Medellin to Roldanillo Day 2

With four of our group actually making it to La Pintada from Medellin yesterday, we stayed the night there in a truckers town.   Those four flights might just be the longest ever flown out of Medellin, at least that we can find online!   Luckily in the 24 hour town that doubles as a truck stop on the busy highway, we found a nice hotel with a pool, and cooled off from a very hot day of flying and traveling.  No hot water in the hotel but it had everything else, even AC!

Here's Marty's blog for the day, showing Jim and I eating cake for breakfast! Like everything else in the bakeries here in Colombia, it was only moderately good.  Not sure why that is.  http://devietti.blogspot.com/2015/02/dies-y-ocho.html

Our launch for the day was back up the hair-raising mountain roads we had traveled the day before, and getting there involved some getting lost and back tracking.  But eventually we found ourselves in a cow pasture laying out amid fresh cow patties.

Matt (Farmer) Beechinor negotiates the hazards on launch.  Photo by Destin

All 7 of us climbed out together and got to base in a slow climb.   Our goal for the day was to fly a canyon that looked like not many people had ever flown in before.  Unknown territory as it were.   We were assured by our drivers that there were landing placing in the narrow canyon, even if it involved taking a cable ride over the river!

We spread out gradually over the hills.  Farmer had a knot in his lines, and top landed to get it out.  Later he accidentally top landed again and had an adventure getting a ride up to a spot where he could relaunch.   A friendly local at the bottom of the canyon when he landed (for the third and final time), took him for a ride across the river (just for fun)...in a cable car that fits one cow at a time!

5 of us more or less stayed together until a strong valley wind kicked up.  Destin and I made a helicopter landing next to the road.

Jim and Brian and Marty were able to climb above the valley winds a little further, and Flacco collected us all at various points down the road.  Marty seemed to have won the day with about a 50 km flight.  That also might be the longest distance flight from La Pintada!

Here's my XContest flight info for today: http://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:westrumd/18.2.2015/15:58

Medellin to Roldanillo Day 1 Blog is here
Day 3 Blog is here

Matt gets a ride on the cattle car across the river!

I'm not sure which way is down in this photo!