Blind Dog on the Travel Trail: True Stories ,Some Ludicrous

By Larry Kritcher

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome aboard. My name is Larry Kritcher, and I will be your captain for this evenings flight. I recommend you keep your seat belts tightly fastened--we will be flying near high peaks and into low valleys of true travel tales and some bumpy air will be expected. This book is about my lifetime of travel. Sometimes my curiosity has taken me past normal boundaries. Although not a thrill seeker, some of the stories, as you will see, clearly have strayed beyond a normal life of work and play. I have always had a voracious desire for travel, coupled with a love of our worlds cuisine. Many photographs have been included with these stories, proving again, a picture is worth a thousand words.
I suitably represent my slogan--If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504966368

Larry Kritcher

Born to artistic, expatriot parents, Larry Kritcher came to his wandering nature by birthright. He is now a retired airline captain who lives with his wife, Rita, in Coconut Grove, Miami, Florida, that is when they are not traveling to any of more than 130 countries they have visited. He has written and published numerous articles about their journeys and will escort you on a global tour. This is his second book, and it too is packed with stories taken from his travel notes, flight log annotations, and Rita’s daily journals. There is also a cache of photography, which further enhances their voyages. Be prepared for a divergent six continent, five ocean, string of accounts that will thrill most travelers, whether you are the armchair type or actual travelers like us. You may find additional stories in my first book Blind Dog On The Travel Trail, which can be purchased through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Kindle version is available.

Book preview

Part I

Creation

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Papua New Guinea—a mother of travel.

Where did all of this travel come from? How did I become helplessly consumed in surveying our earth? My tour of duty with the United States Marine Corps helped shift me toward a more peripatetic nature; I salute that. Maybe it was my dislike of more school (especially law school) that inspired this life of travel. We all have an itch to get going (maybe, at times, too quickly). I have traveled the earth, moving from one continent to the next, exploring it by land, sea, and air. At an early age, I wanted to circumnavigate this beautiful earth. Fortunately, now I have—several times. With this came an instinctive desire to taste my way onto distant shores. It has been one huge adventure, filled with amazing nuances. For all adventurers and future adventurers, please enter my world of travel. Maybe you can learn from my deals, thrills, and reckless mistakes. Maybe I can even help you out of your nest so that you can fly away from your comfort zone.

Chapter 1

The Surveyor

1967

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Totally out of control.

I was hurtling toward earth in an out-of-control spin. Schoolchildren were looking up from the playground I was going to impact. There was no past tense—the crash was imminent. As my altimeter plummeted through a thousand feet, I was totally stunned, with no ability to shake myself out of this self-induced screw-up. A rewind of my life flashed—ending in disaster. I smelled and screamed fear. I knew I was going to die.

Forcing myself into survival mode, I recalled my flight instructor’s comment: Just take your hands and feet off of everything; the airplane will right itself without any pilot inputs. These directions reverberated in my mind. As I let go of the controls, my eyes clamped shut, awaiting my certain fate. Somewhere, around three hundred feet in altitude, the airplane righted itself.

Oh my God! Thank you, my lucky stars, I stuttered what seemed like a million staccato times.

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Was I returning home scared? No, I was returning home petrified, my head hung low.

My heart was pounding as I returned to the airport. After landing and taxiing to the flight school’s tie-down area, I turned the engine off and just sat breathing heavily, filled with major waves of fear that I had never felt before. The line boy who managed the area came to see if everything was okay. It was obvious I was traumatized, having come within a nano-degree of killing myself.

On unsteady legs, I wandered to my car to face an agonizing drive home. My illusion of becoming a pilot had shriveled into a lonely feeling of complete disappointment now knowing my dream would not become my reality. After starting the car, I hesitated to put it in gear. This was a moment to have a tough conversation with myself. I had to ask if this was a defeatist attitude tainting me. Fortunately, optimism surfaced and self-motivation entered into my thoughts. It was not in my nature to quit. During my drive home, a feeling of strength began creeping through me. Thinking about the narrow distance between my life and my death resulted in a greater confidence. At that point, I knew I had to overcome fear and master that which had almost killed me.

Yeah, kid, a few failures will nurture your success, my uncle Joe had said years ago.

Wow, thank God this one’s out of the way, I thought.

Was I scared? Hell yes, I was scared. The following morning, I forced myself back to the airport. I was still shaken, but I was determined to practice and perfect my stall-recovery maneuvers. That screw-up made me think differently, especially about affairs related to survival. I knew I had to buck up and gain the courage to overcome my anxieties.

Right now, today, I would say that that was one hell of a way to start a flying career.

I had a briefing with my flight instructor about my near-catastrophic event. Too much rudder input, he snarled.

During my practice, I had over pursued the damn stall maneuver and lost total control of the upside-down airplane. There were certain aerobatic maneuvers I was required to learn as a student pilot, one being how to recover from this situation where the airplane loses so much speed that it would no longer fly. At this point, it just stalls and falls right out of the sky. It was imperative for me to practice and re-practice this recovery.

I became analytical, knowing that I had to think in absolutes. My close call had made me believe in mathematics and instrumentation—neither of which lie. If you do not believe in the laws of physics, then stay out of the flying business. Those laws are not negotiable.

I had just fallen out of the sky and joined the ranks of those who have narrowly escaped tragedy. Believe me, it is a brotherhood. An event like that—whether planned or unplanned—toughens one’s fiber. It left an imprint on my absolute being, as well as on my life. I feel that this event certainly helped form my eventual success.

As my thought patterns started to change, I had a moment of epiphany: I would practice the stall maneuvers from a higher altitude—much higher. That was a lesson I would carry with me throughout my flying career: there is safety in altitude.

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My Cessna 150 training airplane, the one that I tried to kill.

Money has never been a driving force when it came to my raison d’être. Early on, I felt that happiness, good health, and comfort were key ingredients to a prosperous life; these were my real reasons to live. Of course, having a decent-paying job was important, but I remembered above all else that if I enjoyed what I did, I would probably never work a day in my life. A career in the sky, surveying this earth, would suit my instincts and dreams perfectly. I freely moved ahead, with no doubts remaining. I charged into a world much less traveled.

Here’s an interesting fact: only 5 percent of the world’s population has ever been on an airplane. To be a pilot for those who fall within that 5 percent is even more distinctive.

Whether you think so or not, there remains a huge mystery to most people about the realm of flight. What keeps these flying machines in the sky? What are these lift and drag theories of physics? How much money does it cost to learn to fly an aircraft? How long before a person can fly by oneself? What about flying cross-country? How about if the weather is bad and one needs to fly by using instruments? Would a pilot get lost without those instruments? How does a pilot learn to trust the airplane and its mechanics? Who was this physicist named Bernoulli? The pathway to become a pilot would be long, but I believed I had the resolve to achieve my goal. I had really disliked law school, to put it mildly. I wanted to be a pilot, to realize my childhood ambition.

Participating in moot court and writing briefs was not remotely exciting to me. That I would be a lawyer, and thereby be in adversarial relationships almost every day of my life, was a dismal prospect. I had been cooped up with teachers and parental instructions throughout my entire youth, doing mostly what they thought best for me. But now I sensed a different goal: to vault toward new boundaries. I was tired of those adult voices. I gave a hard look at my future and then decided to snub my parents’ wishes that I become a lawyer. Flight school was fixed on my horizon.

In my final year of school, I made a compromise. I would spend my mornings taking flying lessons; in the afternoons, I would be in the university learning the law; and my evenings, I would spend as a part-time ground agent, boarding passengers for Eastern Airlines at Miami International Airport.

I promised myself that I would complete my schooling. Finish what you start. Do not quit. These words resonated in my mind. Completion of law school was the goal but not the end.

After graduation from both law school and flight school, I visited Eastern Airlines and interviewed for a job in the cockpit. Luck would have it that my interviewer, Jack, was an Eastern captain whose children had been taught by my wife in grade school—yes, the very schoolyard that I had plummeted toward, the schoolyard that was nearly my graveyard. That event in my early, near-catastrophic training experience resurfaced. Jack gave me the opportunity to attend class at the Eastern Airlines Training Academy in Miami. Thank you, Jack.

After many months of classroom and simulator instruction, I successfully completed the required training. I became a brand-spanking-new Lockheed Electra (four-engine turboprop) second officer (flight engineer). Eastern Airlines and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) sanctioned me as an official line pilot. I remembered being ebullient—absolutely tumbling-over-the-top happy—with that success. I had my commercial flight license. My new base would be Boston, flying the Eastern Shuttle to New York and Washington, D.C.

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An old picture of Eastern Airline’s Lockheed Electra boasting a livery of days gone by. The photo was given to me by an Eastern crew scheduler right after Eastern filed for bankruptcy. Nevertheless, this was my first commercial airliner to fly as a pilot.

I also realized that I had entered a world of unending education. The schoolhouse doors would be open for my entire career. Even if I stayed on one aircraft and in the same seat, I would be trained, retrained, and updated, and then have to comply with the twice-annual simulator training sessions. There would be four or five more days of simulator practice sessions followed by the critical evaluation, given by a company-certified check pilot or, sometimes, the FAA. Every pilot Eastern hired was expected to move up as the company grew, making it so a pilot’s seniority increased. The goal was to climb the ranks from flight engineer to copilot and then, ultimately, achieve a captainship. Wow, being in command of my own airship—the thought still takes my breath away.

Foreign travel adventures became my favorite pastime, my hobby. I had consciously placed myself into a world where travel was the vehicle and I was at its helm. When returning from a journey, reading material—a guidebook from my backpack about my next adventure—was my company. Once I returned to my welcoming home, I seriously planned for my next mouthwatering journey.

Now, as you know, the title of this book is Blind Dog on the Travel Trail. An explanation is in order. There may be a bit of humour noir caged in the title. I found myself piloting aircraft, knowing that I had to have 20/20 vision and that I certainly could not perform the job if blind. Early on in my aviation career, I had a small business for a variety of uses, mostly nautical, for which I was required to have a corporate name, so I chose (tongue-in-cheek) Blind Side Aviators. The nuance of mixing aviation and blindness together fostered a sense of humor that was known in olden days as gallows humor. Well, my dark-sided humor went further when I took on the name. Many friends and fellow aviators laughingly called me Blind Dog, given this as my sobriquet. Rita and I took numerous journeys; it was evident to my colleagues that Blind Dog was traveling. Hence, Blind Dog on the Travel Trail seemed a perfect fit.

With my background somewhat in place, allow me to introduce myself. I am Larry Kritcher, a pilot and a humble traveler, with sometimes, an irreverent approach to many of my adventures. I would like you to come into my spirit house, share my adventures, and hear about some true and unusual journeys. May I share them with you?

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At the Great Wall of China (c. 2001), with wife, Rita.

An Ode to a Flight Path Less Traveled

To receive one’s wings allows entry into a highly privileged and noble fraternity. Few men receive them but once they go on, they never come off. These wings fuse the soul through adversity, resourcefulness and adrenalin. A pilot is a composed, logical man who has mastered and conquered flight. In his world, where risk taking is not an option, there remains the sensation of invincibility and with it, a call to the wild that permeates his being. He is a commander. There is a sense of pride that follows him in every step and breath that remains in his life. After his final flight, the memories of camaraderie, pride, responsibility, and accomplishment remain alive in his mind and soul. The very bearing of the man speaks of what he was and his heart still is. Because he flew, he envies few men on earth.

—Author unknown

Chapter 2

Salute

France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Great Britain

1962

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Corporal Kritcher, I presume. This was taken a few centuries ago. Yes, I, too, had youth.

In 1962 I was a twenty-two-year-old Marine and wanted to see the world. I wanted to go to Europe—anywhere in Europe. I was based in Quantico, Virginia, with one year remaining in my duty. I knew that as a US serviceman I was entitled to ride, subject to availability, on air force transport planes. If I could pull it off, this would be my first big adventure, my first journey across any ocean. I was not traveling with Mom and Dad anymore.

I found out that traveling for pleasure was something most stateside servicemen did not attempt during their tours. I had no one to ask about taking such an audacious journey. I knew no soldier who had ever contemplated anything like that before, let alone pull it off. I asked my platoon leader, my gunnery sergeant, the company first lieutenant, and the company captain. Not one of them had a clue how to go about going on an adventure like this. I learned early on that most of my fellow servicemen were not travelers or adventurers. They found it far too heavenly to go home on leave to attend to a possible girl-friend or to a comfortable, familiar neighborhood; it was much too much of an effort to visit afar. I recognized in many of my soldier friends an unsettled feeling when it came to the unknown. Go ahead, Kritcher, you do it and tell me about your adventure when you get back—if you ever get back. It was an awkward beginning indeed. Not having a girl friend or a neighborhood that I came from—I was a rural boy, it was an empty canvas that I could paint with those freedoms.

These were the cards on my table. I departed with zero advice, just a wild hair and my emerging desire to begin seeing the world. I would not tell anyone about my plans—not even my family. It was my first trip abroad. I was headed for Europe, the lands that only my parents knew about, as they had run away to and had lived in Europe. It was sacred to them. Therefore, I felt it to be a bit taboo for me to invade their elysian fields. But then again, maybe that is why I wanted to go. They followed a dream, so why shouldn’t I?

I was on a thirty-day military leave with a fellow patriot, my buddy Lance. We hitchhiked from our home base at Camp Quantico, in northern Virginia, to Dover, Delaware, and were strong-minded to find out if there were any US Air Force MAT (military air transport) flights leaving that evening for anyplace in Europe. Wow, the very first flight listed was one to Paris, France. Yes, it had space for two of us. Yahoo, let the good times roll.

I think the four-engine, propeller-driven DC-7 carried about a hundred passengers, maybe a few more. Most of them were military personnel on orders with their dependents. They were headed to new lives on distant shores. Lance and I were headed out on my damn Larry dream.

The sun had just settled below the horizon as the DC-7 taxied out the terminal ramp for our departure. The pre-takeoff run-up at the runway threshold was ear freaking piercing. Lance and I were seated in the aft portion of the cabin, watching the black aviation exhaust rocket out the tailpipes mixed with crackling, flashing backfires. To me, those radial engines burst with a thunder of incredible might—of freedom. The pilot released the brakes, and the aircraft lurched forward. Off we thundered into the night sky. My heart pounded with near-uncontrollable excitement. Probably anybody’s would have after that deafening exodus. In all honesty, it super-furthered the hype in me. It might even be said that those roaring engines ignited my future.

I sat there and glanced at my travel friend, Lance. He had a smile of satisfaction—maybe of triumph—on his face. I knew we would travel well together. I remembered my father’s words: Style is not what you wear but how you lead your life. The two of us were leading our way together into our unknown future. I wanted to remember my father’s words.

A few hours later we landed in Gander, Newfoundland, for a fueling top-off, before making the North Atlantic Ocean crossing. The airplane captain had welcomed us aboard and explained that we would lose five hours of sleep upon our arrival in Paris, given the change in time zone. After our takeoff from Gander, while flying over the North Atlantic near the Arctic Circle, I witnessed my first aurora borealis. The dark sky was draped with a soft, whispery hanging curtain that was a greenish-white veil created by electrical storms from the sun—ninety-three million miles away. The plasma is emitted and then pierces Earth’s defensive shield. The Eskimos refer to the aurora borealis as candle dragons. How beautiful it was. I’ve never stopped marveling at our earth, and at the sky with its limitless boundaries. I was exhilarated while falling into a slumber. Lance had a calm, satisfied look on his face. He was asleep.

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For the first time, I saw the aurora borealis, somewhere near Greenland.

Would God please give me a break! Awe, indeed.

What would the morning bring on my euphoric European horizon? I was lost in huge dreams that were fuzzed over by the early rays of the sun. I was young and very eager. I think young people see no limits and have probably fewer goals—selfishly satisfying their appetite for the immediate unknown. It was that way with me—just a young guy, a soldier wanting everything all at one time. There was an innate insistence that there could be no dead ends. I never intended to end my life’s journey to the grave by arriving in a beautiful coffin with a well-preserved body. The feeling I wanted was akin to skidding in broadside, totally disheveled and worn out, showing what a damn good ride I had. Yeah, when I think back on those days, it seemed that I always wanted to eat my dessert first.

From Shannon and its duty-free shops, it was a short flight to Paris. Lance and I found our way into the city center by public bus, but we had no idea where to get off. A map was the first purchase we would make. As you may remember, we hadn’t prepared for Paris. We merely took the first available transatlantic flight that was offered. We came prepackaged—ignorant and carefree.

We found a small hotel in Montparnasse, where we parked ourselves for the better part of a week. I remember meeting a young French lass who agreed to share an evening with me. In those days, to regain entry into your living quarters, you had to reach a sentinel. In the still of the night, I clapped my hands several times, the sound echoing down the empty streets. A clap was returned, and the sentinel attempted to unlock the outer gate to my dwelling. Alas, I was lost, and my key never agreed with his. I was tossed back out into the night, to be reunited with Lance. My attempt at a soiree had failed.

Lance and I roamed the city and saw its popular sights, and then we found ourselves in a café talking with two other Americans. These guys, both confined to wheelchairs, had retired on government pensions for injuries sustained while serving in the Korean War. They had had their specially rigged 1958 Oldsmobile shipped to Europe and were out to see the continent. The following evening Lance and I met them again, and a friendship ensued.

They had come from Portugal, via Spain and were making their way to Denmark. Before Lance or I knew it, we were packed in with them and riding through the French countryside toward Lubeck on the northern coast of Germany in the ’58 Olds. We took the automobile ferry to Denmark. On board I saw, and then consumed my first, smorgasbords, which were little more than open-faced sandwiches. They were laden with pickled fish, cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, and many other unknown (to me in those years) foods—probably anchovies, liver, and roe. Once on terra firma, we began our short drive to Copenhagen.

A hotel? Where? We wanted to be in the center of what made the city sparkle—the Tivoli Garden area. Next, it was all about finding a beer. We spied a small hole-in-the-wall and entered for an afternoon beer, and were pleasantly surprised to see a young Danish female serve us beer, topless. She had tattoos on her breasts; one read sweet, and the other read sour. I’d been to a couple of sleazy bars in America, but I had not seen nudity as prevalent as it seemed to be in Scandinavia. A few hours later, I was pushing Terry, and Lance was pushing Don, from the bar—maybe after having a bit too much. We started to race. I tripped. This sent Terry full bore down a slope, unmanned. He hit the curb and went upside down, skidding into a newsstand—fortunately unharmed.

Among the many attractions in Denmark, besides the sweet-and-sour episode, was Helsingør Castle. Later, the four of us picnicked our way by ferryboat to Malmo, Sweden. I recall it as an extremely staid and quiet city. A sign there read, Håll Bort Gräset (Keep Off the Grass). We hightailed it back to the city of endless fun of Copenhagen, and to sweet-and-sour.

Terry and Don were in for the long haul in Europe, whereas Lance and I had drifted down to a single week left of our military leave. Terry and Don chauffeured us to the Royal Danish airfield outside the city limits, where we parted company with them, offering many promises to continue someday—which we did, in Spain, the following year.

There were no flights available, so Lance and I spent a night in the visitors’ barracks and ate in the Danish military mess hall. The Danes were friendly and generous. The following day, we found a flight to Athens (nope, too far) and then a flight to England (that was the one for us). The propellers on the old C-47 started to turn with belches of exhaust. Away we thundered toward Upper Heyford, a US military airfield near Mildenhall, on the British mainland to the northeast of Cambridge. It was a short, bumpy ride in the back end of the cargo plane, which had no seats and only pull-down webbed racks to sit on. When the plane landed, Lance and I found out that we were roughly fifty miles north of London.

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We bumped along in an old C-47, crossing the English Channel.

An officer meeting the aircraft drove us out to the main road so we could start our venture to the city. We had our thumbs out for a ride. Of course, nobody stopped, realizing we were on the wrong side of the road. Good Lord, we were laughable. Remember, this was the first trip outside the United States for both of us. It was like an arrow through my heart when I realized how unworldly I was. But, hang on, it was the start of our learning curve about living in an unsheltered world. Once Lance and I moved to the other side of the road finally realizing that in England people drove over there, the next car that came along screeched to a stop. In we piled. The driver was only going a few miles down the road to a pub. Okay, just one, we said after he stated that he wanted to treat us to a pint on the day of our first trip to Britain and her pubs. Fortunately, the pub had rooms available.

This trip was my first introduction to the English populace, whom I had learned about from my parents. My first encounter with them was met with some trepidation—they were foreigners to me but were quite like me. I was embarrassed again (yes, Lance and I were the foreigners). I’d been told that Americans and the English were similar but separated by a common language. I observed how hospitable these Brits really were. Lance and I met other men in the chatter-filled pub. My memory is a bit vague, but I remember the establishment being very homey, with a stuffed pheasant or two. There were overfilled chairs covered by doilies. The walls and ceilings were probably painted white but had turned yellow from centuries of smoke, not just from the fireplace but also from patrons dragging on their pipes and cigarettes.

Lance and I were invited into the Englishmen’s circle of conversation; they praised men in uniform who fought for honor and country. But I sensed immediately that these men had a huge dose of chauvinism. Britain was number one in everything. Even if they weren’t, it seemed impossible for them to admit any secondary position. These men had been the first to do it—no matter what it was. But they also made Lance and me feel proud, giving us surges of pleasure, mixing compliments into their bravado. Maybe it was the first time I was complimented by a person from another country—and it did feel good.

I had had my first encounter with the British. Through conversation, I felt I had learned many things about their lifestyle. They generally were amazed that two young men from across the Atlantic Ocean, from the colonies, should be so brave as to wander so far from home. There we were, a mere fifty miles from London, and none of those men had been there—not ever, not one of them. Their curiosity for things afar seemed to be missing. Later on I found out that it was all-or-nothing. A Brit can be found in every corner of the earth; on the other hand, the ones who never travel rarely venture beyond their immediate neighborhood.

In my experience, the Brits wish, particularly in their minds, to be the most proper, the most educated, the most proud, and the most of everything, which sometimes wears on any soul. But, generally speaking, they, even when looking down their rather lengthy noses, past a jowl or two, can be some of the most gracious people on earth. Where else but in England could you ever hope to eat a pig-in-a-blanket, a toad-in-the-hole, or mushy peas? The stories I heard in that pub helped me see that the present-day British still mostly live in the age of colonialism and landed gentry, with the likes of queens and kings—a feudal system of times gone by. They were the last of the explorers, learning well from their predecessors, and using the experiences of the other European colonizers well to their advantage. The wealth of their citizens had been won by feudal welfare. He who had the biggest army won the land. All others were subjugated to him. Then came the firstborn male, who inherited everything. The unlucky second son left home, went beyond the fifty miles to London, and ended up in the four corners of earth.

The next morning, Lance and I started to get serious about getting back to the United States. We chickened out on a flight headed to North Africa—but it had made my eyes absolutely gleam. The more remote a destination, which of course Africa was, the harder it would have been to get home. We thought that we had better start looking for a flight back to the United States now, or else we’d be AWOL (absent without official leave). Fortunately, Stansted airfield, used jointly by the British Royal Air Force and the US Air Force, was just to the south of us and had a plane going to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey the following day. Once back on more familiar ground, Lance and I stood on the correct side of the highway and hitched a ride back to Quantico.

It was an adventure that most of my immediate base comrades wished they had participated in. Lance and I became extremely popular travel consultants for other would-be adventurers. By the way, from then on, we thumbed our way around in uniform. Now we knew that the world was partial to the men in the armed forces—unless they were on the wrong side of the road.

I also knew I was hooked on my drug of choice: travel. I had just the kind of a start I needed to begin loving this moseying around in foreign lands. Look out, here we go. What a great freakin’ start.

Chapter 3

Eastern Airlines, A 23-Year Career

1968-1991

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An Eastern Boeing 727-200 a passenger workhorse of the fleet.

Life with an airline was my dream. It became a reality on my birthday, October 7, 1967. I was based in Boston, flying the northeastern shuttle routes between Boston and New York, Newark and Washington, D.C. After several years of living on Cape Ann in the artist colony of Rockport, Massachusetts, my family and I decided to move back to Florida where I became a flight engineer on the Boeing 727. While based in Miami, I moved up the ranks, to a first officer, and eventually a captainship. Life was ideal, with no brushes with danger, which, enlarge makes my career happily dull. I had adventures mixed with an occasional non-adventure during my 23-year career at Eastern. I spent about 15,000 hours flying the Boeing 727 aircraft through the Caribbean, Central, and South America. The Amazon, versus the Andes, was magnificent chemistry for my brain—jungle versus snow-capped mountains. There my life seemed to take on a new dimension. Maybe I was growing into an age of sincerity. You could easily kill yourself south of the U.S. border. I realized that a modern world could fade away by merely crossing a boundary, and that old customs could easily coexist with even older ones. The thinking environment was not synchronized to what I commonly found in North America. In many instances Spanish and Portuguese replaced English. As a pilot, I recognized it was imperative to understand the ways of people that were foreign to my North American-trained brain. Seriousness had its significance, but fortunately did not hinder my desire to see these worlds.

I had a plan to see Punta Arenas at Chile’s most southern tip of South America after my scheduled flight to Santiago. Starting my flying sequence in Miami, I would climb in the cockpit as a copilot at noontime and fly to Panama City, Panama, on to Lima, Peru and end up in Santiago, Chile at midnight. The layover was three days, and then I would reverse the trip back to Miami. I wanted to go to Cabo Horno (Cape Horn) the tip of Chile, to see where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans connect at the Straits of Magellan; the ones he sailed through on his adventures around the world. I knew that the Chilean Airline, Ladeco, flew to Puerto Mont and continued down the backbone of the Andes Mountains to Punta Arenas, on the straits.

The morning after our midnight Santiago arrival, I returned to the airport and boarded the Ladeco flight heading south. We stopped in beautiful Puerto Mont and I vowed to return. My real mission was the flight on to Punta Arenas. Flying over the southern Andes was full of beautiful sights, but ungodly rough. The turbulence coming off the high mountains was torturous. Three hours later we landed. I noticed that Mother Nature was not showing off here. The place was unpleasant; the tides were so low at the extremes of the earth, that they turned the snowy mud into a shimmering glaze of partially frozen land. When I arrived, the tide was very low, and the town of Punta Arenas had an unscrubed, grubby frontier appearance to it. I had something else in mind. I took a taxi to the waterfront and stuck my toe in the channel, and said hello to Captain Magellan. The taxi then drove me back through town to the airport.

I reboarded the same airplane and took off on its northerly return to Puerto Mont. That would be my night stop. My guidebook called the area The Alps of South America. The scenery was mountainous, fresh, and took on an isolated beauty. I rented a car and drove about, feeling totally alone, like I was dropped off the earth I knew, into a chasm of beauty mixed with desolation. The town of Puerto Mont was similarly lonely, with an absence of man and his machinery. I had to ring the desk bell at the lone hotel. Eventually, a young man appeared and I checked into the Hotel O’Higgins. After a simple, grilled fish dinner, I happily hit the sack. The next morning it was off to the airport to fly north to Santiago. I don’t think Eastern Airlines would have approved of this side trip. What if I hadn’t gotten back for the flight home to Miami?

The coastline of Chile north of Valparaiso is a rocky cliff-lined scenic drive. Our crew knew of a grand lodge high above the Pacific Ocean where we satiated ourselves with fresh mollusks and fish. The sun setting over the southern Pacific Ocean was simply awe-inspiring. The water was shady and cold looking with dark green seaweed floating in huge sheaves. The combination of sky and ocean seemed ethereal, if not a bit forlorn.

I have come to realize that my feelings of loneliness in these distant lands should not have come as a surprise. I may have been a country kid, but my adult life was conducted in the large city of Miami, where there was never an absence of people. Loneliness was a good feeling to learn. In the ensuing years of my career, I frequently did things on my own. I would lovingly amuse myself with a book at a bar or a dining table in a far-away country. I might add, the reading material was usually travel literature about the very land I was in. I enjoyed digging deeper into its culture and what to explore next.

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Copilot Kritcher talking to Air Traffic Control (ATC).

The 1960s and 70s were the years of the cocaine cowboys. Drug trafficking seemed to be front-page newspaper stories, and on a daily basis here in Miami. Where did a lot of these drugs come from? South America. Columbia was one of Eastern Airlines South American destinations. It is a country that expresses itself with many faces—indigenous people, including the Taíno and Amerindian, the Spanish, mestizo, mulatto, and African. Their ubiquitous Aguardiente, a scorching white-cane liquor, and the smell of heavy sweet fruit is nationwide—along with the greed of a culture dedicated in part to drugs.

My layover in Barranquilla, Columbia was about 12 hours. We, the crew, were driven to the hotel from the airport in a secure, company-approved limousine. I seemingly spied smugglers and drug traffickers around every corner. The hotel was about five stories, built in typical Spanish colonial design with outdoor hallways. The army policed each floor, making it look very secure, but it lent a feeling of intimidation. The soldiers rarely smiled. The land did not seem friendly.

One night, I was awakened by gunfire in the middle of the night. Crack, crack, crack. I could vaguely see the flashes. I rolled onto the floor and reached for the telephone. Crack, crack. I called Captain Carlos next door. He said, What, are you nuts? I don’t hear or see gunfire. I paused, got up and turned on the light. Crack, crack. My wall-unit air conditioner’s electrical plug was arcing; causing a loud cracking sound while sparks flew. Damn, my overly active mind never sleeps.

The Miami flight departure agent came into the cockpit. He informed me that onboard were a judge, plus a key witness in the Pablo Escobar narcotic trial to Cali, Columbia. Escobar was being tried for his leadership role in drug trafficking into the United States in the late 1980s. Many instances of sabotage were prevalent during these trials, and I was fearful that someone might try to tuck a bomb onboard to destroy the witness and the judge, which, of course would have annihilated everyone, including me. I was gazing into Pandora’s Box of dark energy. The airplane could be blown up in flight, the shards randomly scattered about the ocean. I was a new—a white-knuckled captain on that flight until our safe landing on the shores of South America. Many assassins lived in the mountains where they avoided what little law there was. Much of the law was maintained by the lawless. All crewmembers were aware of these dangers. I will admit that the darkness of this destination possibly made it more alluring. My curiosity kicked in.

The Andes Mountains and the high-altitude airport in Quito, Ecuador fascinated me. The elevation of the airport is eight thousand feet, which meant landings and takeoffs were of much longer distances—the air is thinner at that altitude, causing less lift. Aircraft performance is much better at sea level—the engines burn fuel better with heavier air. Additionally, you could only land and take off one way—north, because of the high, mountainous terrain. Fortunately, the prevailing winds were from that direction. A large jetliner mostly lands into the wind. A tailwind would make the aircraft float longer distances than desired.

On the approach to landing into Quito, we maneuvered quite a lot, following strict procedures, avoiding mountainous terrain to our landing.

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An ominous pile of wrecked aircraft littered the end of Quito’s sole runway, not every airplane made it in safely.

If the visibility was restricted by cloudy weather or rain, a landing could not be attempted and the aircraft would be flown to the alternate airport over the mountains to the Pacific coastline down in Guayaquil.

The Ecuadorian shrimp ceviche is popular in their cuisine. Made simple with a base of ketchup, spiced up in a variety of ways and topped with raw red onion rings. Popcorn is a ubiquitous snack accompanying most meals and has been ever since the Inca Indians produced corn centuries ago.

Back again in Santiago, Chile we, the crew, rented a car and began a drive north to the Andes and then east on the road towards Mendoza in Argentina. This road goes past Aconcagua (22,800 feet), the highest mountain peak in the Andes. We headed up the mountain pass and entered the snowline on hairpin curves. There were quite a few automobiles headed for the numerous ski resorts in Bariloche. I was driving at an extremely slow speed, when whamo, an automobile skidded off the hairpin road on the turn above our car and slammed down into the ditch 50 feet in front of us. The little white car was on its roof. Two women climbed out through the smashed front windshield and stood there, totally stunned. Nothing was hurt, with the exception their pride, plus a little car damage.

One of the other pilots with us related a story about an Alitalia aircrew that became snowed in up