Graaf-Reinet

Christmas Day! Today we flew a brilliant mountain thermal site in the Camdeboo National Park above the town of Graaf-Reinet, continuing the trend of beautiful new sites in stunning landscapes. It was nice to footlaunch from a mountain site after almost 2 weeks of towing, and all of us had a great time thermalling around the peaks of the national park, looking down on zebras and ostriches. Normally it is not allowed to fly here, but a local contact got us through the gate and up to the spectacular launch. We are getting closer to the coast now, in fact we expect to be there tonight, and the landscape is changing gradually from the high desert plateau to the gently rolling foothills of the coastal range. Tonight we`ll cross over the Outanequah pass and descend to the southern coast of South Africa, where we plan to fly for the duration of the trip.

Wilderness

We had heard a lot about the coastal flying here- the rumors were that a fantastic variety of coastal soaring and thermal sites were within a short distance, and the weather was frequently good, although changeable. The rumors were all true. Yesterday we soared a site called Grenickes, a 150m ridge just to the east of Wilderness. Matt, Mathieu and Jerome launched 10km to the west of the site and soared a wild and totally unpopulated stretch of coastline to reach it! There are soaring sites for almost every wind direction here, all of them quite aesthetic, so we look forward to spending the next couple of days here rinsing the desert dust off of our skin in the Indian Ocean and letting our gliders roll around in the nice green grass.