Paragliding over Lake Atitlán with RealWorld Paragliding, followed by a relaxing afternoon in San Marcos
Paragliding from Panajachel
What a fun, beautiful, awesome day!
Baby woke up with the sun and roosters this morning—5:40am 😴 Which made for a fussy breakfast at Tercer Ojo Café in San Marcos. The food was great! Coffee was not as good. She fell asleep in the carrier while we walked back to our Air Bnb to grab a few things and head to the dock to catch a lancha to Panajachel.
For paragliding, we chose the only company in Guatemala (that we could find) that has certified paragliding pilots: RealWorld Paragliding. It cost 750 Quetzals per person, about $96 USD. They speak excellent English which was really helpful in coordinating ahead of time how we could make it work for one of us to stay with baby while the other flew, and then where and when to switch.
Benjamin went first while I stayed near the paragliding office and fed baby some lunch. He was gone for about an hour and then came back on a tuktuk—the driver they had lined up couldn’t come pick them up which means I didn’t have a ride to my launch point! One of the owners ended up coming in from her day off to drive me up in her own car, VIP treatment 😎👸🏼 The whole way up the mountain, she was super apologetic about the fluke situation where the driver fell through!
Exactly 2 hours after Benjamin’s flight (to the minute, our pilot noticed) I jumped off the mountain too! Watching the GoPro videos is so funny, Benjamin didn’t make a single sound during his takeoff and I screamed like a little kid on a roller coaster 😆 It was so much fun!!! And there were some amazing updrafts so we got to go suuuuuper high over the mountain and over the lake. The pilot said 1000m or 3,200ft in the air. We each got to fly for 30 minutes and then landed in a park in Panajachel. Benjamin and baby came down to the landing spot when I came down! Benjamin’s trying to convince me to go skydiving now since I loved this so much.
Afterwards, we got a boat back to San Marcos and spent the rest of the afternoon/evening relaxing.
A little oops moment at dinner, we both got wet burritos (a burrito covered in sauce) that took at least 30 minutes to come out, and they turned out to be super spicy so we couldn’t give any to baby. We had to wait another 20 minutes for a quesadilla to come out for her, and you can imagine she was irate to be starving and watching us eat while giving her none of it.
Follow along for updates on our entire trip to Guatemala with our 11-month-old daughter!
If you’re like me and you read travel blogs wondering, “Should I use this itinerary?” – because how do you know if the blogger would do it the same way a second time? I’ll just say, I highly recommend this route! Our original plan included some beach time down on the Pacific Coast, but you’ll see we changed our plans mid-trip. I’m so glad we did!
