The day after Christmas found SG and I back at the airport at the civilized time of 8:00 am. We could’ve been there much earlier but we’d been warned that the customs crew probably wouldn’t be making and early appearance due to the fact that they were of so important and it wasn’t like their customers were going anyplace now were they? When we got to the customs office there were already a gaggle of pilots there ahead of us. We got to talking and found out that they were ferrying two Cessna 172s from the US to Argentina and had run into trouble because one of them didn’t have a commercial license and the Brazilians wouldn’t let them continue without one. When I found out that they had been stuck in Boa Vista for five days waiting for the customs guys to come back to work I didn’t feel as bad about our delay. while I was waiting I thought back to our strange Christmas.
Our Christmas dinner had been an interesting one. We’d called a taxi and told the driver to take us to the best restaurant in all of Boa Vista, or lacking that one that was open. What we got was an open air grill type place overlooking a river with a lone guitar player on a raised stage singing Brazilian love songs, or something like that I don’t speak Portuguese after all. A waitress came to our table but seeing she spoke no English or Spanish the conversation was dragging a bit when a man in his early thirties came up and offered to help translate. We gratefully accepted and were soon invited back to his table to have dinner with his friends. It turned out that the man and his friends all worked in Guyana and were on a vacation in Boa Vista that consisted of some very serious partying. It wasn’t long before we were invited to spend the night drinking and doing whatever with the crew but as appealing as that was SG and I begged off due to the fact that we had to fly the next morning and really didn’t want to spend the night in jail. Plus a few of the guys were obviously taken with SG and her dad wasn’t about to put her in that situation.
Around 10:300 the self important a#$ ho*&s customs officers finally showed up. I won’t torture by describing the bloody details of the rest of the morning/early afternoon….you’re welcome. By 1:00 we finally managed to get the Bonanza back into the air. The route I chose was to head directly north over eastern Venezuela instead of north east to Georgetown in Guyana thus saving about two hundred miles but adding a little risk because there was a small mountain range to cross and if we had an emergency landing in Venezuela the reception was bound to interesting. I wasn’t very happy about the late start because along the north coast of South America powerful thunderstorm pop up every afternoon and there is no way of forecasting just where they will be. Fortunately luck was with us that afternoon because the Bonanza continued to make airplane noise for the four hours it took to cross to last dangerous leg over the rain forest and around the big thunderstorm that was blocking out path to the ocean. It was a great relief to finally leave South America behind and head out over the Caribbean where the water was warm and the beer is cold. Grenada never looked so good.
