Just back from a great week of flying in Valle de Bravo. Valle is a rather nice resort town almost three hours drive north of Mexico City. Imagine our distress in the second hour rattling sardined in a small pickup, to peer out into the darkness and see the unmistakable glow of six inches of fresh slushy snow and the traffic slipping and sliding all over the two lane 10,300 foot pass we had to get over.

Fortunately our driver was up to it, and got us down to a charming old house with a stunning view of the lake before the road closed. Amazingly down at 6000 feet it was a shirtsleeve evening to enjoy excellent food overlooking the town square with all it's bustle.

Valle has it's own launch above the town, and is obviously a flying Mecca. Even the sides of city police cars sport views of hang gliders and paragliders over the lake. The more interesting launch is about 14 road miles out, and the game for the first flight of the day is to fly back to town. A challenge as launch is only about 1000 feet above the lake and even the hottest of gliders can't make 3 miles on a dead glide. However the air currents are uniquely shaped by the terrain.

Launch faces a huge expansive dry valley ringed by extinct volcanos, typically a 3000 foot altitude gain is easily obtained, albeit in exceptionally rowdy air. A jump over the back contains some terminal sink which sand trapped most of the pilots most of the time. If you are fortunate, as I once was, you can rip through the sink and come out just high enough over a pair of giant boulders to snag some ratty lift and work your way carefully over the dense unlandable pine forest back to a chain of peaks.

A second air mass muscles up at an angle from the ocean which is a couple of hundred miles away and a convergence frequently sets up along the these peaks, easily boosting one up to the clouds at 11,300 feet in much smoother lift. From there the lake is an easy glide, and indeed I came in over the town launch and soared for another hour hoping the horses in the lakeside landing zone would move. They turned out to be tethered, which made for some dramatic near misses as I finally had to come winging in!

The second flight of the day is quite different. By 5 p.m. the air becomes glassy smooth and one can either cruise till dusk a thousand foot over the dry valley or boat around above the town until the wind off the lake slackens. We all did all of the above most days, and apart from some truck breakdowns, and a rainy day to bike around the lake on a mountain bike with the saddle 6 inches too low had a great time.

The water was off for a couple of days in much of the city, our house included, which made the loos rather smelly, but this is Mexico, and, here in Valle there is plenty of charm to balance the creaky infrastructure. The Roman style streets are (paved) with the flatter sides of hard volcanic rocks making all traffic move at a crawl and bad enough to deter even the most determined mountain biker! but the Bougainvillea and the Jacaranda burst out over every wall, and every corner has good smells of street cooked goodies.