Skywing magazine
April 2007
ON THE BUS were the usual women, men and boys. All rural people. The small boy next to me stared out of the window enjoying the air until two older men got on and, unbidden, he moved to stand in the aisle, letting one of them sit down.
I got off at the top of the road in the middle of nowhere, to the vocal consternation of the bus driver. In fact I got off too late and missed the dirt road up. It meant an hour-and-a-half walk trying to reach the 3900m take off on Cerro Sacro. The hill was gullied by erosion, which made progress slower. Great gashes six-feet deep and 30 feet across would appear, forcing detours straight up the hill to a rock or grassy clump where you could teeter across.
Eventually I reached the ridgeline and walked along, counting paces as altitude made it hard work on the slope.
The wind was ferocious. I got to take off and sat bag to the wind as the eucalyptus trees whomped like Harry Potter willows and two of the three white streamers – all equally long and evenly spaced by the meticulous local pilot Franz Schilter - blew away in the wind, stakes and all.
I waited. I walked the hill. I took GPS readings of the take off site. I watched the weather. I walked downhill 200m to a lower launch where trees promised shelter. I ate all my chocolate. I drank coke from a plastic bottle, lay on my bag and watched two hawks battle and soar on the wind. I inspected tiny blue orchids growing up through the grass. I sheltered under a tree as a cu-nim trundled slowly overhead leaving its rain behind.
I watched the valley turn gold in the showers and the 5,700m peaks disappear behind ragged cloud. I checked my GPS for sunset – 5.32pm, barely an hour away.
I gave myself a deadline of 5pm to fly or walk down - I didn’t want to be out here in the dark. Behind the rain I could see a slash of blue, and then more stretching out beyond.
The last drops of rain still on the wind I unbundled my bag and laid out on this perfect spot. The trees were no longer whomping, the hawks no longer battling and the sky was only getting clearer, but the sun was only an inch above the horizon.
The canopy came up, I turned and – like in a dream - stepped into rising air and floated upwards as if lifted by angels. A beat left, right, left and it was clear the whole valley was lifting. I was at the height of the towers. A small group of workers stood in a line on the hilltop, tools down, watching me fly. The sky had cleared, but the sun was setting – this close to the equator there’s not much dusk.
In front I could see the 5,750m pyramid of La Verónica. To the right, the dabs of glaciers and snow-covered peaks that hem in the Sacred Valley from the north. Below, the landscape spread out to reveal that every possible patch of this valley was groomed smooth by agriculture. I went higher, to 4,300m, barely seeming to scrape the bottom of this magic lift as the last light on the mountaintops turned gold, pink and then cold blue.
Would it matter if I stayed up here until dark? Could I land in a pitch-black valley? Slowly I headed towards Urumbamba town, just 6km from take off but now nearly a mile below. And slowly I drifted down losing height with big ears and 360s. In town, a football match with floodlights already on. A crowd of kids doing exercises. Should I land on the soccer pitch?
Discretion overtook valour and I chose a field instead, worried about possible pylons and swarming children. It would prove to be a bad choice – it was fenced in, there was an evil pack of dogs and I would struggle to find my way out in the darkness between the brick backs of houses and the looming, moonlit shapes of cows.
A flare like a thousand before, but somehow perfect in this half-light in the mountains. A family of three watched from a shack, their house on the edge of the field. In half an hour the boy, about seven-years-old, would show me the gate, hold his hand out to shake goodbye and watch me as I walked to town. Clang, he would shut the high steel gate and I would nod hello to three country women in tall white hats and ruffled dresses as I made my way through the dark, adrenalin sparking and fizzing and cooling, back home.
It really was a perfect flight, a perfect afternoon. Not high, not far, just half an hour at sunset. But it’s why I fly, without a doubt; for moments of hunted-down perfection like that.
Site info
Cerro Sacro, Sacred Valley, Cusco region, Peru. Take off at 3880m,
GPS: S 13∞21.485’, W072∞06.691’
Links
www.aventurasvientosur.com
www.perufly.com
Flying the Sacred Valley
Flying the Nasca Lines
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