Skydive Cuautla – Mexico

As perhaps the original extreme sport and quintessential casual thrill-seeker experience, skydiving is both intensely touristy and resolutely remote. Dropzones are routinely named for whichever human settlement is closest – most likely somewhere not terribly important in the grand scheme of things – while being simultaneously marketed as something fancy sounding to jockey for position above the competition. Skydive Arizona is one of the most famous skydiving operations of all, but try finding someone who can tell you anything much about Eloy itself. Anyone know where Skydiving London is? It is not in London. Skydive Spain is in Spain, and people will readily add Seville to that, but you ain’t there yet. So while you may be sat in the plane with a bunch of tandem students who are for sure on holiday, there is also a good chance that when you go away to skydive you have the opportunity to experience an increasingly evasive version of travel – seeing the real version of a place.

Skydive Cuautla

Skydive Cuautla is around a hundred kilometres South of Mexico City, and about fifty of those are enough to feel like you have actually made it to the countryside. Phone signal is a possibility, Uber is but a memory, and time settles into a form that requires some adjustment for Europeans. Booked a taxi? Thirty minutes on either side is acceptably normal. Things will get done, but you need to stop looking at the clock. Cuautla is a big town that has Americanised stuff like supermarkets and department stores, but you have three more towns to go before you get to the airfield, each more rural and authentically Mexican than the last.

Mexico has a bunch of dropzones, many of which are up and down the coastal resort areas. Cuautla is the sport place where you go if you have serious business to attend to, and despite leaving fancy city things behind to get here, this is a well appointed dropzone with a Twin Otter and a snooker table landing area of perfectly manicured grass. It would be too hot if not for the low humidity, and the open sides to the buildings where you can linger in the breeze to stay cool. Many historically significant skydiving locations have good access to Mexican food, but in Europe it is an elusive commodity, so it is easy to run up a worthy bill at the cafe.

The CYPRES team travel to a lot of dropzones, and we are frequently asked about which is the best and for what reasons. Everyone has different priorities and considerations, so recommending a best place to go skydiving is an impossible task, but with a good plane, nice spaces, a pond, almost perfect weather and as many proper countryside mum kitchen tacos you can cram down, it is hard to not feel this is top tier.

The challenge in this part of the world is admin. Traditionally skydiving things get here via the United States – carried back and forth via luggage on commercial flights or in the back of cars. This is still largely the way of things, as shipping can be unreliable and prone to extra surprise expenses. Without getting too into it, things are challenging right now for this system. The additional costs and uncertainty have put pressure on the official and unofficial systems for keeping things rolling along in skydiving. This is part of why CYPRES chooses to go the extra distance to support our partners around the world, and we have found that extending our reach to places a bit more out of the way yields amazing results. Spending time here in Mexico has offered us the chance to connect with a growing area in the sport, and some of the most positive experiences we have ever had on a dropzone.