HANG GLIDING AND PARASAILING

33-year-old Josué Bustamante has practiced all air sports except the ultra-light type. He has practiced parasailing, hang-gliding and paragliding. He teaches mini parachute jumping to 8-to-13-year-old children. It is a kind of parasailing, which consists in a parachute that is pulled by a station wagon until it flies like a kite. Paragliding comes after hang-gliding and is more manageable according to Bustamante. You can fly tandem in both. This means you can take another person with you or even a dog or another animal.

There are two different air currents when you fly. The ascendant type, which is divided into two kinds: orographic- found all along the coast and easy to handle. These occur when the wind rises after it encounters a relief, like in the Costa Verde cliffs for example. Enthusiasts take advantage of the wind that blows from the ocean and fly close to the cliffs.

Thermal- These are common in the sierra and consist of warm air currents produced by tile roofs in towns.

The descendant currents are similar to air pockets experienced by planes.

Practicing these sports in the sierra or jungle is much more complicated due to the turbulence. It is necessary to have more than a 10-hour flight experience to try your luck in this part of the country. Unlike the coast, there are more warm air currents in the sierra. You must ascend and fly like the birds, imitating the condor; that is, flying in circles or spirals or going into a column of warm air that is somewhat lighter than the surrounding air. To go down, you have to fly in a straight line and catch a down-going current.

There are thermal currents called blue currents. These make you gain altitude without feeling the ascendant wind. A barometer is very useful in these cases because it has a whistle that tells you if you are suddenly going up or down. An altimeter is also needed to know whether you are going up or down when there are no points of reference.

Another type of current originates when you are below cumulus clouds. There are always ascendant currents under them. In general, clouds are dangerous for pilots; they can freeze them or leave them quite wet.

There are many places in which to practice air sports. On the coast we have: Colán (Piura), Pasamayo (60 kilometers north of Lima), the Costa Verde (Lima), Pachacámac (30 kilometers south of Lima), Hawai beach in Chincha (195 kilometers south of Lima); in the sierra: El Mirador de Chinchero and the Sacro hill, in front of Pisac (Cusco), Cotahuasi and Misti (Arequipa), Cabeza de Cura hill (Huancayo), Chiquián and Caraz (Ancash), Gavilán hill (Cajamarca); in the jungle :Morro de Calzada (San Martín).

One of the most outstanding feats was made by Swiss-born Franz Schilter who flew 50 kilometers in a paraglide from the Mirador de Chincheros to the city of Cusco.

There have been fatal accidents too in this risky sport. In 1991, Juan Carlos Salazar was calmly flying at 20 meters above the ground when suddenly he began rising and falling rapidly. The holding bar fell off and he crashed against a rock. He died in the hospital. In 1993, Kiko Bustamante suffered multiple traumatisms because he was using a new paraglide that he didn’t know how to handle. A sudden air gust crashed him against the hill.

Juan Ortiz was the first pioneer in paragliding. At present, 31-year-old Walter Braedt, who also has Brazilian and Swiss flying licenses, is the best sportsman in this discipline. In Switzerland, he took a course with Urs Haari, one of the 10 world’s best. Switzerland has the largest number of paragliders in the world with 18,000 pilots registered. In Peru, there are around 60 registered pilots in the APP (Asociación Peruana de Parapentistas) (Peruvian Paragliding Association)

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