Midnight over the Amazon
by Charlie Lacy
Years ago I would have never dreamed that I'd
be flying with a load of cattle over the Amazon jungle at midnight. It all
started in 1973 when I was contacted by the president and acting manager of
a Bolivia cooperative. The cooperative wanted to improve their cattle
production with superior bovine genetics, consequently it was their desire
to purchase some good Brahman and Brown Swiss cattle in Texas and fly the
cattle to the country of Bolivia.
The cattle were destined for Monteagudo, a small, outback village, located
in the southwestern part of the country, where the cooperative planned to
hold the animals while they recuperated from what turned out to be a very
hard trip. After the imported animals had recovered from the stress of the
trip and the harsh environmental changes, they were to be distributed to the
small farmers in the area, where they would be crossed with the local
cattle, known as Criollas (cattle brought to America by the Spaniards more
than 400 years ago). The Criolla cattle were tougher than hell, they had to
be for the horrendous local conditions, but they were very low in fertility,
as well as beef production and at their best, the Criolla cow could only
produce a couple of liters of milk a day.
Juan I. Gonzalez, President of the cooperative, had sent me a telegram
asking for my assistance in the selection and shipping of the cattle. At
that time I was a registered international cattle consultant with the World
Bank and Juan's cooperative had received one of the bank's circulars that
listed international contacts in the cattle export business and as fate
would have it, the cooperative contacted me. I agreed to assist the
cooperative and about three weeks later Juan was in Austin, Texas. Before
Juan's arrival I had contacted several Brahman and Brown Swiss breeders who
were more than eager to show us their cattle, particularly for the higher
prices being paid for export animals.
Juan told me he had been educated at a Jesuit school in Sucre, Bolivia, the
colonial capitol of the country. This was Juan's first trip out of Bolivia
and needless to say he was very impressed by the lifestyle in the United
States. Juan had studied education in Sucre and admitted upon his arrival
that he knew nothing about cattle and was totally depending on my experience
for the selection.
The import contract was for forty-one yearling Brahman heifers, twenty
yearling Brown Swiss heifers, two yearling Brown Swiss Bull calves and four
Brahman bull calves, from 15 to 18 months old, a total of sixty-seven head
of cattle. The import contract stipulated that the cattle were to be
purebred, with pedigreed, as well as registered with their respective
associations and in addition the cattle were required to meet a certain
health criteria that was standard policy for all cattle imported by the
country of Bolivia. After visiting about twelve ranches in four days we had
selected the cattle, finished our business and he departed for Bolivia.
I had given special instructions to Juan as to the pre-preparation of the
corrals and the area surrounding the corrals, where the Texas cattle would
recuperate from their trip. Everything had to be just right in order to
lessen the degree of local environmental contamination of the North American
cattle. The imported animals not being native Bolivian cattle, were not
immune to many of the illnesses that were present, that fortunately didn't
affect the native cattle. After many years in the area, the local cattle
had built up a strong resistance or immunity to such problems as
Paraplasmosis, various strains of fever ticks and many other types of
parasites, as well as numerous viruses, including several different strains
of Leptospirosis none of which found in Texas. Bolivia also had screw worms
and hoof and month disease, but the later was somewhat controlled by a
preventive vaccination administered every ninety days.
I had asked Juan to scrape the top 8 to 10 inches of soil from the corral
floor, and disinfect, on a daily basis, the complete corral system,
including the posts, planking, gates, water troughs, loading chutes,
buildings and all cattle working equipment. Juan was to install a good
lighting system that would keep the bats away at night and he would
quarantine an area of about three acres that surrounded the corrals. A
water purification system was installed and all the workers were required to
disinfect their boots before entering the area. In addition, the corrals
and the nearby surrounding area was fumigated every three days. The same
cleaning and disinfectant was used on the trucks that would transport the
cattle from our port of entry in Bolivia, the international airport located
at Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
As it was my custom, I planned to accompany the animals during the flight to
make sure none of the details were over looked. Although the cattle were
insured, I wanted to do everything possible to guarantee the animals arrived
in good condition at their final destination.
At about the same time an acquaintance in Austin introduced me to Walter, a
German, in his late fifties. Walter said he owned a restaurant near the
university and claimed to be a professor at the same university, which could
have been the truth. Walter who was interesting, although as it turned out
was a incredible liar, asked if he could go along on the flight and I
agreed. As a youth, Walter who seemed to have had a few blemishes in his
past, migrated from Germany to Peru and several years later to the United
States. He spoke good Spanish and although he was full of BS, he did make
himself extremely useful one time during the trip.
Finally the big day arrived and I was very excited. Walter and I left
Austin about 10:00 a.m. and we drove to the quarantine facilities, located
at the Houston International Airport, which was a little over two hours away
from Austin. All the paper work was finished and the cattle appeared to be
in good condition. I had hired a long single deck cattle truck to transport
the cattle from the quarantine corrals to the loading area, about five
minutes away and now all we had to do was wait for the plane. Just about
nightfall we were notified that the plane had arrived and was waiting at the
loading area.
We hurried over to the loading area because I couldn't wait to see the
aircraft. As we got within sight of the loading area, all I could see was
this huge shinny, four engine airplane. The young captain, who turned out
to be an ex-U. S. Air Force, Vietnam pilot, the co-pilot and the flight
engineer, all dressed in white shirts with gold bars on the shoulders,
flight caps with gold braid, all very official looking with the proper
insignias, were standing by the loading ramp. I introduced myself and
Walter and than Captain John took us aboard for an inspection. I had
contracted, what appeared to be about a 1948 vintage DC 7, prop engine,
cargo transport aircraft from an air freight service based in Miami to
transport the animals. After seeing the plane I was sure it had been used
somewhere out in the South Pacific to haul cargo just after the Second World
War.
The aluminum corrals had been assembled with several layers of thick plastic
covering the floor of the aircraft under the corrals. Everything seemed to
be in order and Captain John asked if I had a loading plan. I told him no,
but if he would give me the weight balance of the aircraft, I'd make the
loading plan. He agreed and in about ten minutes we were ready to load the
cattle. During the loading, Captain John, who must have been in his early
thirties, inquired as to the total weight and I told him about 56,000 pounds
of cattle and another 2,000 pounds or so of farming equipment. Captain John
looked at me with a sort of half grin of surprise on his face, than he
cleared his throat and said fine.
We finished the loading around 11:00 p.m. While the three crew members were
in the cockpit starting the giant engines and doing the pre-flight checks,
Walter and I were loading our personal luggage. When the right side engines
started I could see the release of a big puff of gray smoke, as I looked out
of a small 10 inch diameter port hole side window. The smoke didn't scare
me, but needless to say it was a surprise.
As it turned out, Walter and I would sit on two small jump seats just behind
the wall of the cockpit, in an area about 3 foot deep and 8 foot wide.
There was a narrow door that opened into the very crowded cockpit. As we
were storing our bags, we could hear the loud buzz of an electric motor
closing the large cargo door, that finished its descend with a heavy thud.
Suddenly the aircraft jerked and we started rolling down the taxi lane to
the runway. It caught my attention that although the cattle had been
bawling and restless when we loaded, the animals became very quiet and
didn't move a muscle when the plane started taxiing.
We finally reached the end of the taxi lane and turned on to the runway. I
opened the metal door to the cockpit and to my surprise, Captain John was
sitting shirtless and was wearing a pair of large leather gloves, the type
you see used by the old locomotive drivers. Captain John revved up the four
enormous engines while the other two crew members checked the lights, gages
and other instruments. There seemed to be a satisfactory mutual agreement
between the crew members as the plane began to roll down the runway. In
only a few seconds the lights along the side of the runway began to past
very rapidly and it seemed that we should have began our lift off, but
strangely enough we were still rolling down the runway. I looked at Captain
John, who appeared to be struggling with the controls and oddly enough kept
repeating, "come on now, come on" and at last, in what seemed to be forever,
the plane slowly became airborne. I looked out the port hole and I could
see the lights of the runway, near but behind us and the waters of the Gulf
of Mexico just below us. It could have been my imagination, but at that
moment I would have swore the plane was overloaded.
Captain John assured us that everything was normal and under control as the
plane continued to climb. He said we would climb to an elevation of about
10,000 feet which was our cruising altitude. The plane couldn't cruise at a
higher altitude because it wasn't pressurized and didn't have oxygen. I
glanced into the cargo area and the cattle were relaxed and doing fine.
Walter and I had a bite to eat and in no time we dozed off. Ever so often
one of us would wake up, look out the port hole and talk with the crew and
than doze off again. Neither of us slept for more than a couple of hours
that first night.
It was about 9:00 a.m. the next day and Captain John informed us that we
would be landing at Barranquilla, Columbia, in about an hour to refuel the
plane. Again I felt excited, I'd never be in Barranquilla and I was really
looking forward to the experience.
We had a very smooth landing at Barranquilla. While the plane was being
refueled, Walter and I decided to stretch our legs and went into the
terminal for some breakfast. We finished breakfast and meet Captain John in
the terminal who informed us that we'd takeoff in about another hour. There
really wasn't much to see at the old terminal building, just a few food
stands and the local people, but we walked around and talked with some of
the natives.
The takeoff at Barranquilla was much shorter than it had been at Houston
International. In almost no time we were airborne. The cattle were claim
as we began what we thought was the final leg of our trip, which happened to
pass over a part of the Andes mountains, than the Amazon jungle.
Our scheduled arrival time at Santa Cruz De La Sierra, Bolivia was about
8:00 p.m. I was thinking what a long flight from Texas to Bolivia. It
took us about 10 hours to fly from Houston to Barranquilla and it would take
another 6 hours flying time from Barranquilla to Santa Cruz, a total of 18
hours. It was just getting dark and I was really tired so I decided to
close my eyes and take a short nap before we landed. The loud humming of
the engines was almost soothing consequently it didn't take me long to fall
asleep.
I guess I'd slept longer than I'd thought and suddenly I was a woken to the
sounds of "May Day, May Day". It was pitch black outside as the co-pilot
continued his May Day, May Day announcements. Walter quickly filled me in
on the situation. It was about 9:00 p.m. and thank god it was a clear
night. The unfortunate thing is that we were somewhere over the Amazon
jungle and very low on fuel.
I immediately spoke with Captain John and he said we were heading the right
direction, but he didn't know exactly where we were on the map. Somewhere
between here and here, as he pointed to the map. I could see the indicator
needles on the round fuel gages almost bouncing off the empty mark and the
co-pilot, who didn't speak a word of Spanish, was still calling out "May
Day, May Day". I asked Captain John want he was going to do and he replied
that they were looking for a dry river bed, where he could set her down,
when the fuel was gone. He continued by saying it was best for Walter and I
to go to the rear of the plane where it would be safer, if we crash landed.
A thousand things were going through my mind at this moment. I went to the
cargo area and climbed along the aluminum fences and between the cattle to
the rear of the plane where the farm equipment was loaded. It was dark and
by lighting my cigarette lighter I could make out the outline of some of the
equipment. There was a large red piece of "I" beam steel, that was part of
a plow and I decided this would be as good a place as any if we should
crash. Crash in a dry river bed, in the middle of the Amazon jungle at
midnight, what in the hell was I thinking about as I made my way back to the
front of the plane.
I entered the cabin and the co-pilot was still calling out May Day. I told
Walter to get on horn and speak Spanish to see if someone could understand
him. Walter began his plea of "May Day, May Day" and began speaking in
Spanish. He asked if anyone could acknowledge our request and continued his
call for help. The flight engineer was studying the map and told Captain
John he thought he had found a dry river bed. I asked him how he could be
sure if the river was dry, but he didn't answer. Everyone was calm but it
was a really tense situation and I'm sure I wasn't the only one that was
scared to death.
Suddenly we could hear a crackling sound over the radio speaker and it
sounded as if someone was trying to answer us. Soon the crackling became
clearer and we understood that we were being answered by a ham radio
operator in the small town of Trinidad, Bolivia. Walter told the engineer
to look for Trinidad on the map and sure enough the engineer found it.
Walter explained our situation and asked if there was an airport nearby.
The man on the ground replied that yes there was a runway in Trinidad, but
it had no lights. The engineer gave Captain John the map coordinates of
Trinidad which was about 300 degrees on the compass. We all strained our
eyes but it was pitch black outside and we couldn't see a thing. We all
kept staring into the darkness and after a few minutes Captain John saw a
flick of dimming light off to his left. The radio connection with the ham
operator was clear and Walter continued talking, I guess he was afraid he'd
lose the connection if he didn't say something. At the moment of the
sighting of what he thought was a light, Captain John began to bring the
plane around and headed straight for that glimmer.
Within minutes we could see the lights of Trinidad in the far distance. As
we approached the town it looked like thousands of fire flies on the ground,
moving in all directions. Captain John warned us that we only had one shot
at the landing and I could see why because the indicator needles on the fuel
gages had stopped bouncing around and were sitting on empty! We passed, in
a left hand turn, over the town one time and we saw that the fire flies were
actually cars, trucks and motorcycles, with their lights on, heading for the
runway. The ham operator had put out an a general alarm and all the town
people who had vehicles with lights were on their way to light up the
landing strip.
Captain John had more or less circled and we could see the runway directly
in front of us. That courageous and luckily experienced pilot had lowered
the flaps and we were flying low, preparing to land. As it turns out he
made an excellent landing on the half paved runway, with not even the
slightest bounce. Captain John yelled at the co-pilot to go to full flaps
because it looked like we wouldn't have room to stop. The plane began to
slow down but without any warning, we suddenly ran out of paved runway. The
huge plane kept rolling on the hard packed dirt surface until we could see
several cars and motorcycles facing us, with their bright lights on, parked
at the end of the strip where the deep jungle began. Captain John finally
had her stopped and when he did the flight engineer opened a small exit door
below the cockpit and I jumped out. There was no radio communication at the
airport and Captain John wanted to know where to park his flying corral.
A middle aged lady, riding a small motorcycle, pulled up next to me and
motioned for me to get on the back and I did. I'm 6'4" and thin, I was
carrying my briefcase, wearing Levis, a shiny silver belt buckle, western
boots and a western straw hat and I'm sure the people thought I must have
been strange. The lady was trying to talk to me but I couldn't hear a word
she was saying due to tremendous roar of the DC 7 engines. The lady drove
away from the plane and as she did I asked her if she knew where we could
park the aircraft, she than stopped the motorcycle and she said in heavy
accented English "tell them to follow me" and I motioned with my hand to
Captain John to follow us. It was a short distance to the parking area and
within a few minutes the plane was parked and the engines were turned off.
The weather was warm and I yelled to Captain John to open the cargo door.
The engineer dropped an aluminum ladder from the cargo area and I climbed up
to check the cattle, that seemed to doing O K. Meanwhile Captain John,
Walter and the co-pilot were escorted to the local police headquarters to
have the flight plan checked. I found a couple of men who wanted to help
and asked them to water the cattle and than I took off for the police
headquarters with the lady on the motorcycle.
It was past midnight but the police headquarters was humming with activity.
Our landing was the most exciting thing that had happened in Trinidad,
Bolivia since the last revolution, which was about four years before.
Walter, who was translating for Captain John, was trying to explain to the
policeman in charge, who I think was a major, our situation. Uings the fuel
was hand pumped into the aircraft. Captain John told me we were so low on
fuel that there wasn't enough fuel remaining in the tanks to start the
engines. I could see the cattle were suffering from stress and tired, but
still in good condition. By about 2:00 p.m. the refueling of the aircraft
was complete, we had thanked everyone again and we were rolling down the
runway. Although the runway was much shorter than Houston International or
Barranquilla we didn't have any problem at takeoff, but from the port hole,
it seemed that the landing gear just cleared the top of the jungle at the
end of the strip.
It appears we had been short of fuel for three reasons. First, if the
aircraft was full of fuel the weight of the cattle and farm equipment would
have greatly exceeded the maximum load limits. Second, the crew purchased
less fuel in Barranquilla due to the higher cost. Third, due to not being
equipped with oxygen, the aircraft was subjected to fly at lower altitude
and crisscross through the Andes mountains, subsequently it couldn't fly the
shortest route. This poor judgment almost cost us our lives.
It was about 5:00 p.m. when we finally landed in Santa Cruz and Juan was
very glad to see us. He was waiting at the airport with seven small cattle
trucks and a small flat bed truck to haul the farm equipment. We had
everything unloaded before dark. The cattle were weak and I cautioned the
truck drivers to make sure to keep the cattle up and not let them lie down
in the truck, fearing that the stronger animals would stand on the weaker
animals, which often results in death of the weaker cattle.
Juan invited us to dinner and we bid farewell to the Captain John and the
other crew members. We loaded into Juan's red Toyota Jeep and soon after we
were enjoying a wonderful dinner. The trucks with the cattle had gone ahead
but we would catch them a few hours down the road.
The road to Monteagudo was practically dirt all the way. Juan knew the road
well and after bouncing around for about three hours, we caught the trucks.
The road had been cut through the jungle and there were many curves as well
as mountains. The trip from Santa Cruz to Monteagudo lasted about 7 hours
and we finally arrived at our final destination around four in the morning.
The cattle were unloaded and unfortunately we had lost eight head on the
trucks but we would lose another three head the following day, a total of
eleven head of cattle. I thought that under the circumstances we'd been
lucky. Fortunately the cattle were covered by insurance so there wasn't a
economical loss.
The first day at Monteagudo was a much needed rest for the cattle as well as
ourselves. The next day we were up early and began working the cattle. The
first thing on our agenda was to setup the working chute for the animals,
that Juan had purchased with the other farm equipment. After the chute was
setup we began passing the animals through the chute, branding them and
checking them one by one. Apart from a few cuts and bruises the cattle
appeared to be in relatively good condition. I worked in the corrals
shirtless, it was Winter in Texas and the warm Bolivian sunshine really felt
good. I was wearing Levis, waist high leather leggins, boots as well as my
western straw and I'm sure again I looked unusual to the other workers.
Monteagudo was an almost uninhabited village, without electricity or running
water, surrounded by jungle and tucked deep into the mountains. During our
four days at the corrals we went to the village only on one occasion and
that was when we were leaving for the cooperative headquarters, located at
Sucre, the colonial capital of the country.
Before we left Monteagudo, I took a final walk through the corrals to check
the cattle. The majority of the animals were still eating the concentrate
and those not eating were full and licking, lying under the warm morning
sun. The cattle had really recuperated in the last couple of days and as it
turned out not another animal died. About a year later I received a letter
from Juan at the cooperative. Some of the heifers had new calves at their
sides and the rest were ready to calf. The cooperative was very pleased
with the results of the importation and were discussing the possibility of
doing it again in the near future.
I don't suppose I'll ever forget about Captain John and our midnight flight
over the Amazon. Regardless of who was at fought for our running low of
fuel and that dark night over the jungle, if it hadn't been for the
incredible expertise of Captain John, I'm sure you wouldn't be reading this
story today.
Walter and I stayed in Sucre for a couple of days, than it was off to Salta,
Argentina, but that's another story.
Charlie Lacy, a transplanted West Texan living in Costa Rica, is a tropical zone cattle production and marketing specialist. In the past twenty-five years he has lived and worked in many Latin American countries as a cattle project consultant with several international organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Charlie is considered one of the few experts in his field and established the cattle marketing system for the country of Costa Rica. His short stories are true accounts of some of his experiences in the Latin American cattle business. Any comments about the stories can be sent to endovac@sol.racsa.co.cr.
