Sunday, 1 May 2011

Log 14-April-2011 Trinidad - Guyane

 Had an enjoyable night in Port of Spain, in the same hotel (the Hilton "upside down", you enter on a hill, and the rooms are down) where I stayed 32 years ago, doing a Nestle audit. We met 2 employees still from that time! Dinner with Steel Band, and short sight seeing around PoS, then heading for the longest flight of our trip, plan was PoS to Paramaribo (4 hours), over water and mostly inhospitable jungle. Here we refuel the plan to the rim.


About an hour and a half after take-off: the first sight of SOUTH AMERICA! Here Venezuela, the mouth of the Orinoco (engine, please don't quit!)
Port of Spain handed us directly to Georgetown (Guyana), even if we flew a little corner through Hugo Chavez's airspace on A324. And after we lost communication with PoS, it took about 45 minutes until Georgetown could hear us.
Coastline of Guyana, near Georgetown



Here a suburb of Paramaribo (Surinam) from the air. Here we had already lost our battle over the radio, for the permission to land at Zorg-en-Hoop, the only airport in Surinam with AvGas. The controller wanted us to go down at Zanderij, the larger airport, but only jet fuel. So despite being already 4  hours in the air, we asked for deviation to SOCA - Cayenne, another 1 3/4 hours
 My copilot and passenger were very brave, still smiling with this ordeal. Finally we had a flight of 5 hours and 38 minutes on the tach, almost 6 hours hobbs.

The coastline of Guyane, near St.Laurent de Moroni
And finally an ILS approach for Rwy 08 at Cayenne - Rochambeau. The first time I had to trust the needles in real life (and they were nicely centered...)! And it worked, here, at around 1000 ft, we could guess the runway, smack in front of us (piece of cake, with an MDA of 340') 

Bienvenue en France! The gendarmes controlled my pilot license, Securite our bags, la Police our passports, and la douane again the bags, but all very friendly (must be far from Paris....). Cayenne was full, and Elie, our able taxi driver spent 60€ knocking on every hotel in town (next time, the Amazonie looked nice and central), but a regional Petanque championship filled up the whole place. Happy to find rooms at the fashionable Novotel on the outskirts, near a lovely beach. Champagne, un bon diner et allez hopp au lit, this was a tiring day!



1 comment:

  1. Nunca pensei que a floresta Amazonica fosse tao impressionante como vista de nao muito alto como estavamos voando..

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