The Azores Festival is, first of all, a meeting of friends who love flying. That is at least what the enthusiastic organizer Joao Brun and the members of the club Asas de Sao Miguel try to convey, without saving efforts to make the participants fly and enjoy the impressive views of this beautiful island from the air. So, it is no wonder that many of the pilots we saw this year are already regular visitors of the Festival and have the date marked as a must-go annual appointment and an opportunity to meet again with other flying buddies from different places who, like them, do not miss the trip to Azores.

A group of international pilots invited to each edition of the “Voo-Fest” is the way to promote the Festival in and out of Portugal, as the organization believes that the most effective publicity is person to person for an event whose aim is to make this attractive flying destination better known, and to have many happy pilots by the end of the event.

Press conference with some of the Festival's guests

This time the guests were the female champion of France and world champion, Elisa Houdry, the well-known pilot and ex- PWC champion Patrick Berod, the Portuguese top pilots Gil Navalho, Claudio Virgilio, Silvia Ventura and Eduardo Lagoa, French photographer Aurelie Cottier, and yours truly from Ojovolador.com.

Pastinhos, a small slope that offers more than what it seems at first sight.

The island of Sao Miguel is the biggest of the Azores – that last remain of land in the Atlantic Ocean where high-pressure with its good weather usually settles, only a couple of hours by plane from Lisbon. The landscape is green, scattered with fields where the cows graze placidly, next to old volcanoes today covered with forests that descend to lakes and lagoons with smoking fumaroles on their shores, or to the sea. The length of the island is just a bit more than 60 km with a maximum width of 16 km, and so from many takeoffs or with a little altitude you can see both the north and the south coast.

As soon as we arrived at Sao Miguel we went to the capital city, Ponta Delgada, where the organization welcomed us. They had a comfortable headquarter at the sports port next to the promenade, a very nice zone. Every day, this would be the meeting point for the pilots and departure point of a lively caravan of 4x4 vehicles, a minibus, several cars and even a moving kiosk with fresh drinks and sandwiches, that would drive us to the best takeoff for the conditions of the day. In the night, it would welcome convivial dinners of the event that contributed to a great extent to the good ambiance in the Festival –together with the famous ‘caipirinhas’ (a typical Brazilian cocktail) at the square, which some pilots got so fond of!

On the first day the weather was enough to let us fly –with some strong wind in the morning– at “Pastinhos”, almost a school-slope but from where you could soar to then catch a thermal and climb to the base of some low cumulus. The thermals were a little broken by the wind, but it was possible to fly and get a nice view of the North coast of the island. By 3 pm the wind crossed and the organization moved everybody to another site, Serra Gorda, only 5 minutes away by car. The ride to the top of a 200m hill was by 4x4 and the views from the takeoff were superb, although the wind soon dropped and the slope stopped giving lift, just when the police came to forbid the flying following a call from an airline pilot who claimed that paragliders were flying “too close” (the Festival had all the permissions to fly there, in any case).

The caravan moved on again and in about 40 minutes we were at Salto do Cavalo, a viewpoint towards the lake of Furnas on the east of the island, where we took off over a cliff covered with forest and about 400m above the landing zone. This captivating site would host the Festival on the following days, as the weather did not allow us to try any of the other 20 takeoffs in the island except on Sunday, when we went to a hill near Sete Cidades for some top-to-bottoms with a view to the sea. The impressive flight in the crater of Sete Cidades, just above the lake, was reserved only for the experienced Patrick Berod with a 20m glider due to the strong wind.

The last day ended with a bath in a hot springs by the seaside and a good celebration around a bonfire at the landing zone of Pastinhos, with a great ambiance, lots of happy faces, live music, and the wish to go back next year to the Festival and the island.

Azores 09 PHOTOALBUM

*Many thanks to Joao Brun and the club Asas de Sao Miguel
for inviting us to the Festival and for a fantastic paragliding event.

More info: http://www.asassaomiguel.com/

Salto do Cavalo (horse jump) launch in Furnas

We tested the new intermediate glider from Sol, the Ellus3. Comfortable to fly and with good performance, it left good impressions on us that you will read in detail soon in our review on Ojovolador.com

The glide to the lake of Furnas became a favorite one from Salto do Cavalo.

Joa Brun, tireless giving first flights with the tandem glider