Cayenne to Barcelona, Venezuela

11 - 12 Nov 2005

VIP reception in Barcelona by Carlos and Jesus, 50 hours maintenance

It was a 5 hour 30 minutes flight to Barcelona. There were some CBs around this time, but fortunately they were just to the right of our track, so no worries. Also, we were relieved to see that the stormscope is working, as it lit up to show electrical activity in the clouds. So it seems that the CBs on our Atlantic crossing were not active enough to activate the stormscope. Nice to know in retrospect!
Upon landing in Barcelona we were met by the customs people who asked us to take everything out of the plane for inspection. We judged this would be one of those “headwind on the ground” airports so were relieved when friends of our good friend Hector arrived to help us. They explained that Hector, who was not in good health, was very sad to be unable to greet us. He was at his other residence at quite a distance from Barcelona.
Hector’s friends, Jesus and Carlos, were wonderful to us. They handled all the airport hassle for us and then escorted us to the aeroclub where Jesus keeps his plane. Carlos’ daughter greeted us there with a lovely bunch of flowers for me and cool drinks for all. Jesus removed his plane from the hangar to make space for our Mooney as Flemming was to do the 50 hours maintenance the next day and would need some shade to work in. (The daytime temperature was around 32 C.)
Later Jesus drove us through a major traffic jam to a comfortable and safe hotel resort in the next town called Lecheria. He told us that Venezuela was not a safe place to live these days and showed us two bullet wounds on his stomach. He had been shot at twice when trying to pursue several thieves who had been burgling his neighbour, a woman living alone. One of the bullets passed straight through him and the other was still inside him. He was going to have it removed soon as it was causing some inflammation. After he had been shot, he still managed to shoot a couple of the thieves and they died shortly afterwards.
We decided to call Jesus our “Saviour”. When he was in Africa some years ago, a man asked him how he could have such a name. He replied, “Don’t worry, I’m not God, just His son.”
After an early breakfast, our Saviour drove Flemming back to the aeroclub to do the maintenance with the help of Carlos and his mechanics. Flemming had only found the time to polish one side of the plane before we left Geneva, so this was the chance to give it a full face lift. It certainly does wonders for the paintwork. Meanwhile, I took advantage of our comfortable, air conditioned room to catch up on some emails and start writing for the website. I didn’t even take a dip in the swimming pool!

Thanks to:

Hector TELLO, Carlos ALVARADO and Jesus Alberto PEREZ