Cape Froward and northward

Well, the Lost Ducks have begun their migration back to Canada. After spending three months in Chillan, Barb pointed the plane northward. Of course there had been many interesting flights within Chile and many local flights with friends there. The most notable however was in the beginning of February, Barb and John piled into CFIGT and flew to Puerto Montt . They passed volcanoes, glaciers and flew over salmon farms and landed on the private strip of Doug Tompkins, an American famous for his acquisition of over 250,000 hectares of temperate forest which nearly divides Chile in half. He is also the owner of the Northface Company. Doug is a pilot and gave us alot of advice about flying into Argentina. We also flew to the national park he established in his forest preserve called Parque Pumalin. From there we flew to the island of Chiloe and went to see the penguins.

Later Erin (our 12 year old) and I joined the Chillan aeroclub for their annual ride. It was a fantastic flight to 5 different airstrips with nine planes that terminated with a curanto, a feast of shellfish, salmon, sausage and ribs, peas, beans and potatoes all roasted in a huge pit in the ground covered with nalca leaves , huge leaves similar but three times the size of rhubarb. From there Erin and I continued on to Punta Arenas, the most southern city in Chile and then we flew around the most southern tip of the western hemisphere, where we saw the white cross on Cape Froward. Then it was time to start heading home to Canada.

There has been a slight change of crew members with Raúl Bustos coming on as co-pilot and our oldest, Joshua deciding that this might be ¨a cool trip¨. Raúl is Chileno but lived in Calgary for 36 years, he currently lives in Concepcion, Chile with his lovely wife, Ketty. Raúl is both a Canadian and Chilean pilot and flew his own Piper Comanche down from Canada in 1996, alone!! Down here he spends his time as President of the University of Concepcion flying club and has done some flying as a fire spotter. Interestingly in Chile, the flying clubs own many planes and club members pay a membership fee to belong to the club but this offers them the opportunity to fly the club planes. Some members have their own planes.

Our journey started Monday, March 5 when we left Concepcion at 11:00 am after clearing customs and immigration. Services that we had to privately request. We flew over the Andes at a height of 10,500 and landed in Nuequen, Argentina to clear customs. Then spent the night in Santa Rosa where the friendly a Argentine flight controller gave us a ride to the city. She was very nice and wanted to keep Josh for her daughter. Our second day, Tuesday, had us come into Concordia where the ground crew rapidly whisked us out of there as they had to prepare for their next incoming flight ....on Thursday. We made our way over the Pampas to Cataratas, the Argentine airport near the Iguasu falls. Interestingly enough on this flight flew over Uruguay and Paraguay as well. We did the tourist flight over the falls and agreed that it was more panoramic from the Brazilian side. Stayed on the Argentine side and went to see an amethyst mine and a yerba mate orchard. Wednesday morning after we went to the Brazilian consulate to get visas we toured the falls, spent 6 hours in customs and immigration between Argentina and Brazil with only 10 minutes of flying all day!

Now in Brazil, we flew from Foz de Iguasu to Tres Lagoas and on to Goiania, reaching it just before the torrential rains hit. Each leg so far has been about 3 hours and we are making very good time, weather has been very cooperative so far, with us only having to dodge showers or low cumulus clouds. Here in South America there appears to be less turbulence under the clouds than what we are used to in Canada, so the flying has been great.

In Goiania we met with some pretty spectacular people. First there were the helpful people from the fuel company who took us all over to change our money, then change our flight plan until we finally got it through to them that what we wanted was an oil change. Here we met Abrão Berberian who runs the Quick aircraft maintence shop along with his wife June and son Abrão. Fantastic people they squeezed us into their busy schedule and not only did they change the oil but they checked over the plugs and tightened and cleaned things up. Abrão even loaned us his car to get to the terminal to file our flight plan. Way beyond your average oil change experience. We were very grateful for their service.

We also linked up with John Carter who along with his wife Kika have a project going to help preserve the rainforest, you can check it out at http://www.aliancadaterra.org.br/ . John is also a pilot who flies alot in the Mato Grosso and with his advice we decided to cut north across the eastern edge of the rainforest. We also got to spend the night at his fishing camp along one of the Amazon tributaries. We went fishing and too bad I caught only the trees! We also had a night boat ride on the river on the way back from eating in town. Pretty spectacular!

Today was a full flight day covering about 800 miles (John´s fishing camp – Sao Felix- Maraba- Belem).