Up, up and away!

I had another oportunity to design another jungle airstrip for AGAPE ministries. I was able to bring EMI intern Josh with me on a voyage to Chel . Chel is a small village in northwestern mountains of Guatemala. It has no electricity and little influence from outside.

Our job was to survey the land and design the new airstrip. We took and hour and a half flight up north into the middle of nowhere in the northern mountains in Guatemala with Ludin from AGAPE in a small single engine 'jungle hopper' plane. Ludin even let me fly the plane for a while when we were up flying around stormclouds. Once the GPS said we were there we flew around and made our way through the maze of clouds as we descended to our destination. We flew into a small dirt runway on the side of a mountain in the farm called "the pearl" La Perla (see the video below for the landing)...

At La Perla we met with the local pastor and got ready for our couple hour journey even further into the jungle. We packed up his horse with our surveying equipment and Josh, Ludin and I went on the motorcycle. I rode the motorcycle and took Ludin part of the way and then returned for Josh. Once we arrived on the other side of the river we were able to ride in a pickup the rest of the way and the pastor took the horse back while Ludin followed us on the motorcycle. The road, or should I say path, continuing on to Chel was almost more than Josh could bear. He was already not feeling well and now he needed to stand up for a long bumpy ride on a container of diesel which got all over his pants and the fumes were making him even more sick. When we rounded the final hill, the sight of Chel was almost magical. It was beautiful. A little village nestled in a small valley with a river running through the middle.

We arrived at the church and we settled into our room. There would be no work done today because it was already getting dark and we were tired from the trip. Josh went to bed to try and shake the sickness while Ludin and I went to a lady's house to get food (because there are no restaurants in Chel). After dinner we went to bed at about 6pm. It was an early night because there are no lights so when it gets dark most people go to bed. Some people have solar panels and car batteries for minimal electricity and lighting but for the most part the sun rules the sleep schedule. My bed was just some boards with a blanket on them and my jeans for the next day for a pillow.

The next morning Josh had a fever and did not get out of bed the whole day. We traveled to the site to begin the survey. The truck could not make it all the way up the rocks so we walked the final bit. To my surprise, I found that about half of the area to be surveyed had thick brush about 15' tall. We decided to start the survey at the bottom where it was clear but after a few shots the battery was dieing in the survey equipment. I didn't know there was no electricity in Chel so I had not thought to charge it prior to leaving. we tried to charge it over night using a car battery but to no avail. The next day we were up against the wall. Would we need to go back just because the battery was dead?

I remembered that the equipment had a second battery but it was useless because it couldn't accept a charge so I had a hairball idea to cut up the battery to use it as a shell that can snap into the survey gun and then wire the two walkie-talkies together and then wire them to the broken battery in the gun and...it worked! we held the broken battery in place with a plastic bag we found that we rolled up into a rope and tightened it up by twisting a twig in the loose part of the bag. We held the walkie-talkies on top of the gun with Ludin's hankie and vuala! we had equipment that worked again.

The other problem was the brush. We had 5 guys with machetes and we told them a path to take and marked off every 100' where they would branch out to both sides so we could take side shots. This did take time but it worked It rained on us a while and we kept going with another plastic bag put over the gun with a hole cut in it so it could take measurements. By God's grace we finished the survey just, and I mean JUST in time. At the last scheduled shot of the survey I could barely see the yellow target good enough to take the shot and within 2 min, while we were taking down the equipment, it was totally dark. The next morning we set back out for La Perla and waited at the pastor's house for the weather to clear enough fro takeoff. Our one day trip turned into three and the fam was very happy to have me back home.