Oaxaca - Toluca, Mexico. Earthrounder Meeting Mexico City 23 - 28 Nov 2005

Great Earthrounder meeting

We made an early start but the formalities at Oaxaca airport took 2 hours and it was midday before we took off in our respective Mooneys for the 1 hour 30 minutes flight to Toluca – CarolAnn and Joe just a few minutes in front of us. It´s not often that we fly in tandem with friends, and it was fun to communicate with them over the radio. Flying VFR at 10,500 feet we were experiencing some turbulence over the mountainous terrain so decided to climb to 12,500 which was much more comfortable. CarolAnn and Joe stayed at 10,500 and it was a bumpy ride for them. In addition we even got a better groundspeed up there.
After about an hour’s taxi ride, we arrived at the 5-star Hotel Nikko where all the Earthrounders would be staying for the next 5 nights. Mexican Earthrounder and organizer of the meeting Jorge Cornish and his wife Malú were at the reception to greet us, together with some of our Earthrounder friends who had arrived the day before. After an excellent Japanese meal (the hotel is Japanese-run), we boarded a bus to take us to the tallest building in Mexico City for a welcome cocktail party.
Four wonderful days with our Earthrounder friends as well as potential Earthrounders whom we gladly provided with useful tips on the business of flying round the world. The days were spent visiting the Castillo de Chapultepec, the fascinating Anthropology Museum, the Teotihuacan Pyramids, the colonial neighbourhood of San Angel with its Saturday handicraft market and the painter Frida Kahlo´s house. All this was beautifully organized by Jorge, who even arranged for our bus to be equipped with TV screens showing pictures of the last Earthrounders meeting in Perth (in 2003) and photos of South Africa sent by the organizer-to-be of the next meeting scheduled for February 2008 in Cape Town, Frank Hettlich.