Birds added to the 'Beech zoo'!!

……and a bird in the hand is better than one in your Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior

 

The amazingly creative birds nest in our right engine!!

So here comes story number two: Flippie sorts out our hired car and tries to extend the rental for one more day. Phil and I meet our kind airport assistant Pierre and security man called Nathan. Nathan manages to get us through passport control and security without too much hassle and we walk out to the Beech.

 

the repaired cowling bracket

It’s roasting hot and midday. Phil has to go back and load each single piece of the balloon onto the belt for scanning. One guy asks Phil whether the cylinders contain any gas. Phil has to admit quickly that ‘yes’ we have but that we carry a ‘dangerous goods certificate’. To that the security man just says: ‘that’s great! Thank you’!

 

security staff Nathan who helped to spot the nest

In the meantime Nathan and myself unlock the aeroplane and prepare the space to load the balloon. I want to see that recent repair of the right engine’s cowling bracket and walk around to the front. Flippie and the engineer had spent a couple of steaming hot hours to get it repaired and we are grateful that all is fixed but it dug another big hole into our pockets.

 

the entire nest collection spread out on our hostel table!

What we then saw was unbelievable and even Flippie in his 50 years of flying experience has hardly seen anything so cleverly collected and put together: a massive bird’s nest was artistically weaved into the upper part of our right engine!!! Incredible! And how lucky we that spotted this attempt now and not tomorrow when we want to depart early.

Phil arrives and we show him the conglomeration of stuff that this clever bird has collected: various thorny sticks, broken cable ties, metal straps and as the crowning glory – plastic fork – stuck over all this artwork! Indeed Flippie later guesses that the bird might have been a crow.

Well this nearly makes our Beech Zoo complete: from mice in the UK to snakes in Canada to crows in Belize! What next???

'nose art'

We carefully try and pick out all the bits and pieces and collect them in our now empty crackers box in order to present the collection to Flippie who has been working on flight planning and the met for tomorrow’s long and challenging sector.

As we meet him in the terminal waiting hall, we show him the findings. Watch his reaction here:

Finally all back in the car we drive into Belize city via the small Belize city airstrip along the coast. Here is a Cherokee 6 on take off.

As my GPS tells me that this is our guesthouse and we pull into a very narrow and rather dodgy looking alley, We all look at each other in disbelief: this place looks more like a drug den or brothel than a decent guesthouse.

 

the view from our floor to the streets of Belize city

I knock at the door and Ivory – a young chap – opens. I ask whether this is really the place that we booked. And yes it is. The rooms look clean and fine and this is the place I booked last night. Ok. We are all too tired.. internet in fact is brilliant and there is an Indian laundry place and a beer shop around the corner. All we need for now.

 

downtown government house

Phil and I wander around the town a bit later that afternoon trying to find a clothes shop to buy new shirts as one has been lost and one got seriously dirty from dripping oil. But the streets don't fill us with much confidence:iIn fact most folks that we see are lying half dead by the road, junkies, homeless and very poor. But Belize city a hundred years ago must have been a beautiful town with several churches, a pretty harbour and some lovely wooden houses with Dutch style roofs. These days, it looks run down and not a place to wander alone – never mind a night!

 

Dutch style houses

We eventually find a decent looking restaurant weirdly called the ‘balloon pizzeria’ by the sea. But our evening is soon interrupted by a noisy bunch of Americans turning the music up to ear-bursting levels. We move outside and finish our drinks and meal talking about dodgy places on this planet. This certainly is one of them!

 

where on earth does that name come from?

We are now facing a lot of difficulties with our next few flying sectors as permissions, distances, clearances,  fuel consumption, altitude of terrain, points of official entry - all have to be taken into consideration.

Tomorrow will be a big challenge for Flippie flying the Beech right to the edge of the aeroplane’s capabilities. We will have to cross part of the Andes and fly up to 11,000ft. It will be pretty freezing in the cabin (down to 7 degrees Flippie is predicting!) – and as always in the Beech – noisy. Stopping anywhere in Honduras on the way to Costa Rica sadly doesn't work due to all those logistical problems and so we will have to do the entire way to San Jose in one go.

I am too tired now to proof-read this text and had troubles on the last posting with my type face. We will have an early start and I am dam knackered, so apologies for any misspellings or other ‘beauty’ errors!