From the logbook..."Stuck like a pig on a spit"

Today I had a full flight schedule. I had 10 landings and about 3.5 hours. Once again the weather was beautiful, and I was able to keep moving right along. All of my flying today was air ambulance/medical flying.

This photo was from stop #5 to pick up a medical team in Sharamentza and move them to Santiak. The airstrip at SHA isn't all that technical, and I love the view from this end of the strip. The runway stops at the Pastaza River and drops off about 100 feet.

This is the photo that warranted the title. This was my first time into Llanchamacocha (LLA), and I made it real obvious to the villagers. Unbeknown to me, this end of the airstrip is unusable. As I taxied for takeoff and tried to turn around, the soft ground just swallowed me up. I had all 3 tires buried up to the axles. By the time I took this picture I had got the nose out, and was working on the main gear. It didn't help that the airplane thermometer said 100 degrees, and I imagine the humidity was close to 100 percent as well. Needless to say, about 20 minutes after my "incident" and with a lot of help from the community, I was airborne again en route to Molino.

Molino is a fun airstrip, and the approaches are really fun. I was filming them today, and hope to post some video of my flying in the near future. In Molino I picked up a patient, an 82 year old man and his wife. You don't meet many people in their 80's that live in the jungle. And, (speaking very bluntly but with all respect) this was the smelliest person I have ever encountered in my life...EVER! It wasn't until mid flight back to Shell that it finally dawned on me what this poor old man smelled like...a rotting cow. I guess it took me a long time to make that conclusion, because the only time I had ever smelled that smell was from dead things, and animals at that. I don't know what was wrong with the man, but he was in pretty bad shape. Did I mention he smelled bad? I'm just glad the air vent in the cockpit is adjustable, because it didn't stop blowing air on my nose for the entire 30 minute flight home to Shell.