My passion for flying started in my childhood, when I was only 2 years old. My father had just begun his paragliding training. My mother and I would join to watch him practicing. I loved doing so.
Once, I was at the beach with my family when a lifeguard helicopter passed by performing a panoramic flight. It was the first time I had ever seen such a thing so close. My immediate reaction was to start running towards its direction. I saw it landing and turning the engines off. My mother ran crazily to catch up to me. She could see that there was something starting to grow inside of me, which was the passion for flying.
Even though my father had always been a paragliding pilot, I’d never thought about starting flying until the year of 2012. During this year, my father went to northeastern Brazil with his team for an expedition where they would try to break paragliding distance world records. They were being sponsored by Volkswagen, which was launching a new truck model called Amarok. Because of that, the expedition took the name “Amarok Expedition”. During the days they were in this expedition, an audiovisual team would produce videos for YouTube with their every conquest. They made the videos in a very animated and interesting format. I watched every episode more than 10 times and would wait anxiously for the next one. I couldn’t explain it, but the passion inside of me was growing bigger and bigger each day.
When the expedition was over, my father came back home very excited after having broken 2 paragliding world records. His happiness took part in me, and I was starting to get more and more excited about learning to fly alone. One day, I was by the pool with my father and my older brother, when I decided to ask him to teach me flying. He got very excited about it and told me he would start teaching me and my brother by next week.
During my first class, he taught me the basics about meteorology, aerodynamics, paragliding parts and ground handling. He used an old glider he’d got from a friend but it was way too advanced for me.
Sol Paragliders is a Brazilian paragliding manufacturer and my dad has been sponsored by them since 2008. So during my first month of training, they gave me a proper glider for ground handling. After that, I would train as much as I could. I remember my father telling me that if I wasn’t able to control my glider on the ground, I wouldn’t be able to control it in the air. Due to this, I practiced ground handling for over a year until my first flight solo.
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