First Day in Valle

A long day of traveling on Sunday to get to Valle de Bravo. Left the house at 5am to catch a 7am flight to Dallas, where our connecting flight was delayed because it was 20F and all the aircraft had to be de-iced before take off. I'm so ready for some warm weather! We touched down in Mexico City around 5pm, got our baggage, and cleared customs without a hitch. Jeff Hunt was there to meet us and we caught a superdeluxe bus (they served snacks and showed a movie, neither of which were present on our flights) to Toluca to meet Jeff's driver, who took us the rest of the way to Valle de Bravo. We arrived with just enough time for Jeff to give us a quick tour of the square and to grab some tacos before getting dropped off at the pilot bunk house, a comfy multi-level Mexican villa with a beautiful view of the lake from just about every room.
This morning we headed to El Peñon, the local thermal site, for our first flight. There are some other pilots here for the upcoming competition, and a group of about eight of us flew. The thermals were rippin' and I found it hard to relax, having not done much big-air thermal flying since the Chelan Classic last year, but after about a half hour of getting tossed around I found my groove and got up high enough to head over the back but sank out shortly after. Ah well, it was a good first orientation flight. Russ on the other hand, headed over the back and nearly sank out as well but managed a low save thanks to the help of a local farmer whose tractor apparently triggered a thermal as Russ was getting ready to land in his field. He rode it up from 500' agl, as the only cloud in the whole sky formed above him. He made it the 14 km to Valle and took this picture of "downtown" before landing.