After commenting off-topic on Facebook with Jorge Parra on Venezuelan pilots on Gail Mooney´ page, I decide to write some anecdotes on flying on my blog (too long for the 420 character limite of Facebook).
My first pilot in Venezuela was Tex Palmer, being Texan he was a real cowboy bush pilot, working the diamond mines in the rainforest. He was the only one who could land at a small mine airstrip between mountains in cloudy weather. Others tried and killed themselves. I did only one flight with him, going from Caicara (where he lived) to San Juan de Manapiare with an anthropologist and his wife. For such classy passengers he put back the safety belts and did a complete check-up of his plane. After leaving us in SJM he did some acrobatics over the small town. A few years later during his annual checkup he had high blood pressure, and he was prohibited to fly. I visited him once in the small town on the Orinoco River where he lived a simple life. I didn´t hear about him for several years, but I learned later than, deprived of his life passion, he commited suicide. Quite a character… Next pilots: Boris Kaminski and Willi Michel in Venezuela, and “Cabinho” in Brazil.