We were all waiting to depart Venezuela when we learned it was a little more complicated than previous departures. Our flight plans had to be faxed to our next stop, approved and faxed back. It seems that ATC wants to know who is coming out of South America and when. You wouldn’t think this exercise was too difficult but it seemed to be taking a long time. It turned out that there was one controller in the tower who had to work the planes in the pattern while he filed our flight plans for us. If it weren’t for one of the pilots (who had been on a trip like this before) who went to the tower to assist the controller we might not have made it to Martinique before dark.

The slower planes got sent out first and we blasted off for Martinique. We were back on the ground at our next destination about an hour before dark. We touched down in Fort o France and once again we had a welcome reception by the ramp crew. The little yellow plane slid in right up front between the Mooney in the group and under a Caravan’s wing. Our 14 planes filled the GA ramp to capacity and a couple of planes had to park on the other side of the airport near the terminal. After taking on fuel we boarded a taxi and were off for Trois Islets where we would base for the next couple of days.

The accommodations in Martinique were not what most people expected. We had known earlier in the trip that our reservations here had been inadvertently canceled and our leader had scrambled to have us a place to stay. Upon arrival we learned that our rooms were not up to the four star level we had come to expect. Now, I'm not saying it was a dive. If I had been a college kid backpacking across Europe it would have been great. Some ventured out to find better accommodations, Diana and I were more interested in dropping our bags and heading out to find some good food. After all, this may be the Caribbean but we were now in France and we all know that you go to France for the food! We weren’t disappointed.

Because of time logistics, it was a short stay. We arrived on Saturday afternoon and the next day there wasn’t much shopping to be done as it was Sunday and many stores were closed. We entertained ourselves with hiking around, finding places to eat, checking out some of the historical sites, enjoying the food and walking along the beach. A bikini salesman could go broke here, this is after all a French territory. Yes, Diana, the sun really was in my eyes walking down the beach when I almost stepped on that couple’s dog.

We really want to go back to Martinique for a longer stay. The countryside is beautiful, it is a relatively big island with a few airports and I think it deserves at least a week. Did I mention the food was really good.

On to La Romana, Dominican Republic

Monday morning it was back in the air again. Jim (C-182 ) and I had planned on stopping at St. Croix for gas and lunch. This is part of the US Virgin Islands so we got to go through US customs again. A bit more paperwork but straight forward none the less. We filed our flight plans with the tower and headed out. North over Guadeloupe, swing past Montserrat to look at the volcano, cut the corner left and head for St. Croix

When flying through the Caribbean you pass through several ATC countries and your flight plan isn’t always passed along. As the planes in front are handing off to San Juan Radio, one after the other is being asked to standby and get their flight plan air filed. I’m normally one to wait until the chatter dies down before I call ATC. It became obvious that if I waited much longer I would be past Puerto Rico before I could get a word in edgewise. "SAN JUAN RADIO, N996RV, ..NUMBER SIX". He came back laughing. "How many in your group?" "Thirteen". It was almost time to call St.Croix Approach when I broke in and said "be advised, 996RV and 759JK will be landing in St. Croix for fuel". At which time he rearranged the filing order and moved Jim and me to the front of the line. I don’t know if the planes out front ever got a flight plan re-filed before they were out of range.

Landing in St. Croix for gas, the controller recognized the aircraft type. "Hey, we have one of those based here on the island!" she said. I still hadn’t used the "E" word since we left Florida. We fueled up the planes and ourselves, called flight service to file our next leg and headed out. We flew direct to our next stop in the Dominican Republic, only having to deviate for some restricted airspace on the southwest corner of Puerto Rico.

Approaching the Dominican Republic and La Romana it was once again good to be next to terra firma. As we descended to the pattern we flew over the manicured resort that seemed to stretch for miles. After landing we gassed up, got our paper work in order and headed for customs. Here was a typical situation where there is no consistency at a point of entry. The people in front of us had to give Immigration one general declaration form, we needed three, and Jim, right behind us, needed five general declarations. The landing fee was US$10 and we only had a 20-dollar bill. Of course they didn’t have change and after a LOT of talking they let me pay for Jim’s landing fee. They were perfectly willing to take my $20 and waive the change.

We cleared the airport, grabbed a taxi and headed for the resort office. Checking in we got keys for our room and keys for our golf cart. A golf cart was standard issue for the guests since the place was so big. We took a couple of drives around the place and found the tennis village, riding stables, polo field, shooting range, beaches, golf courses and restaurants. A person could come here and spend a lot of time before they got tired of it.

La Romana resort started life as an old sugar plantation. As they built accommodations for the owners coming and going it grew so there was a place for the families to vacation. This grew to a place beyond the needs of the plantation and was turned into a destination resort. It has been a very popular vacation spot for celebrities over the years. There is a new-old city located just outside of La Romana, built about 20 years ago and fashioned to look 300 years old.

It has shops, museums and an amphitheater for tourists to enjoy artwork, local eats, history and culture. Lots to do here, catch them on off-season though, as we were pulling out we heard that they were booked solid for the Christmas season. That would be a huge crowd.

There are two 18 hole golf courses, a park land style course and a traditional links course called Teeth of the Dog modeled after Pebble Beach. I got to play a round on Teeth of the Dog and only lost about half a dozen balls in the surf. The course crosses the old runway in two places and there are electric gates that are closed when a plane is on approach or taking off. It would be a neat place for a bunch or RV’ers who like to play golf to go for a week. We need to fashion some drop tank style golf club racks for our birds. That way we could start an RV Golf circuit. Just one more excuse to fly around the country!

Back to the States

After three days at La Romana it was time to head home. This had been an adventure beyond anything I had ever undertaken. We decided that we could go all the way from La Romana to Exuma International in the Bahamas. A couple of planes stopped at Providenciales, Turks & Caicos for gas while the rest of us headed for the Bahamas. Leaning "aggressively" we landed at Exuma Intl. and put in 27 gallons, the most fuel we had taken on at any stop.

Once again fueling the planes and us we were heading for Ft Lauderdale Exec for a rush hour arrival. The weather was bunching up as we approached the coast but most of us finished up the leg VFR. Miami approach followed us to the handoff for FXE. I have heard some auctioneers in my time but the controller at FXE was impressive. It seemed like she didn’t take a breath for about five minutes and never missed a beat. Not only was it rush hour but we handed her 13 planes above the normal load coming in from the Bahamas almost all at once.

We cleared customs for the last time, got in and headed for our last stop of the day and our original point of departure from the US. In Boca Raton we tied down for the night and joined the rest of the group at a banquet dinner not far from the Holiday Inn where we would stay.

Heading West

From a mileage perspective we were only through two thirds of the trip. It was the middle of December and we were headed for Oregon VFR. It took two extra days to get out of Florida due to low clouds and a couple of trains of thunderstorms. This gave us a chance to visit one of the couples on the trip at their beautiful home strip on 25 acres west of Ocala. John and Sara had made the trip in an immaculate 1954 Cessna-195. He’s an A&P/IA and while we were waiting for the weather to break we pulled the RV into his shop got the cowling off and finally got our oil changed about 25 hours late. As usual the screen was clean and everything was as it should be. We stopped at Cross City and saw the beer drinking pig (and fed him a long neck of his favorite brew). Night three had us waiting out thunderstorms in Panama City, the home base of our trip leader.

When the thunderstorms cleared we headed west into forty-knot head winds. It was annoying to be in a 150-knot plane making 105 over the ground. At our fuel stops we would run into other RV owners who recognized because they had followed the trip on our web page (thanks to Doug Reeves and the VansAirForce.net World Wide Wing web site). We made it to El Paso, Texas that night in spite of the winds.

0800 MDT, Monday, December 18.2000
El Paso to Aurora, Oregon (home) the next day saw the winds turn around. After gassing up in Casa Grande, AZ and Tonopah, NV, I landed at Medford in the dark and had been gaining ground speed all the way. I had a tail wind on the last leg into Aurora getting 165 kts over the ground. I pulled into the pattern and landed at 7:15 p.m PDT.

Epilog

It had been 25 days away from home, 16 days flying, 76 hours in the RV-4, 593 gallons of gas and over 9600 nautical miles. It was a hell of a trip. It didn’t go smooth as silk but that would have been too sterilized for me. I know now that flying in the Caribbean is something we can all do. The paperwork, customs and immigration and ATC challenges are minor compared to the thrill of going the distance.

I’m looking forward to more trips over those beautiful blue waters and hearing about RV’s adventuring out more. Some of the people here at home in the Northwest are planning a trip to Alaska this summer, some have traveled to Mexico annually. Next time I plan on a trip like this I’ll be looking for people to join up and if I hear about your trip in the works you just might get an email from a guy in a yellow RV-4 wondering if there’s room for one more plane.
 

Blue skies,
Mike & Diana
 

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