Well we’ve found paradise. It’s called Rainbow Beach and it’s exactly what we’ve been looking for in an Aussie beach town. This town is small and not at all touristy. We’ve been staying in a really nice little resort motel with a great swimming pool and Jacuzzi. The best part of this area though is the beach and surrounding dunes. The ancient dunes stretch for close to 15 km with a beach to match. Of course what drew us here is the flying. It is a very famous place for hangliders and paragliders. That means at least 10 pilots know about it. Yep, that's me below.
As you can see from the pictures it is quite beautiful. After a day of sitting around because of high winds I was able to get into the air the following day. Below are some pictures of me taking off from the top of the dune. This dune is huge! There is so much sand here. Once in the air you can choose to fly north or south all the way along the dune.
I also have a picture of my flying assistant, Lora. She has been great over the past few days. Flying can be quite a frustrating sport and most wives wouldn’t stand for it. But Lora has really been great in helping me stay calm and remembering where we are.
Here’s a shot that Lora took (she took almost all of them) from the shade of the trees on top of the dune.
I was able to snap a few pictures while flying. Most are not good enough compared to the ones Lora took from the ground, but I thought I would include one shot looking north. You can just make out a few other paragliders flying back towards me. Well, I couldn't load this last picture. Oh well. For those that don’t know about this sport paragliders are always losing altitude because they do not have a source of thrust. In two cases, both providing lift, a pilot can stay up in the air. The first way is by using a rising thermal of warm air. The other way is to use wind rising quickly over a hill…or dune. This is what I had to work with here at Rainbow Beach.
After flying for an hour and a half I was getting hungry so I decided to land on the beach down below. Lora drove the car down and got a great shot of me landing. The landing is a bit scary because this beach is popular for families to drive down. I was surprised by the number of cars driving quickly through the landing zone. I hoped for the best as I came in for a landing, hoping that the cars would see me and stop for a minute. I have to say the best part of landing on the beach is that you just unhook from the harness and jump in the beautiful green Pacific Ocean.
Well after relaxing for an hour and having some lunch I decided to have another flight. This time I just walked up the lower dune from the beach and took off. It took me a go or two before I was high enough to use the lift. This time I flew for about 45 minutes or so. Lora snapped a few more shots of me.
One of the cooler things I experienced up there was flying above Lora who was just on the edge of the beach in the shade reading one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. It was pretty cool turning circles while looking down at Lora relaxing on an absolutely beautiful beach. Paradise indeed!
P.S. Hey Adam and Shela, let’s meet up for a flying vacation over here soon. Lora is even ready to learn to fly. She needs a lady flying partner.
This is just the first half of it. It turned out to be a 13-15ft python with a very full belly. About 6ft down it had a huge hump were it was busy digesting dinner. Dinner was about the size of a oppossum or large bird. I of course radioed to Lora to calmly tell her to find another way out of the forest and to quickly come and see this monster. She of course thought I was exaggerating and that it was probably not more than a 4ft long snake.
As far as the leech count goes I stopped counting after 2 more days of leeches in the 50 to 60 range. I'm not sure where Lora is at with her leech count but I know she started to catch up with me the following days. 