When I traveled, only Satena arrived to Guainía and in "the Colombia's airline"e4 there is never share. We wait, we call every day and there was never share. They told us that we went a.m. at 6 o'clock to the airport "to see what they could make", but the idea of getting up so early with everything and suitcases, without the most minimum certainty, it convinced us that we would have to look for on other site.
Then, already in Guainía, they would count us that the airplanes arrive almost empty, with several free seats; what they do is to request a collaboration to put you in the airplane and to give you the surprise of the share when you are already in the air. Thanks to
, we were also said that the load planes sometimes took people and that was cheaper. That was an incentive. We check and it was 10 thousand pesos less, and if we were lucky we would have a seat; if not, we would go above boxes and corotose5 that the plane took. January3 arrived to its end and we should have arrived at its beginnings. 15 days of wait, with money that slipped away in one's hands as a hen amid the jungle, they went enough for convince anyone.
To the partner that also went to Guainía it was not so bad. Telmarrosa Ceciliahurí Angarita Gómez is from Bogotá. She lived in the capital and she didn't have problems with the buses neither with the feeding. Where she had them it was in the National university, that seems to be more rigid in the paper work than Univalle. They demanded her to request permission in three different offices to retire for a semester and she had to present a work that demonstrated that she didn't leave for tourism, they credit it or not, neither it served her as a contribution for her career.
Anyway she decided to go; their principles demanded her to fulfill the given word. We went to buy the tickets to an office, at the other side of the city, where they received the load for the airport. Only two load lines arrive until Inírida and they ordered us to present us a.m. at 6 o'clock in "the track in front of El Doradoe6". That damned track doesn't exist for any taxi driver, in Bogotá they are few those that know where you can find that thing or another. If you question them, they send you where it is not, the most common thing is that they tell you «I don't know, look well in this direction, maybe you find it». After a lot of turns and a fight with the taxi driver so that he didn't cheat me (he made it already), I found the place crossing the street.
In a cellar full with boxes and barrels waited all the passengers. I arrived late 2 hours, but the airplane would come out about 10 in the morning, anyway. In the wait we met three missionary nuns, a lawyer, a policeman and a teacher that also went for Inírida. There were other 15 people that went in the same airplane but they stop at Puerto Carreño, in Vichada. All were habituated to wait, except us. It was not seen neither a small seat, neither a wall neither anything. We could not sit down in some box of the cellar, because we could damage that it took inside. We must to lean us back in the wall, to give turns so that the legs went not slept and to wait. We talk about those DC-9s those they had fallen for that time, but thanks to
We gave the tickets and we made line; the women and the children entered first, so that they reached to catch seat. The other ones would sit down on the boxes, or somewhere around, where we could. We ascend to the airplane through a metallic stairway, not the typical boarding ones, but a painter's one.
The load inside was not treated better than us: broken potato bundles were seen, thrown potatoes, boxes of broken mayonnaise and of tomato sauce bottles and with their content watered. There everything went: furniture, groceries, vegetables, cement, bars, etc. It had near to 12 seats in the part of ahead and the women occupied them almost all. We the men who were more than enough sat down among the potatoes, as in any chivae7, and we waited. At least we could look for the window and sit down where we wanted. They went up with the stairway to the fuselage with a lot of uproar and they threw it somewhere around, among the seats. Since the same airplane you felt in the countryside. The airplane was used by peasants and their voices and ways remembered the small town atmosphere.
Most of we were pure overweight. The managers of load carrier surplus the airplane to the maximum of their capacity and sometimes until more (and only speaking of load). Only when some airplane falls they adjust the controls; the rest of the time, a tragedy should be expected for not risking the life for a while.
When we finally leave toward the track, we had a line of airplanes of all type and size behind us: Light planes, Hercules, load jets, etc. waiting their shift to be able to raise flight. What irony, Bogotá has traffic trouble until in the airport!
The truth is that I felt very comfortable in the flight. I had an entire window to look down and to contemplate the landscape, without seats that were in the way if I wanted to look besides. I saw how the monstrous city went becoming mountains, little toy cows and trails of houses in the surroundings. The dark and cloudy green land went descending and it went peeling it self little by little in the agricultural areas, until becoming the grass of the plain. Waters of different colors were seen, with rivers and births borders full with thick forest. Every time that one of the toy cars passes through the little roads, they were formed small smoke clouds.
This is a postcard of the Amazon River that I found. It is more or less a vision of the Guainía from the air (in winter season.)
We made scale in Puerto Carreño and everybody had to descend so that they could discharge. We traveled the dusty and sandy streets of the urban helmet, hot as them alone. Tiny, of wide streets, the town didn't have a lot to show. It is only for highlighting the monument where the flag stands, the landmark that demonstrates where the Colombian territory begins.
"This way, exactly the same, is Inírida's climate, just a little bit fresher" told me those that had already gone. In the airport, almost the whole load was left below and it was replaced by a people's tumult; all were toasted by the sun and they had a singular air in speaking. Their faces revealed ancestors nearer to the indigenous, but they were the rich mestizo class that dressed up to date and they could pay the cost of the ticket.
The jet played earth hardly, all the rest of the boxes that were there come above us and we had to stop them among all, in a mess of hands, boxes, feet and potatoes. The children that had sat down more behind screamed "help!" among laughs, navigating in that sea of boxes. For good nothing happened to them.
The airplane stopped, they opened the scuttles and they put the stairway down again. From the windows mountains of white sand were seen around the airport, left there since they built it. In the opposite side a starry airplane lay years ago, almost whole, being turned to rust by sun and water.
When I went down the stairway, the first thing that I saw at the horizon was five columns of smoke, each one in a different cardinal point. I remembered the fights of the firemen against the fire in Cali's surroundings, almost always they were surrendered for arriving too late. It was seen once at the Cristo Rey's hill, just besides the statue, through a whole day and night. The problem was the same, but this time they burned four times more species of plants and animals. We were in Inírida, the Guainía's capital.
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