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.
Yes, I did the June-July trip and a November 2009 trip, always in the Brazilian Highlands. I will do a short trip there February 2 -8 2010, then a longer trip, always in the chapadas (plateaus) of the Brazilian Highlands in April - May 2010. Then certainly in August as the Rally dos Sertões this year will be in August. It will pass through northern Minas Gerais State, which is a beautiful region, it should be interesting. Starting, as always, from Goiania, it will end in Fortaleza (Ceará).
After coming back from my last trip to the Brazilian Highlands on April
30, I am already planning my next trip in early June, although I have a
huge backlog of Photoshop waiting on my hard disk. But my love for the
Highlands, its beautiful landscapes, the flowers in the savanna all
year long (but each time of the year different), the small farmers and
cowboys living in adobe houses covered with palm thatch, the dirt
mountain roads… all this beats my need to work on Photoshop. My 4×4
Ranger pickup is already being prepared by MENESES OFF-ROAD,
. The synchronization of 3rd to 2nd and 2nd to 1st has to be fixed, on
my last trip I had to double-clutch all the time on dirt mountain roads
(it added to the fun). A new gearbox is too expensive, and the
available third-party synchronization parts are of poor quality.
Meneses is still looking for a used gearbox in good condition.
Meanwhile he is preparing two cars for the RALLY DOS SERTOES,
probably the toughest rally after Dakar, which was run in Argentina and
Chile this year because of terrorist threats in Mauritania. Actually
the same team won the Sertoes last year and Dakar this year with a
Volkswagen Touareg. A blog showing the obstacles this year
(but not saying where: it will be revealed to the pilots and navigators
only the day previous to each stage) is worth having a look at. Don´t
forget to click on “Próxima” after scrolling down each page. I hope to
be able to photograph the preparation of the cars (they are completely
modified) and Meneses told me I would possibly be able to accompany one
of his support cars (which follow a parralel route) at least for one of
the stages. Before and after the
race I will be in the highlands with my small farmer and cowboy
friends, and enjoy finding my way among the rocks to take photographs
of the beautiful nature of the highland rocky savanna, finding flowers
I have never seen before. Hopefully the Vellozias will be in full
bloom. I am buying a car-top tent that opens automatically when you pull down the ladder, it will stand on a metal frame so
the rear cargo area of my Ranger can still be used (image at bottom of Meneses´site, without the added metal frame).
I will be traveling in the last days of March, 2009 again to the Brazilian Highlands, until the end of april or the first half of May. My Ranger 4×4 pick-up is being prepared in Brasília in a shop specializing in preparing cars for off-road rallies (they will have a 2-car team in the Rally dos Sertões, probably the toughest one after the Dakar rally), so it should be in top shape to go to remote places where small farmers and cowboys still live in adobe houses covered with palm thatch, and that can be reached only by mountain dirt or gravel (or mud!) roads. No internet, no cell phone. When people want to talk to someone they get on their horse and go there. Good place to throw away the stress of the city… I plan also to photograph the preparation of the cars for the rally, and hopefully get a ride with one of the drivers… You know, when the car pulls 3 feet high, or takes a turn completely sideways on dirt roads. The 10-day rally across central Brazil will be at the end of June/early July, but the itinerary has not yet been revealed. A soon as it is published, I plan, if Photoshop leaves me any time after the April trip, to locate a good spot to photograph it.
I hope to have a batch from my previous trip in the region online before the trip, but I had problems with my computer and now with my monitor (after “calibrating” it with one of these spider gizmos the colors are completely off). March 18: got a new monitor, but still tweaking the calibration, as I have to adjust to LCD. Jacques
My next trip (a short one this time, from November 25 to December 10) will be again to the Brazilian Highlands. From Brasília I will go again to the plateaus of Goiás, a region that I love. The cerrado is so beautiful, always with flowers, always changing, both during the dry and during the rainy season. Each te you travel you see different flowers.
In my last trip, from the last days of July, 2008 to the first days of September, I covered more than 5,000 km in a 4WD pickup that I bought after wrecking two 2WD rent-a-cars on the dirt roads of the Brazilian Highlands. I leave it in Brasília in the covered parking lot of a shopping center, which has monthly rental. From Brasília I travelled to the plateaus and savannas of the State of Goiás, then I drove to Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais State, from where I visited and photographed old colonal mining towns (Ouro Preto, Serro, Diamantina) from the mid-18th Century gold and diamond boom. On the way back to Brasília I photographed the saxicolous vegetation on rock outcrops in the Serra do Espinhaço Mountain Range, and savanna, called cerrado in Brazil, at lower altitudes. After a break in Brasília I went to Barretos in the State of São Paulo to see the Festa do Peão de Boiadeiro, the biggest rodeo in South America with guest cowboys from the US, Canada, Australia… All the way I was able to photograph some aspects of Brazilian economy. Now back to Photoshop…