Middle on the Jungle!

Hello from the deep jungle of Peru! As I sit here over 300 miles away from my home base of Cashibo, I am amazed at the computer that sits before me in this small Peruvian town. Today was a long day of flying the float plane and in the end, due to bad weather, I was not able to get back home! The small town that I am staying in is build arond an oil drilling rig that us just a few miles away. We keep fuel in 55 gallon drums here and although I have been many times to this location, this is the first time I will be spending the night.
I was VERY supprised to find a place that had internet access! I am actually sitting next to a bare foot kid of 10 years of age who is playing Counter Strike! The small hostal I am staying in is spartian but it does have a bathroom, shower, and a sink that are all in the same 5 by 3 foot space. A very interesting idea as it saves on space and still fits into the principal room that is 10 by 15 feet. I had supper from a street vendor and it seems as though EVERYONE in town knows that there is a white, american, pilot who is in town for the night.
Hopefully tomorrow morning I will be able to have good enough weather to fly back to Cashibo. The tenative plan is to pick up two people at a destination about 45 minutes away. The only catch is that their exact location is not know, only that they are at an intersection of two rivers. So that should be a challenge to find tomorrow. Thanks to eveyone who has been praying for safetly while flying. The Lord continues to grant safety.

For the Pilots

This post is for the pilots. Just to give you an idea of what a day flying in Peru is like. Granted, this is one of the longer days, but it just did happen today and here is the story!The alarm goes off at 5am. I get ready for the day with breakfast and am out the door and driving to Cashibo, where the airplanes are, before 6. Get to the hanger, file a flight plan, check the NASA satellite for South America grab my gear and head down to the float plane. At 7am the passengers are there and Pablo helps me load and tie down the cargo. We pray as a group and are off the water at 7:30. It is two hours to my first fuel stop, but today there is a 15 knot headwind and I sadly watch the GPS dance between 99 and 102 knots. High overcast for the first hour until a lower layer develops and meets me at my cruising altitude of 4,500. Another cloud layer is up ahead but I see a space where I can duck under it and find that it is clear below with just a light rain falling.I manage to get back to 4,500 still under the overcast and land at the first fuel stop in Industrial. After docking next to the bank. I unload five 5-gallon plastic jerry cans and walk over to a shed that is locked up. This is where we keep fuel in 55 gallon drums. I siphon out almost 40 gallons and fuel by hand through a funnel and filter on top of the wing.After being on the ground/water for 40 minutes, I am back in the air. Just one hour now to Galilea, but there are clouds all along the ridge line between me and the destination. I talk via HF radio with the community and they report light rain with low clouds. Not good. I make a course change and head for the place in the ridge where a river cuts through. I decent to 700 feet above the water and follow the river through the gorge. Just below the clouds, I have about 5-7 miles of visibility but there is still light rain. I follow the river for 20 minutes and arrive at the village location. Ceiling is now 500 feel but there are breaks in the overcast. I land against the current and dock where a group of 30 people and kids are waiting for us.After unloading a couple, their 3 children, and all their baggage I quickly climb up on the wing and check my fuel in the left and right tanks. Good, 40 gallons for an estimated 1.5 hours of flying plus 1 hour of reserve fuel at 16 gallons per hour. I write own the tach time on my flight ticket and quickly weight and load more cargo. Two missionaries are returning to Pucallpa after 3 weeks out in the jungle visiting many of the churches along this particular river. They are happy to see me!Off the water and the cloud are definitely broken now, I climb on top and can see a low spot in the ridge at 3,500 feet, I cross at 5000 and start my decent to the next location of Boca Chivasa. I have never been here before but I have a drawing from our chief pilot. As I arrive over head I immediately see two canoes tied up at my docking location. I perform 3 full circles over the landing sight evaluating the current, approach path, and takeoff path. I also look for boat or logs that may be float in the river. I elect to land into the current again and have to modify my final approach leg as there is a slight bend in the river. I touch down on one float in a turn and smoothly set the other float down as I power back to idle, drop the water rudders and send a message over the HF radio saying I am safely on the water. Two more passengers get on and I weigh their cargo and check fuel levels gain. Perfect, we are within the weight limit by 30 kilos and I can tell by how the float are sitting in the water that C.G. is at the aft end to give me a little more cruise speed but the water line is still 2 inches below the back of the floats so I know I am fine.After casting off I open the throttle half way with mixture in ICO. Master on bust pump on. Wait till I hear the tone change that the pump is circulating fuel and there are no more air bubbles, mixture rich momentarily to clear the distributor line and give a small prime. Clear prop! One, two, thee, four blades go by and the engine catches. Mixture rich and quickly retard the throttle, 1000 RPM. I love that hot start technique on the Continentals! I go through my ¨P´s¨ Power (alternator) Power (ammeter showing charge) Pump (boost pump off) Pump (vac pump indication) Pressure (oil pressure indication).It is 1 hour back to Industrial and by now the cloud base is 1500 agl with tops of the broken layer at 5000. I pick my way through holes and corridors up to 5,500 where I am above it all. I clean my hands with some hand sanitizer and eat an apple and grapes as I watch the clouds float by. Lunch to go!Now with 4 people aboard, I realize yet again what a privilege I have to transport there people in Peru! They are all older than me but have seen fit to put their confidence and safety in my hands... something I do not take lightly. I ask the front seat passenger if he is anxious to see his wife and two kids. He nods and smiles!After refueling again by hand, I takeoff for the tow hour leg back to Cashibo. On the way back almost everyone takes a nap, except for the pilot. The morning overcast is still there, I estimate bases to be at 10´000 msl. I fly back at 5,500 in perfectly smooth conditions and enjoy a tailwind as I see 125 knots of ground speed. After an hour and 15 minutes I switch tanks and note that I should have 8 gallons left in that tank if I need it. By the time I get back to Cashibo I am down to 20 gallons total fuel. A smooth landing back at Cashibo in spite of the quartering crosswind. I unload the cargo and fill out the paperwork. It is 4:30 in the afternoon and I head up to the office where I spend another 20 minute figuring out the billing for the flight and completing my flight ticket, 7.1 hours today, 5 landings, and 1 tired pilot!Hope this give you a small glimpse into what flying in Peru is like. There is so much more like how you load chickens and lawnmower engines into the airplane, or communicating with ATC in Spanish. But maybe that is for some other time.

Jungle Flights

In December, I had a flight for a missionary family that was going back to their village location about an hour flight away. It was a sad occasion because the family was leaving Peru and was returning to the USA after over 6 years of ministry in Peru and Brazil. I stayed with them for a night in the village as they said goodbye, then they left in a boat to travel 45 minutes down steam to where there is a rare straight part in the river long enough to take off from. I flew the 3 minutes to the location as taking off from right in front of the village is marginal and only ever done with one person and a very low fuel load. After securing all the cargo, we were off the water for the last time. It was a quiet ride back to Pucallpa.


Fortunately, I found out just this month that there is a new missionary family that will be taking over the work out in this community! So, I am happy that SAMAIR will get to keep serving the people and missionaries in that location.

Not again!

Well the on going saga continues with my motorcycle. I finally put all the pieces together and took my motorcycle out on a trip this past weekend. We crossed over a nice little river with a log spit in two to walk your bike across. There was also a fair amount of mud which always makes for a messy ride.

Needless to say, we were off the beaten trail by a good ways and two hours into the ride found us lugging our bikes over logs 18 inches in diameter. It was a tight jungle trail that were were on and my engine had started making a ticking sound. I hoped that it would not give out on my and we presed on! An hour later we were wet, filthy, but out of the jungle! That is when my bike broke down. Again. I was unserimoniously pulled back to Cashibo where I systematicly checked out every system. When the easy things such as fuel, air, and spark were ruled out I knew it had to be bad. And yes it was, a valve keeper had broken and allowed the valve to fall into the cyclinder. The piston bent it, broke the guide, and that was all she wrote.

So once again my bike is in 100 parts and I am waiting for some parts to come from the USA. maybe by the middle of Febuary I will have it working again...

Moving again.

With a New Year comes a new place to live again for me. When I first got to Pucallpa last spring, I lived with another single missionary for 2 months until he left for the USA. Then I moved to another house and lived with two single missionary guys. Now, after 6 months, all three of us have moved again and are living in a third house while the previous occupants are in the USA for a six month furlough. However, once they get back... you got it, we will be moving yet again.

Needless to say I have gotten good at packing and unpacking all my things, and it has motivated me to keep the amount of "junk" that I have down to a minimum. It also got me thinking about "home" and the things I associate with that word. Having moved around a lot the past two years, I have found that I can live just about anywhere. However every place I have been, I have known that it was not my true home because I would move on from there eventually. To a larger extent, even being in Peru is not my home because I will one day leave here as well. Thus I realize that my true home is the place that is being prepared for me right now. The place where there is no suffering, no pain, no good bye's, and where every tear is whiped away. I look forward to that home!

One piece!

During the New Years holiday, I had a couple of days to work on my motorcycle. I had assembled all the parts and pieces to the point where I would be able to ride it once again! After starting it up I put it in first gear and it pronptly stalled. Eveidently there was a problem with the clutch and it was not free wheeling. So, I took the clutch cover off and started rooting around in there looking for the problem. Thankfully I found a washer that had not been placed in the correct location and was causing the clutch basket to bind. Anyways, after putting the washing in the correct location everything was free to spin again! Now, I have a working motorcyle again and it only took 5 months to get it to that point. I'll be able to return a friends motorcycle that I was borrowing and start using my own. It was nice to finish my New Year's resolution so quickly and have my bike all in one piece again!

We have a winner!

The day before thanksgiving I purchased a vehicle! I had been in Lima, Peru for about a week and had a number of vehicles that I was looking at. Finally, It came down to a 2003 Kia Sorento that I got a good deal on! Purchased from the original owner, this vehicle, has 60,000 miles on it and was manufactured specifically for the forgien market which makes it a little different than the other Kia that I had been looking at.

I was very pleased to say under my budget, and had money left over to recharge the airconditioning, replace a broken window (that broke on thanksgiving day!) and transfer paperwork which is different here in Peru versus the USA.

It took two days to drive from Lima to Pucallpa. The journey is only 500 miles but it takes 16 hours. Some fellow SAM co-workers came over from Pucallpa and spent a day with me in Lima before we headed back together. We tested all systems on the car as we went from sea level to over 16'000 feet! Speeds ranged from 5 to 75 miles per hour and I got 25-27 MPG! I have been very happy with the diesel engine and here in Pucallpa, diesel is cheaper than regular gas by 10%.

Finally, as I was driving to work this week it started to rain. I thought about what it would have been like on my motorcycle and was very thankful to be dry and comfortable inside my vehicle! Thank you so much to the many people who gave to this project. It truely is a wonderful blessing for me!

Looking for a vehicle

Right now I am in Lima, looking for a vehicle to purchase and drive back over to Pucallpa. Thus I have been looking though the newspaper classifieds, and stopping at many of the used car lots. There are a number of options out there but I am looking closely at the Kia Sorento. With a 2.5 liter Turbo Diesel, it gets very good mileage and with diesel fuel being cheaper than regular gas, it is also more economical.
Here is a sample of that I looked at today. This is a 2002 model that was imported from Korea 2 years ago. It has 110,000 miles on it, leather, and even seat warmers... which I'm sure I would use all the time in Pucallpa.

This sunday the paper will come out and I will be looking it over for some more vehicles to check out, I already have a couple appointments for monday morning. Unfortunately the last 2 days have been holidays here in Lima, so many people are taking a 4 day weekend and most of the used car places are closed. I will be posting more updates throughout the week.