"That Michal is going to drive me nuts! There he goes again climbing a tree and pulling off those almonds!". And a short time later Michal is sitting satisfied on the ground, skillfully breaking apart the hard shells with a rock. "Back home a back costs 40kc, here they grow all around, and, besides, no one from the Canaries collects them." argues Michal somewhat logically, and continues, undaunted, in smashing shells and eating almonds on the Mirador El Time runway, and the sharp March sun beats down upon his long-since burned neck. From the sun-warmed edge of the vertical cliff, strong lifts blow one after another, the wind sleeve on the edge goes wild and all the while, Michal's paraglider lies idle in the trunk of the rented Hyundai Accent.





Why La Palma Again?
    After a gradual and thorough exploration of the Canary Islands of Lanzarote and Tenerife in 1999 and the island of La Palma at the beginning of the year 2000, an odd thing happened. The tiny island of La Palma simply enchanted me. It's difficult to say whether it was the natural beauty, an abundance of green foliage and fruit, the hearty and friendly inhabitants, the home-like and inexpensive accommodations in a house in a village, the pleasant, warm climate, beautiful flying terrain or navigational simplicity. Or whether it was something else entirely somewhere deep in the subconscious, that one has no idea of. Most likely it was a synergy of these positive circumstances. In short, a thermic Christmas and a bombastic new year on the island of La Palma just can't hold a candle to sleet and biting cold in the Czech lands. The local inhabitants don't suffer from flu or colds and overall seem healthier somehow.





Fasten Your Seatbelts for Landing, Please
    For our mixed expedition of glider pilots and paragliders to La Palma we used the most direct and most pleasant connection one can find from the Czech Republic. We made our won way to the airport near the German City of Nuremberg and from there we took a big Boeing 737 belonging to a German airline, directly to the airport of Santa Cruz de La Palma. A round-trip ticket, at the current rate of exchange for the Deutsche Mark, comes to about 12,600 Kc and flight time is something less than four hours. Flight data including speed, altitude and temperature of the surrounding atmosphere were displayed on ten monitors mounted just under the cabin ceiling. Simply wonderful! No comparison to the unnamed Czech airline company that we flew to Tenerife with in December. The exemplary and pleasant flight crew on board even let me pound away at my laptop after I had intuitively denied the presence of a CD drive in my computer. The food served was very tasty and they even offered one of the passengers, a tall guy of about 190cm a chance to seat at the rear of the plane so that he wouldn't have to be so scrunched up. Well, Dankesein and alles gute!

    The strange misty haze high above the upper cloud layer that we observed upon our final descent into the Santa Cruz airport, at an altitude of 3,600m was clearly eloquent. Tiempo Del Sur! This "southern weather" is usually accompanied by strong winds, carrying microscopic particles of sand from the Sahara. Landing in strong winds and turbulence at the relatively small airport was as could be expected. During the fast and dramatic corrections of flight direction while landing we slightly envied non-flying travelers, who didn't realize anything was amiss, other than the strange motions of the plane. Following the relatively hard landing, we breathed an audible sigh of relief. It's just that when someone else is driving, it's always a little unsettling.


Buenas tardes amigo !
    "Look ... that lone South American is Jose Angel from the Yanes rental agency and is waiting for us with a car." as I point to a comic-looking fellow with a hand-scrawled name sign. A dumpy, small character, shirt untucked over a swelling belly and a funny twitch in his eyes. "Buenos tardes!", he says in friendly greeting and obligingly leads us to the waiting car. " Oh rats! Cuanto es?!", I stutter, wide-eyed while looking at the brand-new vehicle, a grade higher than we had originally agreed upon, even equipped with air-conditioning. Evidently I'd paled slightly in the face at that moment, because the genial South American immediately began saying, "Special price for you!", and pulled a contract out of his bag which agreed precisely with the price we had previously negotiated. The only addition to it was the standard 4% Canary Islands tax. Full coverage insurance, which included even a scratch in a parking lot was part of the contract. In conversion it was all for about 740 Czech Crowns per day. Now that's something!

    Should you wish to use the services of the Yanes Agency while visiting the island of La Palma, call Jose at 0034 922 485 or fax to 00 34 922 497 068. The rental agency is located in the small city of El Paso, and in addition to having someone meet you at the airport with a car, you can also arrange to leave the car at the airport upon departure. Unlocked, of course, and with the keys in the ignition.

Landing In the Ocean
    "It's Free today!", I yell into the radio, high above the cliff of Mirador de la Concepcion, to get everyone on the runway into the air. The heated walls of the sharp cliff give truly abundantly, just like the dark surfaces around the port of Santa Cruz. Stable lifts are also to be found above the dark beach on the shore and even above the ocean large areas with zero or stable lifting can be found. The sun beats down unbelievably and the temperature down on the beach reaches up to 30 degrees Celsius, while at this height it's around 20 degrees. Now this is how I imagine a pleasantly spent winter.



    After not quite two whole hours of fooling around in the air, we've had enough and agree on landing. Surprisingly, no one wants to touch down on the beach first. As an almost local I voluntarily place the steering bar to my left ear and drill down, until the centrifugal force pulls the tongue from my mouth. Lifts are everywhere though, and getting down isn't easy, so I have to fly out over the ocean to take it down. I amuse myself for sometime following a huge freighter, which a short while ago has left port for the open sea. It doesn't take long and I'm above her. She's floating terribly slowly. I try to measure her speed, but it's below the threshold of my falling speed. It appears to be a little less than 30km/h. I've lost a considerable amount of altitude, so It's quickly back to the beach for me ... several ambling maneuvers and I'm standing with my feet on firm ground, in the hot, dark sand.



    Waves rolling onto the beach today are truly huge and the ocean roar is incredible. South of the beach the waves smash against sharp cliffs, geysers of seawater shoot into the sky and the breeze carries the ocean spray over the land in the form of a white fog. "Buenos Tardes!", a group of gathered curiosity seekers greets me, and with holy deference touch the wing, shaking their heads in disbelief. "Muy Buenos!" I roll out like an old native as I take off my helmet so that the children won't be afraid of me. The more daring ones try lifting the wing and I can see that in their eyes I've just risen in stature.



    "Flying over there is El amigo and in two minutes he'll be landing here too" I say in broken Spanish, which I managed to reach lesson 4 in before I came to La Palma, and I point out over the ocean where Mila is leisurely approaching. The onlookers crane their necks back and in admiring awe carefully watch the course of landing maneuvers of a Czech aviationist above the thundering waves. Mila skillfully drops from the last excess height and just above the beach traces the border between wet and dry sand. The onlookers don't even breathe and watch the wing in suspense, hurtling at high speed just above the edge of the waves. It appears to be a smooth and flawless landing, but in the closing phase of slowing and reaching over from the speed bar to the trapeze, Mila slightly changes direction and heads right out over the ocean. The onlookers top breathing altogether and even in me something freezes at that moment. Quickly I take off my harness ... it looks like a swim in the cold Atlantic. But it's clearly visible that Mila hasn't given in to panic and is putting up a fight. With a wide flat left turn he tries to get back above the beach. But once he's already dragging his feet in the waves and the speed of the wing is on the threshold of dropping it certainly can't be done. SLAM! The wing has stuck into an oncoming wave from the right, the right trapeze is split in two in the blink of an eye, Mila hits the water with his head and the foam dashes over him. Fortunately he's in a shallow area and has firm ground under his feet. He jumps out of a flattened wave, which in the form of white foam flows back again to the sea. He looks at the next oncoming wall of water, loads his broken submarine Nautilus onto this back and hightails it towards shore as fast as his strength can carry him. The huge wave is faster though, bashes into the 14 square meters of the wing surface from behind and the soaked Czech aviationist is propelled from the ocean with extreme force, onto the shore into the dark sand of the beach. Scenes from "Best Home Videos" are endless boredom in comparison with this. I clutch my stomach and sway with laughter until tears run from my eyes and the frightened and pale spectators finally realize that flying is not a dangerous sport, but, above all, immense fun. Well, sometimes, but I can't explain it to them, as the word for fun wasn't in the first four lessons of Spanish.