Went flying...like a bird!

Our final morning in Interlaken, Switzerland was AMAZING! The thunder and lightning that came through the night before made way for beautiful blue skies and we were able to go paragliding before we left for Paris. I have never experienced anything like that before in my life. First, let me say when you first arrive in Interlaken and you look into the sky you will see not only the majestic mountains, but a beautiful rainbow of paragliding sails sweeping and looping way up in the sky until they gently drop below the building skyline. It happens several times throughout the day, but when we arrived at about 6pm, you couldn't take your eyes off the sky and it looked so peaceful and beautiful that it really was the first thing you wanted to do. That was certainly my first question...how do we arrange to do that! Luckily, we were able to finish off our great stay in the Swiss Alps flying like birds over the treetops and in the mountains. It was so quiet and peaceful and beautiful up there...not scary at all! (once you get off the ground ;)

The first thing they do is get you into a harness that will act like a seat while you're in the air. You fly "tandem" so the pilot is behind you and you run together down this very steep mountain until your parasail catches the wind and lifts you off the ground and in seconds you are literally flying. It's like you're about to jump off a steep cliff, but you don't jump at all, just run and then lift-off! We were about 2,500 feet (800m) up and it's about a 15 minute flight down to the landing field. We caught a few cool updrafts and then my pilot took us swooping very low over the treetops (ok, that felt a bit scary when we were first heading for the trees!) But, you look down and see the town below, the lakes, the mountains and we actually saw a little deer type animal way up on the cliffside in the trees. We were also flying next to a hawk who was making alot of noise trying to talk to us. Aidan and Ralph took off behind me. Aidan requested a bit more of a spin and roller coaster ride (and got it). Anyhow, can't imagine anything else quite like that. Between canyoning the day before and then the paragliding, it was definitely a highlight, although there's been so many. One more week to go until we head for home. We've covered alot of ground over 7,300 km...woah. Feel totally blessed to be living this adventure. More soon.