After three days of holiday travel snafoos, we arrived in Yelapa. Sati and I were in love with this town from the first moment.
On our second day, we wanted to fly. In the morning, we walked a minute or two down the main cobblestone path to Alan’s house. He is one of three local pilots who gives tandem paragliding rides and he also offers visiting pilots site intros and a meeting spot for rides. Ten of us piled into a little Toyota pickup and headed up to Tapa, the top launch. We wound our way up a bumpy dirt road under a lush canopy and out onto the ridge high above the beach.
Launching at 2150 feet to fly over the jungle all the way down to the beach is surely a hair-raising first trip. The Tapa launch is steep, short and ends in thick jungle. I was nervous and I’ve flown for more than a year. Chris is a tandem pilot with a harness that looks like my canyoneering backpack after a summer in Utah, like Timmmii’s camp after a week on the playa (so I’ve heard) … I mean it is tore up. So his passenger, Melissa, put on a big brave face, strapped in and off they went. Seconds later, an incredible hissing sound followed them out into the air and BANG!!!!! Alan had shot at them with a big ass firework (we caught it on video). Nothing like a little mortar attack to calm the nerves. FKO? Oh yes. And it was only day 2.
Down we flew, over the palms and figs and bananas, over the palapas and donkeys and restaurants, to the beach. The beach is a strip of sand between a shallow river delta called “the lagoon” and the ocean. The beach is also the beach, dotted with sunbathers, tents, dogs, merchants and umbrellas. This is where we were to land our gliders every day. Touch down facing the waves, kite the wing and lay it down, trying not to clobber or clothesline anyone. Order a Pacifico at Juanito’s, hang out with all the paragliders and other friends and wait for the afternoon wind.
The cast of characters made our two weeks in Yelapa into a real trip. We’d all hang out on the beach and laugh and laugh and laugh. There was a French Canadian guy and a Belgian woman living in Nelson who were carrying bricks and sand and giving massages and gardening in exchange for rides to launch and Spanish lessons. There was a guy from near Willits who used to be the hang glider stunt man at Marine World, an English couple who had come for a friend’s wedding which had been called off, a sculptor from NYC and his girlfriend of two months who looked exactly like Jamie, several aging Canadian ex-pats with crazy Canadian-accented Spanish, the woman from Washington who survived the tandem ride artillery fire and her husband who had watched it, the soft-spoken Yelapanese tandem pilot who would just shake his head and laugh at us.
We went fishing one day with a couple of friends and caught 12 bonitas – ceviche, grilled, tacos for many peeps for a couple days, yum! On the way back to Yelapa, the sea began to boil with dolphins. They were everywhere, surrounding us, running with the boat. The buzzes and chirps came from all directions. We threw on masks and jumped into a bubbling sea of hundreds of dolphins swimming past and below us.
From our bed we could see the ocean, beach, palm trees, bamboo, pelicans, frigates, skates jumping and sky. We could hear tubas, mackaws, waves, and Spanish being spoken. Sati and I loved Yelapa, a town of winding cobblestone paths, backyard restaurants, donkeys, jungle and smiles.
