Things started out innocently enough. Here's Bob, our intrepid traveller, waiting at the San Jose Jet Center. The boys are bringing the Navajo over from Concord. Does that look like a lot of baggage?

Not really. Bob's going to be gone for an entire month in the Caribbean. Note the flying boat motif Hawaiian shirt. Bob's already getting into the mood!

There's just one teeny little problem. Steve and Tim are over 1 hour late with the aircraft. What could possibly be going wrong!

Cell phone to the rescue! It seems teeny is not the way to describe this problem. It seems they're having a few disputes about how much luggage to bring. Apparently, the aircraft is completely full in Concord and they still have about half a minivan full of stuff to load, not to mention poor Bob here and his luggage. Steve asks nervously how much luggage Bob has and whether he will really need to bring all of it. Of course Bob has anticipated this problem and packed less than anyone else. Still, it is going to be a difficult problem to sort through.

Oh, oh. This is a scary way to start!

Get a load of all this junk (pardon my pun)!

We did manage to get most everything loaded, but not before we had jettisoned goodly amount of our humanitarian aid cargo. Did I forget to mention this is a mission of mercy and not a mere globetrotting pleasure cruise? Well, we needed some excuse to enter Cuba legally.

In any event, we are loaded and ready to head out!

It's going to be cozy back here for Mr. Bob, but it's still more room than I'd have flying Coach on Southwest!

Now would be a good time for Mr. Bob to have confidence in the flyboys in the front office. They certainly look relaxed. Hey what's that red light that's on right in the middle of the panel?

They're smiling, so it must be okay. I just wish they'd keep their eyes on the road!

Here is the beautiful new International Terminal. Kinda quaint, it'nt it? It was here that I got my first taste of dealing with Mexican officialdom. It's typically not very pleasant, although it isn't excruciating either. There is a pretty long line of individuals we have to deal with here. They include the aviation folks, customs, and immigration. Each one wants a handout as well as to have the proper paperwork filed.

In this case, customs was not available, so we had to wait for them. It seems the Capitan was on break. He appeared suddenly and announced very peremptorally that he only had 3 minutes for us.

We hustled through his office and bestowed the appropriate honorarium.

Here we are in the restaraunt at the Marriot, Puerto Vallarta. It seems that Timoteo (on the right) has persuaded the wait staff that it is Esteban's birthday. What the heck, we are definitely in a celebratory mood!

Actually, the hotel was very nice, and this restaraunt was a genuine find. It was a very good Sushi/Teppan Yaki bar. The staff was a lot of fun and this was a great way to kick off our first night on the trip.

Checking the weather at the FBO in PV. If this looks primitive to most US pilots used to checking in at Jet Centers, just wait. This was plush compared to others. We couldn't get an actual weather map so we had to read those nasty METARs in raw format. Yuck!

BTW, we used ICCS as our FBO. They were really nice folks. There were lots of pix on the wall of celebrities who had landed there like Arnold Scwarzenneger and Rod Stewart. We used the same firm to provide us with "handlers" to deal with customs and immigration in Cuba.

Weather is going to be a factor on this next leg. We're hoping to get all the way to Belize, but we'll have to thread our way through thunderstorms to do it. The weather radar is showing us what's up ahead. The scale goes from green to yellow to red and shows the severity of the weather. Basically, it's an indication of how much precipitation is happening inside the clouds because the radar is reflected by rain drops. It turns out that turbulence is also increased in direct proportion, so you really want to try to avoid the nastier stuff. Red is a bad thing in this case.

We're enroute to Bahia de Huatalco, where we will refuel before continuing on to Belize City.

Just as the radar depicts, there is a pretty solid layer of clouds below us. We had to spiral up on the instrument departure to get to the minimum safe altitude. It took quite a while as the loaded plane would only climb about 200 feet per minute. We noticed that controllers here can often take their sweet time answering queries as well. No matter, we got up to our assigned altitude and moved on out. It was made all the more pleasant by the Andrea Boccelli we had playing over the sound system. There is something so right about a nice soft Italian opera while in the clouds.

Someday, I have got to become a IFR pilot!