A Small Plane Flight Over the Andes

April 1995

[click any picture to enlarge]

This is the small kit plane, just large enough for two moderately sized people and no baggage, that Reinhard and I flew over the Andes in April 1995. Reinhard was in the grain silo business at the time but previously he and a friend/partner had made a business of assembling kit planes for customers in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Together they had assembled this plane for a priest. The priest was not the best pilot, and he had plowed some furrows in the runway with the wing of this plane (pilots call this tendency of the tail-dragger "ground loops"). As a consequence Reinhard served as his pilot sometimes and had discretionary use of the airplane. The friend was still in the business and was actively building a helicopter and a couple other airplanes. He was in the process of moving his little airplane factory to the small mountain town of Samaipata, which we shall soon be flying over.

I had met Reinhard ten years prior in Australia - for three days. Then of course I new him from Saturday until Thursday on this visit to Bolivia. Would you go flying over the remote Andes with this guy, in a plane he built himself? Well I didn't know if I would either, but while I was thinking of excuses, it happened. Most of the time I am a risk-taker, but sometimes more than others. After we got the plane pushed out of the hanger, dashed across town to get a recharged battery to replace the dead one we got the plane running and taxied down to the fueling area. From the moment the plane moved, Reinhard was pretty much all-business and projected an aura of competence and confidence. All radio communication with the airport tower was in Spanish, so I couldn't track much. The airplane has two redundant fuel systems and at the end of the runway Reinhard revved up the engine separately on each, then got tower clearance and we were off. We also carried a small hand-held GPS receiver to complete the modern technology compliment.

Flying in a small plane like this is amazingly 3-dimensional. It was very small and can travel at relatively low speed, so we could wind through the canyons, fly down over cliffs and waterfalls, and generally go just about anywhere the whim strikes. I was reminded very much of SCUBA diving, where you are weightless (not the zero gravity kind, of course) and can move with equal ease in any direction. I'm sure this is more so than it would be in a larger plane that must anticipate maneuvers and requires large distances to execute them. Everybody flies over the Andes in a 747, but this is different.

So ..... the first picture shows some remote jungle terrain with two cascading cliff formations and waterfalls over each. The area is unreachable except on foot - and that's not easy either. Sometimes we would see little huts and small patches of fruit or various plants cultivated by the indigenous people of the area. A second picture is a close-up of the upper cliff with the wing struts of our little plane in the foreground.

The final three photos are scenes from the little mountain village of Samaipata. First we see an elaborate mansion along with two views of our little airplane - in the right foreground, the wing struts again, and in the lower left, our shadow on the ground.

The next picture shows a group of modern and elaborate appearing mountain homes in this remote little mountain town. It is evident this is somewhat of a weekend mountain retreat for the better-off of Santa Cruz. Finally, we have an aerial photo of a section of the village El Centro de Samaipata.