All indications were that the whale watching in Guerrero Negro was just as good as Laguna San Ignacio but the Guerrero Negro routing would be short enough to only have to stop for fuel in San Felipe where as the Laguna San Ignacio route with the Cherokee Six would have to stop in Loreto to get fuel in addition to San Felipe. Nothing like going 110 miles further than you wanted to go just for lack of fuel.
Flying in Baja is dominated by worries about getting fuel. In an attempt to squash the drug trade the Mexican government decided to tightly control where you can get fuel. Generally the only places that sell fuel are international airports. If flying has not forced you to become a logistician, then flying in Baja will. Luckily the RV-8 has a fantastic range so I haven't had to stop at Loreto for fuel, but even still, careful planning will let you avoid getting stuck somewhere with no fuel and not enough fuel to get to where there is fuel. That is a harsh place to be.
Well, the weekend where I had lined up the Cherokee Six approached and then entered the horizon of the 10 day forecast. That forecast was also accompanied by fanfare of some relief in the drought that the west has been experiencing... So small airplanes and weather can mix but this mix must be done carefully, throw in 5 passengers and crossing the mountains a few times and you've got something really interesting on your hands. At this point I had spent significant time and money getting prepped to confidently take 5 passengers to go see the whales in Mexico... so I really wanted this trip to work. When the time came to go the forecast was just ugly, if the flight were to happen at all it would have been very turbulent but what really killed the flight was the potential for icing. Ice can bring down any plane, in a little plane with no icing protection to speak of it's a non starter. So I called the flight off, I should have called it off earlier, the other plane that was planning on doing the same itinerary call it off on Friday, wishful thinking pushed me through till Saturday AM.
So we canceled, and my wife and I resolved to give it another try in 2 weeks along with the other plane. The friends I had initially lined up to fill all the seats of the Cherokee had other commitments so we decided to just take the RV-8. A few days before the trip the other plane's pilot ended up with the flu so they canceled.
Now it was just us going to see the whales, my plane is a bit faster than the other that was planning on going so... back to my earlier idea of squeezing more from life, we decided to make a day trip out of it rather than stay overnight in Guerrero Negro. The plan wasn't too onerous, if we woke up at 6 AM we could easily be at Guerrero Negro by 10 AM, 1 hr before the tour starts.
30 minutes out of Gillespie, and well into Mexico now, my wife starts to complain of nausea from the turbulence and asks if we can turn back, at this point I don't think I can with out rankling some feathers with US customs. I do my best to work our way out of the turbulence and we land 30 minutes later at San Felipe. Even though I planned for a hour on the ground 30 minutes and one "turbulence can't hurt you" pep talk later and we are on our way to Guerrero Negro. The flight isn't too bad, we fly high, and for the most part it's a smooth flight.
After landing we find the taxi we ordered isn't there so we call and by 10 AM we are at the tour operators rendezvous point and restaurant. Once there the man I pay for the tour mentions something about the Minister of Tourism being in town, some roads being blocked and potential delays. I do some quick calculations and we can tolerate about 3 hrs of delays before we have to start worrying about getting stuck at San Felipe because Mexico looks suspiciously at flying after the sun goes down.
So we wait and have a wonderful breakfast in the amazingly authentic restaurant attached to the tour operator.
2 hrs pass and I finally talk to a woman tour guide on the phone and she tells me that they, along with all the guests from the morning tour, are trapped in the area where they put the boats in the water, the security folks won't let them go past a certain gate, and they have no idea when they will get out.
So that was it, we grabbed a taxi and went back to the airport, flew to San Felipe to clear customs out of Mexico, flew to Brown Field to clear US customs and then we were back home sipping margaritas by 5:30 PM wondering what we should have done differently...
In retrospect if we got off the ground at Guerrero Negro before Sunset would could have flown back to Ensenada and filed an instrument flight back to Brown, maybe anyhow... we also could have been stuck somewhere along the line.
We saw amazing beaches and beautiful mountains but that has all become a bit old hat... All along there were obstacles to doing this trip, we overcame all of the ones in our control, some might say that they were all signals that we should have just bagged it right there. Although if the trip yesterday, or 2 weeks ago, actually happened as planned then those obstacles would have just been thrown in the category of character building and the normal frustrations of getting anything done in life. Nothing worth doing in life is a sure thing and nothing fulfilling in life comes easy. My perspective is we were just unlucky... but I also don't know when I want to try to do this trip again...
1 comment:
Too bad you guys didn't get to see the whales... but sounds like a pretty nice Sunday anyway!
Why would anyone say you should have bagged this one earlier? Bagging the attempt two weeks ago due to the weather conditions was definitely a good call (and that one was just bad luck -- a date picked months in advance falling on the worst storm of the season...). But this time around you were never in any danger. So why bag it? I'd say it was worth the attempt.
The only lesson I would take away from this one, or I should say, reinforce an old lesson learned from years of traveling, is that you just need to leave yourself a lot more margin in your schedule. That was a very aggressive timeline with little room for anything unanticipated, and there's always something unanticipated. A plan that tight might have worked in Switzerland, maybe... but would almost never work in Latin America.
So next time just take a weekend, go up a day early, or leave yourself the flexibility of coming back a day late if needed... Better chance of executing the mission successfully, and even in the off chance that everything does go smoothly, you'll have a more relaxing and stress-free trip!
And hey, remember, if you're actually frustrated that you spent a day flying your own airplane to an exotic destination where you only had a nice lunch but didn't see whales... boohoo :-P Life is good :-D
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