Our 1st flying day started in a typical Roldanillo way with ZERO visibility at the Los Tanques take-off!
But soon the valley started to show her face and the day was on :)

... a great day beginning in Rolda :)

1st climb out & I remembered! "p... says cloudbase!" ;-)

After a nice climb out I chose the sunny valley crossing to Zarzal whilst the German group decided to hug the shadowy hills and head mainly down & Judith decided to do a bit of both!

10.000 colours of green

The fluffy clouds were forming just in front of me all the way to the river making the flight really fun. After the river I thought that maybe I had risked too much going alone but the birdies came out to play to help me find the climb and we all cruised to base together.

show me the way ...

The smoke at La Paila was showing a south wind so I had a moment of dithering ... I had intended to head south towards Buga but north looked like a better sky and with south wind made more sense.

So, deciding against instinct and opting for logic (& trying to practice patience in the air) I went for Zarzal town to wait out a shadow cycle (instinct was with a nice cumulus but a very very long way from any roads / civilisation) The town was giving off light lift but even the birds weren't climbing much so I hovered for about 15 minutes waiting for the shadow to pass. I nearly had a heart attack while clinging onto a light scrappy climb over the south of Zarzal - the military base started live-firing, WTF!!! From being relaxed and focused on hanging on to my climb, suddenly all hell seemed to break loose with the noise of dozens of guns directly below and smoke nearly choking me. It sent me into a right flap - literally! Hands and glider all over the place with the surprise - I was out-of-there prontisimo!! Bad choice! :(

A short while later, still in shadow I grounded in a caña field : these nice farmers have left grassy runways criss-crossing the caña so you can chose you approach according to the wind but it was really not where I wanted to be.
When I landed I was so mad with myself for dithering and not following instinct and to add an insult to it all, the sun came out directly and a nice cumi developed direct above my head - grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

But the really positive thing, once I stopped behaving like a 'loca', is that its been a long time since I enjoyed flying so much and landed so totally annoyed and mad with myself for being on the ground ...
While I was flying I realised that I am feeling like ME again :)
Flying is soooooooooo much FUN! :)))))))))