flight of the micro-light

I woke up way before everyone else this morning, and had to get into a little bit of trouble when I realized how nice the weather was today. See, Sabrina and I were hoping to do this ‘U-Fly Extreme…Pilot A Stunt Plane’ activity up in Motueka this week, but every time we called to enquire about it they upped the price, so we gave up on it a few days ago. When I was left to my own devices for too long this morning, though, I got into all the other aviation brochures we’d picked up, and decided a micro-light flight over Abel Tasman National Park was too good to pass up on a gorgeous day like today.

Described as ‘a motorbike for the sky,’ a micro-light is pretty much a hang-glider with a small motor. The pilot steers with a set of ‘handlebars’ attached to the wings, which appear to be made of plastic sticks covered in heavy-duty Saran Wrap. My pilot, Trevor, was bored with traditional flight by the time it was my turn to go around 3 pm, so every time he wanted to lose altitude, he just aimed the nose of the ‘plane’ into the ground for a few seconds while we plummeted. This, he assured me cheerfully, was not the way it was usually done, but was more fun. It was fun, once I remembered to breathe.

The view from above was absolutely amazing, and it was awesome being up in the sky in a completely open-cockpit craft. We flew along the coast, visiting all the places we went on the catamaran yesterday, and then toward the end of the 40-minute flight we flew over the orchard where I worked for most of December.