After a morning swim in the ocean (lovely water temperature!), we headed into Budva to try and find an Internet cafe to try and find some information on paragliding in this area. We eventually contacted a British guy, Robin, who spends half of the year here flying paragliding tandems, mountain biking tours and vineyard walks. He suggested we go to the beach in neighboring Becici (“be-chee-chee”) and look for other tandem pilots there. There were a few wings in the air as we arrived and we watched where they landed and spoke to a guy mentioned by Robin called Doshan. He hooked us up with some Russian guys heading back up to launch to do a tandem so we followed them in their 4x4 Lada and I was impressed that Betty could keep up!
The launch was nice with a couple of large mats covering the dusty ground. The view of the town and beaches below was astonishing but behind launch wasn’t so hot, being the municipal dump or at least it looked to be. A couple of Bulgarians that we had chatted to arrived at launch as Garth and I were setting up. They had said that it had been fairly turbulent earlier and weren’t going to fly again but they had changed their minds. I was the first one off and launched in a weak cycle. It was not problem with the actual launch but I lost a lot of height quickly and didn’t find much thermal activity on the glide out. It was a short flight but the views were awesome and I especially loved flying over the packed beach of arranged parasols and small figures frolicking in the water. The landing zone was relatively small and was the grassy front of a hotel with a white steel fence around it, a few trees on one side, a small maintenance building in the middle and if you overshot, you were heading to the overcrowded beach. I was happy with my approach and landed safely on the grass where I was met shortly after by Holly who had gone for a swim in the ocean during this time. Garth had a good flight too, a bit longer than mine and he had a solid landing. It was his first flight outside of Saudi Arabia in a long time and had a renewed spring in his step as Holly put it.
The launch:
The view behind launch:
My launch:
The gorgeous coastline:
Flying to the beach: 
Garth's view of the beach:
My landing:
Robin was heading up to do a tandem flight so I split a taxi with him to go and retrieve Betty. His passenger was an engineering professor working in Norway but of Serbian descent. She specifically worked on the wind dynamics of bridges and was a pretty cool lady. I walked to launch with them and made sure they got in the air before heading down to catch up with Garth and Holly. Robin had offered a room to us for 30 Euros but we decided to return to the same campsite as we planned to head further north tomorrow. We ate dinner at the same place (why mess with something you like?). Part way through the meal a thunderstorm ripped through the area. We were rushed off the patio into the main part of the restaurant as it turned into a torrential downpour. As it subsided, we returned to our campsite only to find that Garth and Holly’s tent had collapsed and their sleeping bags were quite wet. Thankfully they snagged the last hotel room available. The storm was visible for a few hours as it rolled south along the coast. I don’t think I can remember the last time I saw so many lightning flashes in one storm. At its peak it must have been a flash every second or so...super awesome to watch!
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