while we floated around. After about twenty minutes we landed in a football field and that was that. It made me a little sick, but motion sickness is the story of my life and it wasn’t really a problem. Overall it was a great experience! Beautiful and, at 80 cedis, probably the cheapest legit paragliding I’d have a chance to do. I’ll try to put pictures up later when the internet is better. Until then, here is the link for the event – http://www.ghanaparagliding.com/. If you click on photos, you can see the venue and the cliff and all.  Oh! Also, while we were waiting to go, the vice president of Ghana showed up and made a little speech. I had a very good view of his back :). So that’s that! Now just in Accra, waiting to do something at the Embassy tomorrow and then onto COS conference!