Conambo and Viejo Corrientes

Yesterday afternoon at about 3pm, I went as a passenger with one of our pilots to do a final flight for the day. The first flight was into a village called Conambo which is about 80 miles from Shell, or a 40 minute flight. We were hauling cargo into Conambo for some anthropologists that will be there for another 3 weeks or so.

This is final approach into Conambo. It is about 620 meters long. Presumably, when I get turned loose to fly solo I will be able to go into Conambo because it is over our 500m limit that we use for rookies like me. After I gain more experience flying into strips of this length, then I will slowly work my way into shorter ones like Viejo Corrientes.

These are some of the "locals" in Conambo. Yes, that is a monkey that the girl is holding. Monkeys make popular pets. Also, the "monkey girl" is wearing an "Ecuador para Cristo" shirt. This is basically Compassion International in Ecuadorian form. So yes, those very touching commercials about sending in your $25-30 a month to some poor kid really does go somewhere. We fly Compassion International extensively here in Ecuador. If it wasn't for MAF, they wouldn't be able to exist or operate here.

This is Viejo Corrientes. It is the shortest strip we have in Ecuador. It is just over 320 meters long and we use it for medical/emergency use only (notice the long grass and plane tracks). So imagine the picture above of Conambo and split it in half. We can only go in under weight and take off considerably underweight as well. We went there to pick up a medical patient. Nobody could say what was wrong with him, but he was sure in bad shape. By the time we got to him, his tounge had "frozen" so he couldn't speak. His bowels looked VERY bloated, he was vomiting, and generally he looked like he had seen better days. We hauled him back to Shell were he had some family members waiting for him to take him to the hospital. I suspected he may have had rabies, but it could have been stroke related as well. Maybe next week we will find out what was wrong with him when, or if, we haul him back home.