True story...Christmas 1973... Flight to La Paz, Mexico with the Goldwater family and close friends. Barry chartered a twin engine Cessna 421, about 2 hours south of the Arizona/Mexican border... Forecast is for clear with widely scattered thunderstorms. Ahead it looks real dark but Im not worried because when we cleared Customs I remember him telling us he knew Mexico like the back of his hand...and he said...I also speak the language fluently giving me that sly grin of his... A few minutes later we are lost...and not only lost we have no maps because someone forgot to load the map case. After dodging a few storms we find ourselves flying over the Pacific Ocean following the beach Southbound with the ceiling getting lower by the mile... Finally about 500 feet over the water we flashed over a fishing village with a landing strip made of sea shells. As we land Barry keeps it nose high so we dont sink in with our weight...but the ground holds and before we can shut down the engines there is a crowd of curious villagers coming out in a light rain... For the next few minutes Barry tries his best to communicate with the locals but to no avail. Finally 89 year old Ollie Carey, a close friend of Mrs. G, and widow of silent movie actor Hairy Carey shouts out the rear door and in Fluent Spanish tells the leader we need fuel and directions to La Paz...Oh, Si Senora we have 50 gal drumsand its that way pointing out the direction... One hour later we made an instrument approach into the La Paz airport and found the area flooded and all roads to town were washed out. That freak storm had forced two other airplanes down killing several passengers. Ollie and Mrs. G were put up in theairport jail which only had two bunks and Barry and I spent the night in the airplane... I heard Mrs G say to Ollie, Im glad he is Fluent in flying! I never brought it up again and was sworn to secrecy until I wrote my book!! Great memories and times....
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 04:27:18 +0000
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