If you’re going to film a TV show about some unnamed pilots flying an unnamed plane from some unnamed country in South America to another unnamed country somewhat north of there you need to get some shots of the aircraft in flight.  And if you’re going to try and get some Quality shots of an aircraft in flight you need two good pilots, and experienced camera operator and a capable platform to shoot from.  Enter the P 68 Partenavia.

And if spending the day flying in formation with a Partenavia, swooping and diving,banking and cranking, wasn’t fun enough having a Osprey flying around with us really made the day.  Hell, we even flew an overhead break to landing to cap off the day.  My job doesn’t always suck.

Posting might be a little sparse for the next few days, so what else is new, due to the fact that I have to travel out to Utah for to meet with Cory and the rest of the pilots at CB Aviation.  Whenever a bunch of ferry pilots get together much salad, rice cakes and skim milk will be consumed while relating truthful recent events followed by some Bible study and lights out by 10:00.  Sort of.

When we shut down on the ramp in Grenada SG jumped out of the plane like a shot.  The Caribbean is her favorite place in the world and she was just about jumping up and down with excitement.  When we’d gotten stuck in Brazil for Christmas SG had proclaimed that Christmas was going to be postponed one day so she could celebrate it in whatever Caribbean island we ended up in.  She’d shown extreme patience in Brazil that morning while the customs officers dithered around wasting time better spent on the beach but once we were on the ground she wanted to get the hell out of the airport!  It was a beautiful warm sunny afternoon but it was already getting late and I knew that by the time we fueled up, cleared customs and immigration and then made it to an as yet unknown hotel SG’s beach time was going to be short.  About this time a man in some sort of airport uniform came up to us and asked if we needed any help with our general declaration papers or clearing customs.  I don’t usually need help from guys like that but they can speed up the process sometimes with their ability to cut to the head of lines because they share the tips you give them with the customs officers.  With SG’s mad desire to hit the beach before the sun went down I accepted the help.  While the fuel guy topped the Bonanza’s tanks off I filled out the paperwork on the wing and handed it off the our helper who scampered off to get the process started.  We managed to clear the airport quickly enough and our airport helper hustled us into a taxi and told the driver what hotel to take us to that was supposed to be nice and gave good pilot discounts.  A short ten minute ride later we pulled into a beautiful resort and were shortly enjoying a complementary  rum punch while checking in.  But the long shadows told the tail of the setting sun and SG’s face fell as she watched swim suit clad couples file past on their way back to their rooms after enjoying a day on the beach.   With nothing else to do we changed clothes and met down at the beach bar where I treated her to a few fruity drinks and promised to get her some beach time the next day.  I was pretty sure I could deliver on my promise, we were in the Caribbean after all.  What could possibly go wrong?

A happy SG finally in the Caribbean.

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.