All "Up in the Air"

Fasten your seat belt for a small plane adventure!

At church on Sunday we heard of a tourist flight available through SamAir (South American Mission). We booked for Wednesday morning and got to the airstrip around 8:15. When we arrived they said we would have to wait because the airplane was needed for a medical emergency and had left earlier in the morning. We chose to come back at the same time on Thursday morning. It also happened to be less windy and it was a bit overcast. Take the photo tour with us; minus the bumps, noise and banks of the small plane. Preparing to leave.

We had a Bolivian pilot who is standing to Mark's right, in the blue shirt.

One reason we wanted to take the flight was to show Tati how airplane flights work. When visitors come, the Kozels go to the airport and pick them up and then take them back to the airport when they leave. We wanted to show her that people who leave on an airplane aren't still up there in the airplane flying around, they come back down someplace else. She was very excited about taking the ride! Here she is all set to go.

Co-pilots.

All set for take off. Our pilot prayed with us for a safe flight before we left.

Micah's first flight at 7 weeks old. After being in the air for a little, Micah fell asleep in Grandpa's lap and slept the rest of the flight.

Our flight was to be about 30 minutes long, we went West towards the foothills of the Andes mountains to see a water fall. It was a double falls in some rugged canyon area that doesn't look very accessible. This is also near the end of the dry season so there wasn't much water.

Above is a picture of the large river that flows North to the Amazon on the West side of Santa Cruz. Being in the dry season it is mostly sand and not very wide but when it rains water covers the whole river bed and even surrounding low areas. Santa Cruz lies just to the East of the mountains at the start of the flat lands which extend for several 100 miles towards Brazil.

While flying over the mountainous terrain we saw a lot of forested area like this(below). It was very beautiful.

We also saw areas of farm land that was cleared for cattle and crops. There are cattle trails and a river bed is this picture.

Next, we flew over the sand dunes, this is the place that many of you have visited while in Santa Cruz. They were neat to see from the air. We first flew over them the one direction and then the pilot circled and came back flying real low over the lake beside the dunes. I think we were flying at about 100 feet off the water. I thought to myself, "I hope we don't go too low, we have wheels on this plane, not pontoons." It reminded us of the IMAX movie we saw at the Grand Canyon, only we really were the ones flying(hold your lunch:).

From the Sand Dunes we flew over the Stansberry Home and Daycare. In the picture the three new houses (casitas) are on the upper right, the administration, kitchen, old dorms, the volunteers house in the lower center and the Daycare is in the upper left corner. The homes "concha" or concrete playing field is in the lower left and the one on the right belongs to the community. The Stansberry property is approximately 7 acres.

Our tour was over and it was good to be on the ground again!

After we returned to the hanger they quickly refueled and prepared the plane for another medical flight, they had gotten call just before we left of a need to pick someone up a one hour flight East of Santa Cruz that needed to come to the city for medical treatment. You can see just inside the door where they took out the two seats on the right side and and installed a stretcher/bed. The plane can haul one person on the stretcher and three other persons besides the pilot.

After refueling and a quick prayer the plane taxied down the grass runway for another flight to help with a special medical need. They also assist in mission work.