Overflying Honduras and Nicaragua!
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| catching sight of vulcano Momotombo in Nicaragua |
The bird had not given up. A pre-flight inspection this morning before departure from Belize revealed another collection of twigs and wire cuttings. More clearing of FOD before we leave.
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| surprise that the bird still has not given up trying to built his nest |
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| despite the plastic bag, the bird came back! |
A brief return to the apron to check a faulty fuel content indication and then off across Belize, Honduras & Nicaragua to Costa Rica. A long sector.
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| we covered nearly the entire length of this map today! |
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| having to fly at 11.000ft for nearly 4 hours due to high terrain |
Phil got quite a bit of hands-on today whilst Flippie worked out the complex route between building storm-clouds.
Nicaragua - sadly absent from our list of ballooning destinations this trip - had two active volcanoes on display with plumes of steam rising to our 11,000ft cruising-level.. Huge lakes between the cones looked fascinating and reminded Phil of his flights over these self-same active volcanoes some 20 years before in a Cameron 145.
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| what a sight of this steaming active volcano from the Beech |
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| plenty of massive crater lakes |
The approach into San Jose was complicated by deteriorating weather with towering CB and a very busy international jet airport only a couple of miles from our destination at Tobias Bolanos secondary airport.
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| A jet flying very close below us coming out of the Cocos International main airport |
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| glad to have made it before the storm! |
Dodging the big jets we arrived to be met by Flippie's long-standing seaplane pilot friend Mike Castillo who regaled us in the bar with stories of flying a Catalina flying boat from South Africa to California.
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| disembarking Betty on arrival in Costa Rica |
What a day - what a flight! We are all too trashed to go out anymore this evening and stay in our rooms working on the PC and catching up with emails. We both forgot to take our little bag with chargers so this computer sadly won't last too much longer and I will have to stop this blog for the night. I am still puzzled why the blog suddenly wants to use different type faces and different colours as I have changed nothing! If anybody could give some advice, that would be greatly appreciated.
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| flying over some stunning looking reefs off the shores from Belize |
Flippie has by the way taken an incredible 'wild-life' (or shall we say 'bird-life'?) movie of that bird -the actually turns out NOT to be a crow but a tiny little bird! He filmed this bird coming right back to Betty and flying into the engine to continue its efforts in building a nest there. It will be seriously disappointed to see Betty gone! I hope to be able to upload the video and some more soon to show you this incredible story!
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| Captain Flippie Vermeulen at the controls |
One thing that I also have to mention at this point: the internet speed anywhere in Belize was the best I have ever experienced - it's way better than here at the rather sophisticated Radisson in Costa Rica which is surprising as the rest of Costa Rice is so much more modern than Belize!
Mr D has helped me writing some of the text today as it takes me nearly 2-3 hours each day to sort and download and back up my photographic material, then write the text, then upload it and check that everything works. Sorry if I can't do much more tonight due to low batteries...
Tomorrow we'll be heading for Panama - at least that's the plan!
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