Time has passed and memory dimmed to the point where I can at last even think of that day. Prepare to experience the terror that was mine when several weeks ago I was asked to fly a death-trap above jungles which I knew were infested with rebel cannibal drug lords waiting to barbecue me on a spit and then eat me with unwashed hands.
Ok, it wasn't that bad.
As I left the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica, hundreds of smiling people shouted and waved while holding signs aloft. I'm not sure who they were doing this for, but it wasn't for me. Thankfully Gus, from the travel company, finally found me and helped me through the throng to where a vehicle was waiting to "take me to the other airport." I was curious. He said, "They didn't tell you?" and proceeded to inform me that I had to fly another hour to where I was going.
We wound our way through the airport to a section that I would have suspected was used for storage or maintenance. The buildings were a series of half circles made of corrugated metal under which were little planes and pieces of little planes. During the trip Gus entertained me with stand-up comedy dealing mainly with how many Americans died last year from drinking the water.
Inside one of the corrugated tubes was a glassed-in area reminiscent of a used car sales office. A girl approached me asked me to sit on a very low couch while she did the whole airline safety speech including such helpful hints as "reeleesing dee bockle" and "your lifesaver ees under dee seat." To get off the subject just a bit, it was my experience the people in Costa Rica were heavily involved in some kind of national niceness contest, as I have never been treated so well. Even fast food servers treated you like a king.
The co-pilot insisted on carrying my suitcase out to the plane which was notable for being very small. Tiny. I climbed up the wing into the back seat while he and the pilot pointed at dials, pushed buttons, and talked in Spanish. We sputtered and chugged out to the run way, and I imagined that the take off was going to be murder. It wasn't. In fact, that was the one pleasant surprise about riding in such a small plane. It took about 20 feet of runway before we were up, up, and away.
Generally, the part that concerned me was how much the inside of the 'craft' reminded me of a 1967 VW Beetle. That, and the fact that the co-pilot was asking too many questions. Those, and the fact that the plane bounced up and down like a yo-yo (though not as predictably) for the next hour as we left the valley and crossed north over active volcanoes belching sulfur flames. I used all the mental and physical tricks that I've accumulated to combat air-sickness and still arrived in Liberia (the city) sweaty and delirious.
We debarked at the airport which could have been mistaken for a school gym without walls and I stumbled through to the parking lot to find my ride. Besides a few baggage personnel, a formation of soldiers undergoing some sort of training, and an inordinate amount of aggressively friendly taxi drivers, I was alone. And I really felt alone, because no one spoke English, I was in the middle of nowhere, and my ride was not to be found. After an hour of speaking very slowly and using charades, I saw an American pull up in an luxury SUV. I greeted him with the enthusiasm of a long lost relative and was overjoyed to hear that he was coming to pick up the musical guest. "I'm the musical guest!", I said. He coolly replied that I was neither Vince Gill nor Amy Grant but he would make sure I made it over to Peninsula Papagayo, too. He could have thrown rocks at me and I still would have been glad to see him.
Fast forward two days, and in the blur imagine paradise.
The trip back was worse, which anecdotally means better. I got to the airport with my mind steely and resolved against any kind of airborne gastro-projectiling. I greeted my pilot - one guy with no side-kick. He asked me if I would rather ride in the front or the back, and after a second or two of imagining him slumped dead over the control panel I chose the front.
A quick scan of the control panel reminded me about how much I didn't know about planes. I was, however, determined to figure out the two or three most important levers just in case I had to land the thing. As we pulled out the runway I identified the wheel, the pedals for the rudder, the throttle, the gauge that tells you if you are flying level, and the radio. That left about 137 different things I couldn't identify.
As we left the ground and peeled off to the right, his cell phone rang. He answered it! Now, I'm not sure if you have at one time or another been ordered to "shut off your cell phone and CD player as such electronic devices may adversely affect the guidance systems of the aircraft", but I sure have! He continued to talk on his phone, the radio, and occasionally reach down to flick a lever as we streaked toward the clouds.
For the next few minutes as I bounced about I looked down at all areas of the rapidly shrinking earth for places where I could land this bucket of bolts, because I was certain at this point that this was my time to become a featured article in Readers Digest. The pilot, sensing my fear, began making light conversation about air masses and started wiggling the wheel so the wings flapped back and forth. He indicated this was an attempt to calm me. Curiously enough, this did not work. I had been taking pictures of everything since we took off, as a way of documenting my death, and snapped one of him. This gave him the idea to take one of me, and he grabbed the camera and told me to take the controls. In the resulting picture, you may note that I am smiling, but this was a smile of terror, I assure you. He surrendered the controls a couple of more times as we closed in on the mountains, so I could more clearly understand why we were bobbing around like a drunken marionette, and I was very grateful.
Landing was great. No problem. Just watch the video if you don't believe me (this isn't dial-up friendly and is a rather jouncy, boring, large file [though it does have a poignant ending] so click at your own risk).
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