In the air again...

We were busy, busy today! Chad and I made a flight to a few places today, and once again I was learning a lot. The weather left a lot to be desired today, as we had low ceilings and rain here in Shell and everywhere in the jungle. So rather than fight the weather trying to stay out of the clouds, we took off from Shell and entered the clouds shortly thereafter. We flew a ways out today, almost to the Peruvian border. Chad and I were in and out of the clouds for about 45 minutes until we arrived at our first stop. Even when we arrived over our first stop called Charapacocha, there were no holes in the clouds to descend through, so we flew a little beyond Charapacocha, and found a hole in which to descend. We dropped our way down threw the hole in the clouds and then worked our way back to Charapacocha. I made an uneventful landing and we dropped off the teacher that works there with Compasion International. Shortly afterwards, we were enroute for our second of three stops called Chuindia, about 20 minutes away.

In Chuindia we dropped off some returning patients, and after a bit of logistical confusion, we loaded up another patient to take back to Shell. This patient was an older woman returning to the hospital for her third TB treatment. Once again, after about 20 minutes on the ground, we left for the 20 minute flight to Wiririma.

Wiririma is a new airstrip for us. In fact, it hadn't been officially "opened" by us, although other operators had been using it. We gathered what info we could from the air, landed, and shut down in order to get more precise info regarding the strip. We spent about 30 minutes on the ground measuring its length, altitude, slope, climb out angles, width, surface condition, and a number of various other things. It was a lot of fun, and the people of Wiririma were jubilant with our opening of their strip. They worked for 2 years constructing this airstrip by hand! It was a lot of fun to see how grateful these people were that we would fly in there now, and could transport their sick, haul their cargo, and any number of other things. They even gave me two HUGE yucca plants (think jungle potato, pretty tasty), and a huge grocery sack of freshly smoked meat. I don't know what kind of meat they gave me. It could have been a number of things, from monkey, to beef, to pig, etc. Needless to say, I gave it all away when we got to Shell to one of our hangar helpers, because I knew I would let it go to waste before we could eat all of it.

After a good time in Wiririma, we were off for Shell again. By this time we were over an hour away from Shell, and the weather still was not improving. If we would have flown about 10 minutes in the opposite direction, we would have been in Peru. So, flying towards Shell, we climbed up to 8,500ft in the clouds and made our way back. The trip home was uneventful, and as we approached closer to Shell, we began the instrument approach into Shell. After flying the approach, we broke out of the clouds about 2 miles out from the runway, and then we proceded to land. All told, I had almost 3 hours of flying again, just under an hour in the clouds, we opened up a new airstrip, flew 4 medical patients, and I shot one instrument approach. It was a complete day indeed.
Chad took this of me in Wiririma. Obviously, I am a giant compared to most of the people we serve, and they wasted no time in making jokes about my size compared to their's. It made for a fun time.