We were on our flight from Fort Lauderdale to Guatemala City. I had burdenly taken the window seat & generously given David the middle seat ;) Descending through the clouds towards the end of the flight, I was looking out the window at the full clouds & David said, ‘Don’t you just wanna touch them?’
Without turning from the window, I said in a completely dead-serious voice ‘Babe, that’s like, MY DREAM.’
He laughed at me, in the you’re adorable way, at my complete seriousness. I turned to him and was like ‘Really!! I really do want to! I know it’s supposedly just water mist, but they look so much fuller & more solid than that, like right now these ones.’ And I went on to talk about having a helicopter dangle me hanging by rope over those kind of thick clouds. Like ya know the ones that look like whipped-cream and solid-white. It sounds so adventurous & amazing, and I love adventures. I might be a bit more scared about the rope-dangling once I was up there, but if they slowly lowered me into the clouds, I think I’d be fine. Like my whole idea isn’t ridiculously crazy. But sometimes those clouds look so solid like you could just bounce around on top of them. And who wouldn’t want to be able to do that?!
Well, I got to kind of fulfill my dream during our trip, TWICE. And I wasn’t even expecting it at all, I didn’t even think about it til it was happening!! It was amazing :) They were just thinner clouds so thats why my ridiculous dream hasn’t been completely fulfilled yet (hey maybe the thicker clouds have more resistance than just water mist…!).
Here’s where we first felt the clouds…paragliding over Panajachel, Guatemala. It was something I almost got to do three years ago when I was on Outtatown, but the winds weren’t right that day. So I was determined upon convincing David to go to Guatemala & return with me, that we would go. Only apparently I always called it ‘hanggliding’ so whenever I talked about it, he was against it (he has a thing against heights). So then in the month before traveling we were looking it up & came upon this site with a big picture of paragliding over Panajachel, and David was like ‘that looks like FUN!‘ and I was like ‘whaaaaaaa, you’ve been against it the whole time, you see one photo & wanna go?’ but didn’t question it more, if he was willing to suddenly do it.
Here we are at the take-off site, my paraglide guy took this photo with his camera. You’ll see.
The guy who owns the land, that our paraglide guy Roger paid to let us use for take-off, and watched us go. All while holding a giant machete.
Me not holding in my excitement about finally getting to go paragliding over Lake Atitlan.
My paraglide partner getting the paraglide ready. He was awesome :)
And he had a camera attached to a stick that I got the photos from. David’s guy didn’t, and originally I was with him, but then we switched cuz David didn’t care as much about getting pics, while I obviously did. You can see the clouds we went through in the photo on the left. There’s no pics of us in them but we totally were & could only see white all around. So awesome!!
The photos I took with my camera of David paragliding…
We went right behind him!!
Yes, I totally got to steer, for like 10 minutes!! Turning us left & right, sharply, slowing down, going faster…all SO COOL!
That still didn’t keep me from getting sick after one-too-many sharp turns he did in the beginning. But we won’t talk about that.
The second time we got to feel clouds, was climbing Volcano Pacaya, which is just an hour outside Antigua. I’d done this last time & actually roasted marshmallows over real flowing lava. Pretty sweet. This time there were only burning hot vents, still pretty cool though :)
Our group.
Handsome hubby <3
David’s super excited we’re-on-a-volcano-roasting-marshmallows face. I love it :) And I love taking him on adventures! <3
TOUCHING THE CLOUDS.
<3
It cleared up just in time for sunset…which this other girl I met, Laura, and I were really enjoying while the others seemingly raced down the volcano which we couldn’t understand, with this amazing view…
The link to what all we did in Guatemala, here. Volunteering at Casa Jackson hospital, here. Going up to a random couple in Antigua & asking them to pose for me, here. And soon to come, a blog about volunteering at the school were we sponsor a lil boy named Cristofer <3
Dream BIG.
<3 <3 <3 <3
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