For context, this is recapping my experiences as a pretty new P2 pilot bumping around in Valle de Bravo for a few days. If you want proper advice, this is the only article that I found really helpful:
- https://www.paraglidingmexico.com/en/about-us/paragliding-valle-de-bravo
Also, is this recommended for new P2 pilots? No.
Valle de Bravo is known as a burly international flying destination, so naturally, as low-hour P2 pilots, my boyfriend Gabriel and I decided it would be a perfect destination for our first international paragliding trip. Despite many setbacks -- getting my foot surgery scheduled in the middle of our planned holiday -- and stressful moments -- trying to get my passport renewed -- on December 2nd we were packed away and off to Mexico City on the midnight flight from Vancouver.
We ended up using a guiding company since it was our first time going to Valle and they offered airport pickup, retrievals, and accommodations. We spent the first night in a hotel not far from the airport and then got picked up there in the morning with one of the other pilots in the group for the two and a half hour drive east to Valle de Bravo.
General Landing/Takeoff Information
I want to mention here that there are two main launches in Valle de Bravo since this confused me when I was reading up on it. There's a launch spot in the Valle de Bravo town called La Torre but this is NOT the main launch. It's technically only for commercial tandem pilots and lands in town at the "Lakeside LZ" which is also where more advanced XC pilots can end their flights.
The actual main launch is called "El Penon" and it's about a forty minute drive south of Valle de Bravo. At El Penon, there's a big main launch and then you can either fly over to Lakeside LZ in Valle de Bravo or land in the big landing fields below the launch. There are two main landings you can see from the launch: looker's left is the Hangar, which has coffee and pizza and wifi, and the Piano, which is looker's right and has tacos and cute dogs. Both have plenty of places to sit and enjoy a beer, coca-cola, and/or tequila.
You have to pay club fees to El Penon before flying there because they will come and scan your QR codes on launch. The launch has snacks and drinks for sale as well as a washroom. On weekends, someone brings a coffee machine (!!) directly to launch.
Also since there are a million pilots flying El Penon the turn direction switches each day; on odd days, you turn left, and on even days, you turn right, but this is not gospel, I kind of forget, so maybe just ask on launch.
Also when you land in Piano, you are not allowed to kite it out. This information is not readily available but if you make this fatal mistake a hundred angry men will converge upon you with their judgement.
Quick Stats
Launch is at roughly 2300m. You want to be around 2600m to head over to El Penon (the rock formation) itself. Landing fields are at 1730m.
General Valle de Bravo Information
Valle de Bravo is a cute little tourist town with lots of interesting stuff that we barely saw, since we were in El Penon flying most days from 9am to 6pm. It looks like most independent pilots head to the main church in the morning to meet up and split taxis to El Penon, and then either fly back to Valle or landing in El Penon and beg rides/hop in taxis to get back to Valle.
My only real recommendation is to try Pulque, which is a Mexican wine made from agave, and to try the local chili oil whenever they offer it. Other than that we just feasted on tacos and tortas. Absolutely cannot go wrong with that.
First Flight
Our first day we drove out for the evening flight. There seems to be a pretty sturdy routine in place for Valle de Bravo pilots, where the morning launch is 9:30am - 11:30am, nobody launches between 12-3pm, and then people come out for the evening flight starting at 3pm to dusk. This works because Valle de Bravo's weather is incredibly consistent. Usually at our local spots we'd be glued to RASPs and weather reports but seems to be totally unnecessary at El Penon.
My first evening flight was kind of a disaster since I mentioned I was nervous to the guide and he proceeded to micromanage me on the radio, which made me way more nervous, and then I bombed out and had a crap landing approach on the Piano LZ. I hadn't really flown in thermic air all summer, since my final P2 flight, and I had a new vario which confused me as well, so all in all, it was a bit of a rough start. I also immediately lost my brand-new vario at the landing field. I did not cry about it because I'm super brave and tough.
Flight Redemption
The reason I don't mention the guiding company is because although he was completely correct about the advice and feedback he gave me, the guide shattered my confidence. He told everyone that we needed to go launch early just because of me, that he didn't trust me to fly on my own, and gave me the same advice about thermalling six times between the evening flight to the morning flight.
Nevertheless I pulled myself together and had a few respectable 1 hour + flights. In retrospect perhaps I can't blame him too much for being nervous about having a nervous low flight-time pilot, but (foreshadowing) perhaps he should have watched the other pilots more...
Notable Flight Shenanigans
On the second day we saw someone in another group throw a reserve, and on the third day we heard someone in another group got injured on a stalled landing. One of the guys in our group had a wing collapse near El Penon and went into a spiral; I was right beside him and thought it was someone just doing a crazy acro manuever until he threw his reserve. Unfortunately he got blown into the cliff and was stuck about a third of the way up the formation and it took 16 hours to rescue him, ending up with a pretty rambunctious 3am return to Valle de Bravo, but luckily he wasn't injured! It was quite scary to witness.
Overall Trip
If you asked on the first day I would never use the same guiding group again due to my emotional injuries; however, after seeing the rescue effort for the pilot and getting a pretty mini final bill (around $600 for a week of accommodation, daily rides, in-air guiding, and airport shuttling) I think I actually would go back to them.
I also got to experience a hint of male culture, as an anthropologist amongst the flocks of 50 year old divorced white men from the USA, and found it mostly revolves showing each other videos of people getting hurt and telling racist jokes. I fear my presence may have damped complaints of western women (evil feminists) but I knew it was lurking every time a podcast was mentioned.
Overall Flying
The conditions didn't feel too crazy to me -- the wind wasn't so bad when we went, and the conditions were pretty consistent. Savona and Pemberton were a lot more scary and bouncy from what I remember. However, it's obviously a pretty big air site. I liked thermalling with everyone but I was also flying very defensively and if I felt too overwhelmed with the people, I would drop out and spend some time scratching around by myself on the spine.
The morning flights were definitely more spicy. One night the evening flight was absolutely magical and I got up to cloud base and then hopped along the cloud street with the more experienced pilots along the valley convergence. One of the coolest tips I took from this trip was to look at the clouds as well as the terrain. I was really focused on finding thermals along the ridges but I didn't look too much at the sky when I was flying, but on that evening I hit 3000m (cloud base!) and was able to maintain it by skimming along the bottom of the cloud street with the sweet vario chirping at me the whole way.
My goal for the trip was to have a flight over an hour and to practice my thermalling. I achieved both so I was pretty happy. Overall very, very fun, still probably not recommended, as everyone I told was shocked we went there, so I probably learned the wrong lessons.
