Sunday 10 November 2013
Nothing
much to report today. Only travelling from Flores Guatemala to Cancun to start
our next leg of our holiday – seeing all the Yucatan Peninsula pyramids (well
at least a lot of them). Get to the
airport; small airplane. Makes me a bit
scared. Trevor says, “that’s not our
airplane,” and points to a much smaller plane, “that’s our airplane. And they have the hood up and are checking
the engine.” I thought he was joking at first. But he wasn't, it was the small plane alright. Then Trevor said he saw the mechanic bang the engine with a spanner, shrug his shoulders, and shut the hood. It was a bit scary. The weather wasn’t good and we were going up
in a tiny plane that looked like a tuk-tuk with wings. Whenever you hear the words ‘light plane’ it’s
usually followed by the word ‘crash’.
So we
get in. The plane is booked to capacity –
eleven passengers! We sit at the
back. I was a little trepidatious. Actually quite a bit. Trevor loved it. The view from the plane was excellent, much
better than a normal plane. Land safely
and easily in Belize. Good. Feel better now. Next leg, Belize to Cancun. Same kind of plane. This time only four passengers. WTF?
We sat
right up the front, just behind the pilot and co-pilot. Fascinating.
Scary. Well, the pilots looked
totally relaxed. Made me feel relaxed
too. Then we flew into a massive tropical
storm; we could see the pilots instruments – the rain radar shows the maximum setting
on the scale; it’s pissing down.
Me in front of the 'plane'.
Rain radar in the cockpit. (Actually the whole plane is the cockpit).
I was a
little freaked. So we go through the
rain; pelting down on the windows.
Imagine a big storm and you’re driving on the freeway and you can’t see
anything because the rain is coming down so fast and hard – then multiple that
by one thousand. Scary. Got through that and the rest of the flight
was smooth sailing. Get to Cancun and we
can see the runway from the window. Just
like a simulator – only not. Perfectly
smooth landing. Yay.
Land
in the ‘private jet’ area of the Cancun airport, get to the ‘private immigration’
office – never gotten through all that rubbish so quickly. For once a good day at the airport.
