November 12th: Palo Buque excitement and the story of the ill fated cravat...

Afternoon took us to Palo Buque again, and it was a bit stronger than the other days. Little did I know I'd get a bit more excitement than anticipated... We drove out to the desert as was our usual routine, and got to Palo Buque and conditions were strong, and the skies were pretty clear. Lots of energy coming off the ground. We pulled into our usual spot which was away from the beginning edge of the ridge and at the point where the little hill meets the main ridge line.

November 12th: putting new knowledge into practice

Today was another good day. Each day typically consists of getting up at 6am, taking wing down to the one sliver of grass on the beach in front of the hotel and shaking out a few pounds of sand. This is the ONLY spot that an alien landing could probably take place in Iquique. In Palo Buque there is NO area for alien grass allergic craft to land (there a literally whitewashed bones on some parts of the desert...probably of pilots who died of kiting in the sun).

November 11th: Palo Buque - Thermaling!

Today was a good learning day for Palo Buque. It consisted of mostly beating the crap out of Roxy by kiting her "in the window" up the hill to launch. If you are good at this, you'll just bring up your wing from 10 o'clock to 1030 and just let it take you up the hill while you balance the wing and shifts in wind direction. Easier said than done! If you can't smoothly accomplish this, you play a game of leap frog where you bring your wing up, control it as long as you can, then drop it down when you are tired or out of control.

November 11th: another good two session day

Sorry for the late update. Days can be long and tiring, and clearing out sand takes time if you want to do it prior to getting up to Alto Hospicio so you don't waste time in the launch lineup. The second day was pretty good.

November 10th: flying fun, special monkey suprise arrival

Hola Monkeys! Today was our first official fly day, and we started out with flying Alto Hospicio launch. After a great breakfast in the morning, we were escorted down to Huayquique beach for another LZ briefing. We then headed up to Alto Hospicio launch. Conditions were cloudy but good in the morning and we started launching members of our group around 930am.

Sharky, Larry and Jorge are in Iquique!

Three Hawaiian Sand Monkeys are surfing sand dunes in Iquique, Chile for the next 10 days or so. Let's keep track of their exploits on this blog. Sharky will try to post stories and pictures here as often as possible, and maybe Larry will chime in as well.