During my preflight on Caracas Del Centro International I saw something brown-grey squeezed under the airfilter. With my pencil I wanted to dislodge this frog, but it promptly jumped to the inside of the engine - rather than off the plane. Should I take off anyway and fry the creature? That would be taking a chance, and I thought it would be better to unscrew the cowling. The frog was hiding near the battery, and this time my pencil got him to return to its regular environment.

            After closing the engine, completing all other chores including paying 500 bolivars for 10 days’ parking, I took leave from my Venezuelan student and his uncle. In the excitement with the frog, though, I left my overnight bag with my camera and razor in my hosts’ car. Oscar brought it back to me to Florida several weeks later, but in the future I must check out the previous vehicle or domicile as carefully as the airplane.

            Caracas International is really a cut-off mountain similar to what can be found in west Virginia. The altitude is 2145 feet and the single airstrip is 6560 feet long. Take-off presented no problem except that I discovered that the airspeed indicator did not work. Since I was anxious to leave and doubted a mechanic could easily be found, I continued using the rpm instrument (tachometer) as my guide. I thought about my training on lost instruments; everything else worked. Now I had to concentrate on flying to clear mountains and clouds in this beautiful country but which was frightfully poor on emergency landing possibilities.

            As expected, the weather improved one hundred percent as soon as I approached the Venezuela shore line. I followed it from Higuerote to Barcelona to Cumana and then crossed a small strip of water to the Island of Margerita.

            I wanted to refuel and leave as soon as possible to get to Martinique before sundown. There was something wrong with my flight plan, however, and the tower refused to clear me for departure. I shut the engine down, passed the guard again telling him I had to straighten out some paperwork. To fill out a new international flight plan correctly I had to ask the attendant for the right abbreviations of airports and routes, and he got a bit cranky. Then I went past all other offices: Customs and Immigration. Tourists and citizens leaving the country are charged a departure tax but my receipt from Caracas was accepted. It was not possible to change my bolivars to dollars at the airport. All this took at least one hour, but now the tower let me go. Soon I left the island behind and was over open water for a long time. A position report had to be made to PIARCO giving ETA, DME distances and altitudes. With my limited instrumentation I could only partly comply and transmissions were unclear. Listening in on airliners conversation I got a very vague picture of the weather. After sunny Margerita I was surprised to meet clouds and the time was also advancing. My ADF was set for Grenada, and I should have been there much sooner. If only I had gotten all my windspeeds and done the calculations more thoroughly. But as I said, getting ready for taking off in Venezuela was delayed. Still out of sight of Grenada, I tuned in St. Vincent which to home on with my ADF (not exactly tracking), bypassing Grenada. There was no trouble with the ADF, and later I received the Martinique VOR. Clouds started to get thicker below me and the sun was getting low on my left (west) side. To upset me a bit more, I heard Martinique was IFR and didn’t like to make a night instrument landing in one of these strange, mountainous places. To my relief there was a little opening below and I saw land. It was St. Vincent, and the tower advised me to land there to avoid IFR conditions farther north. I landed on runway seven which went from the shoreline towards the mountains.

            This island looked beautiful enough, and I parked the plane without tying it down, relying on the control lock and a few rocks under the tires. I grabbed a few overnight necessities, including my portable radio, the Fielding travel guide, some maps and flightplanning material and appoached customs, immigration and airport control (these are always separate offices). Nobody inspected the airplane and what I left in it. General Declaration forms were requested and reasonable fees which I could pay by exchanging bolivars to eastern Caribbean dollars. Outside the attractive terminal, built by Canadians as a development aid, it was dark and raining a bit. A taxi driver cornered me and drove me to Kingstown. But I did not like that hotel, so I was driven to another right on the beach, which according to the driver featured a steel band orchestra and dancing every Friday night. I paid the driver who from now on stuck to me whenever I wanted to go somewhere, checked into the hotel, ate and had a good time listening to romantic Caribbean music. - Paradise! –

            Sunday I got to the airport of Arnos Vale, cleared all necessary offices and started my engine. But it did not develop full power and something seemed wrong. A pilot noticed oil squirting out, and after the engine was shut down we discovered a bent pushrod. After several days of frantic search through all neighboring islands and several days’ waiting I got a good mechanic to come down from St. Lucia to fix my engine. The charge was reasonable, but I had to fly with his associate to St. Lucia and withdraw some money from the Barclay bank.

            St. Vincent is a beautiful island, and I couldn’t have chosen a more romantic place to be grounded. The botanical garden contained an original breadfruit tree brought over from the south Pacific by notorious Captain Bligh. Most of the time I spent swimming in the ocean and several times stepped on sea urchins. Their spines are rather painful, and one of the hotel attendants helped me to get them out. He pulled a lime from a tree, cut it in half, rubbed the juice over the puncture and then lightened a candle to drip molten wax on my foot. He said the sea urchin thus treated will walk out, but the treatment was repeated several times especially when I caught a new spine.

            St. Lucia is also very beautiful, and as guest of the mechanics helper I could spend two days there. I visited the city of Castries, the banana experiment station of the Windward Islands, and a textile coloring factory. Swimming again was ideal and leaving became painful.

            With my plane repaired and the mechanic paid, I flew north over Martinique, Dominica, Guadelupe, Antigua, and St. Barthelemy to Sint Maartin.

            Prinses Juliana was the name of the well-built airport. I had to go through customs and turn in the usual General Declarations. With a taxi I went to Philipsburg. Now I was in the Netherlands Antilles but it seemed most people spoke English. This is a real tourist place featuring dutyfree shopping and a good beach. It is said to be the “in” -place and I enjoyed it. I felt I could not afford the taxi-drive around the island and visit the French part. So I just enjoyed myself in the Seaview motel. I called my wife, listened to a steeldrum band which played during dinner and had a good night’s sleep.

            The weather report next morning sounded OK, and as soon as customs opened I took my leave. The direction of my flight now was westward over the Virgin Islands of St. John and St. Thomas among others.

            San Juan, Puerto Rico, turned up as expected and I flew on to Mayaguez. Just before I got there I lost radio contact with San Juan a fact that later was held against me by customs and could have cost me dearly. However the officer came to the airport after I called him, explained the rules to me and accepted my apologies. A taxi took me to town, but since it was a weekend I could not visit the Experiment station. So it was back to the airport, buying gas for cash and a costly long distance call to St. Juan for the weather and filing a new flight plan. The man at the gaspump was rather unfriendly with me, so I was glad I could leave Puerto Rico behind.

            Landfall on the Dominican Republic came as planned, and I followed the rather sparcely populated north coast. There were some heavy clouds inland which I could easily avoid. I kept up my radio conversation with Santo Domingo and eventually was cleared to Puerto Plata. I was the only small plane pilot who arrived to park on the very hot, tiedown-less ramp. Three or four men not in uniform arrived and I got the idea they were officials. One wanted to check out the inside of my plane, peak into some of my luggage and kept assuring him I was a good guy having nothing to hide. One fellow had a little hand sprayer and sprayed the tires of my airplane, I have not idea what against. After I got my overnight things together put the sunshields on my windows and locked the plane, I followed the men to the terminal where I passed a few desks with officials and was cleared into the country. There was no bus outside, just taxis with a uniform charge of $23 (or 23 pesos) to downtown Puerto Plata. It was a lot farther than I thought, so I got a good view of the sugar plantations in the area. The driver told me of some other rich agricultural crops at other locations of the country which I thought was quite pretty. I was taken to a hotel near the shoreline, checked in and changed into my swimming shorts. The beach of Puerto Plata that I saw was not as good as those I visited on other islands. There was little sand, mostly corals, the water was not deep and farther towards the sea the waves were strong. Still I managed to sit in a warm tidal pool, cool off and enjoy the otherwise beautiful scenery. Later I went back to the hotel, dressed and walked along the beach to see the old fort and have an excellent meal consisting of fish, French fries, Dominican beer and later Dominican rum.

            This stay was very pleasant but I left in the morning after the hotel gave me a complimentary cup of Dominican coffee and accepted my Master Card. Then it was back to the airport with the same friendly taxi-driver who filled me in on local politics, friendly relations with tourists and discussion of agricultural fertility on the island.

            In clearing the country I had some money problem, because my travelers check was unacceptable, neither were Dominican pesos. Somehow I managed to pay $10 US for departure tax and the spraying fee. The gas I got the night before and was able to put it on a credit card. I met an American pilot in a American Yankey plane who was held up for a while getting fuel. I flew straight north, leaving the beautiful island for the open sea. After one hour I reached south Caicos and landed. I had to buy fuel and pay the usual high entering, departure and overtime taxes before taking off again. They took my exact last dollars and I started worrying about getting home.

            From south Caicos I flew back the same way I flew down about a month before. The beautiful Bahama islands with Mayaguana, Acklin Island, Crooked Island and the Exumas were as pretty from the air as before. A few of them had some clouds but I could outfly them easily. My money being as low as it was I did not stop for fuel in Nassau (where I could have used a credit card but needed cash for customs) and kept on flying. I actually stretched my luck much more than I should have. Andros passed under me, but it seamed to take for ever to reach Bimini. At last it came and the Fort Lauderdale VOR could be used for navigation. I felt real relieved again after landing in Fort Lauderdale International. Passing customs and refueling were routine. Then I filed IFR for home, flew around some cloud-buildups by turning east toward the sea, flew over Orlando and about four hours later happily landed at my home base.