Paragliding With New Friends In Romania

My second day of paragliding in Romania was spent with a large group of local paragliders from the Brasov/Bucharest area. Together, we drove as a group to some large forested area in central Romania (I don’t know the name of the area unfortunately) where we drove up a short, but super bumpy road to a small ski resort-style hill where we parked our Land Rover Defender (which many of us were riding in the back of along with all the paragliding gear) and began hiking up the mountainside.

Because of the weight of the paragliders and the varying athletic abilities of the people in our group, we made several stops along the way to stop, rest and take photos.

Once we got to the top of the mountain, Robert pointed out that there were small blueberries (or some kind of similar berry) growing in the grass beneath our feet. At this small discovery, we all began sampling the wild fruit and preparing our gliders for their flight.

Then, all at once, we took to the air! Most of the people were riding in their own gliders, but because I had only one tandem flight under my belt at this point, Robert had me fly with him in his tandem paraglider.

We were in the air for about 30 minutes and the views were incredible. We spent a lot of time, however, looking for updrafts so we could remain in the air… and the device Robert had me wearing to detect our rise and fall of altitude was making me kind of sick. It beeped and beeped (like a malfunctioning airplane) every time we went up or down and it reminded me a lot of the horrible experience I had not too long ago in Nazca, Peru. When we landed out glider back down where we had parked the car, I was kind of relieved.

Back on land, we packed up the paragliders and then ate some soup at a small outdoor restaurant located within walking distance of our vehicle before jumping back in our cars and driving back to Brasov.