Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 106
to sweep away the stench and to sort of sterilize the raw meat. At the time I was not
able to reason that far.
Just months before I had personally designed the runway from which we were now
trying to takeoff. I knew precisely when the plane should be aloft. We passed the point
and were still trying to get to rotation velocity. At this point my sense of smell had faded
away completely but my sense of distance was very keen. As we ran out of pavement
my daring captain retracted the landing gear and the plane flew. Amazing experience!
We circled inside the valley trying to reach enough altitude to handle the mountain pass
that opened the route to the Beni. I had always enjoyed the view of the Cochabamba
valley from the air but as my captain aimed toward the pass while we were still visibly
too low, I became more interested in making sure that those overworked engines could
lift us high enough. He assured me that we would soon hit some convection currents
that would push us up the rest of the way. Obviously he knew what he was talking about
because we cleared the mountain pass by what he labeled a comfortable one hundred
feet. I thought I must have had extraordinarily strong vision that day because I could see
cacti flopping around under our propellers wind.
The pass was the highest point in our flight path, but unbeknown to me, by this time the
engines had burned out their lubricating oil. I became aware of this circumstance
because I overheard my safety-oriented captain instructing his co-pilot to go put oil in
the engines. I didn’t think I heard him right but the co-pilot got up from his chair and
asked me to move away from the door threshold. I had been grasping the bulkhead so
hard I could barely open my hands to get out of the way. The co-pilot walked over to a
nearby window. I then noticed a hand pump connected to an oilcan with a hose that
extended to the engine outside through a hole in the aluminum skin. It terminated
somewhere under the cowling. The pilot feathered the propeller and momentarily
sustained flight with the other engine alone while the co-pilot energetically pumped oil
with his hand crank. Then they repeated the operation on the other side. When the copilot
completed his pumping on both engines he proudly announced that we were ready
for another hour’s flight.
No doubt that the oil was ingeniously delivered wherever it was supposed to go. Their
re-assurances indicated that this was standard operating procedure. I dearly wanted to
share their level of confidence and kept complimenting them on their safe practices
while silently hoping that we would soon arrive and land safely. We had now begun our
descent and had plenty of lubricating oil in the engines. I was about to settle down to an
aerial inspection of the jungle features we were beginning to fly over when the fearless
captain informed me that now it was time to save some gas.
It happened that at the time of year of this flight, the ranchers of the Beni burn
thousands of acres at a time, creating dense smog that lingers for days. Sure enough,
after a few minutes of flight, all I could see below us was a cloud of smoke. Upon
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