South Africa has some excellent hang gliding and paragliding sites suitable for beginner and experienced pilots. Since the late eighties, paragliding in South Africa has seen a tremendous growth in facilities and adventure travellers. Presently the South African paragliding & hang gliding industry boasts more than 900 registered pilots and a staggering 1200 flying sites!
Paragliding is normally considered to be an "extreme" sport as it has a degree of danger appended to it. Most people experience vertigo and could never imagine themselves dangling alone thousands of feet in the air under a "parachute".
For adventure travellers who wish to fly once-off and don’t want to learn to paraglide on their own, tandem paragliding is the solution -- with an over-sized specially designed tandem glider and two harnesses, a paragliding experience is now available for all who wish to explore the skies and soar the mountain tops.
South Africa's hot interior offers world class thermals -- many paraglider and hang glider pilots have made record-breaking distance flights here, particularly in the Northern Cape.
Naturally, this flat, hot area doesn't have much in the way of relief -- for that you need to head for South Africa's coastal provinces -- KwaZulu Natal, Eastern Cape and the Western Cape or the landlocked Mpumalanga province.
There's loads of excellent ridge soar and some fantastic scenic flying near the coast. In Cape Town, you can launch off Lion's Head in the evening, flying into the sunset, to land at one of the popular beachfront pubs.
Further up South Africa's coast, near the Garden Route town of Wilderness, you can fly over the sea, often seeing dolphins and whales. And, of course, the high-lying areas of the Western and Eastern Cape, the Drakensberg and Mpumalanga offer spectacular mountain scenery.
There is even reasonable flying about 80km from Johannesburg, in the Magaliesberg Mountains near the Hartbeespoort Dam -- here you will need to fly below the controlled air space of a number of medium-sized airfields and Johannesburg International Airport.
Organisations and operators:
Aero Club of South Africa is the national controlling body for all sport aviation in South Africa, with 13 chapters and some 4 500 members.
South African Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association oversees hang gliding and paragliding in the country. Almost every launch site is controlled by an affiliated club.
Adventure Purists offer paragliding, flying and gliding, as well as skydiving.
Xplora Tours offers gliding and paragliding as well as bungee jumping. |
