Costa Rica 2025 – Pura Vida Paragliding! (It’s happening again!!!)

Pilots,

Are you tired of the annual winter flying doldrums? Want to change that up for some tropical warmth and potentially hours and hours of airtime?

Join us this winter for an adventure filled paragliding tour on the Central Pacific Coast of Costa Rica!

While the main focus of the tour will be on flying and improving your flying skills, from fresh P-2 and up, it is Costa Rica after all, and there are a LOT of other things to do. We will try to include as many outdoor adventures as the group is interested in, from chocolate tours to jungle tours, to seeing sloths, macaws, toucans, monkeys and much of the other wildlife that inhabits the region. Snorkeling, surfing, swimming and watching the evening sunset while neck deep in the ocean are all part of the daily routine. Ample flying, tropical adventures, making new friends, and having an awesome time are what we aim for. Hopefully, everyone will be able take a bit of the ‘Pura Vida’ lifestyle back home with them.

Beyond our local thermal training site, where we will do most of our flying, we also may venture to an almost desert like coastal ridge site, and a spectacular ridge/thermal site deep in the jungle. You can rely on our local weather experience to make the choice of the best site for the day. Our favorite site, and the one we will be doing most of our flying is just 15 minutes from our doorstep to launch, while the other two sites are no more than a 1.5-hour drive away.

Our tours are quite comfortable, and are completely appropriate for any ‘non-flying significant others’ to join in. We will be staying in two adjacent and well equipped three-bedroom town homes, with a saltwater swimming pool on the property and it’s a lovely 100 meter walk down a private riverfront trail to one of the best swimming and beginner surfing beaches in CR.

We will also provide all group transportation in two premium full size SUV vehicles. (Ford Everest or Toyota Prado, recently)

A typical day involves heading out to the hill at 8:00 am and flying until around noon. After that, we break for lunch and any afternoon activities, which may include surfing, snorkeling, hanging out at the pool, or hopping in for one of Brad’s famously unpredictable drives. (You never know where you’re going to end up, but it’s always an adventure! ) By 3:00 pm, we re-group and head back to the hill for the evening session, which often allows us to fly into the routinely spectacular Costa Rican sunset. Around 8:00 pm, we all re-group for the days flight de-briefing, launch skills, track log evaluations and general in-flight decision making and how to do better the following day. Go to bed, get up and repeat the next day!

Tour size is limited to 8 participants and your two instructors, which allows plenty of room for everyone in both the cars and in our accommodations. It’s also a great instructor/student ratio so we can pay close attention to your progress and work on your improvement goals, at whatever level you may be.

Important things to note:

Covid: Given our living and transportation environment, we will be requesting that all tour participants be ‘Up-to date’ with their Covid vaccine series as defined by the CDC. We don’t take this request lightly, and do so for the safety and comfort of all of our tour participants.

Additionally: Our tours should not be considered ‘site’ seeing tours, nor are they ‘party’ tours. There will be lots of ‘sight-seeing’, but the majority of our flying/training will happen at our local site. As most days are a full 12+ hours of activity, from the morning flights to the evening debriefings, we’ve become rather used to seeing our happy, yet exhausted students wander toward bed by 9:30 to 10:00 at night, then up again around 6:00 am, ready to hit the hill again by 8:30 am. (We’ve had flights up to 3000′ over launch by 9:00 am!)

This will be our 10th year leading paragliding tours to the Pacific region of Costa Rica. So many that we now consider Costa Rica to be our winter home away from home. It really feels like it and we love the Pura Vida lifestyle!

Cost for your Adventure: $3950.00 which includes:

All Lodging, group transport, all guiding and training from the morning to the evening debrief.

This also includes all flight park fees and admission to Carara National park (or alternative.)

Please contact us regarding rates for ‘non-flying significant others’ and/or accommodation alternatives/upgrades.

Be in touch if you would like to know more. We can share more details and send you the tour invitation and application form.

See you up there,

Brad and Maren – Your ‘Couple’ of Instructors