Mountains of the Macaw

1

"I don't like the looks of that weather up ahead. You may want to rethink this, amigo."

Mitch Cassidy had already noted the angry thunderheads building up over the highlands, but he urged the young Venezuelan pilot on. "Just a little farther, Roberto. Just over that ridge."

"The one with the darkest clouds? Not a good idea. What's so important over there, anyway?"

"A window to the past," said Mitch. "My grandfather journeyed there once. I'd kinda like to see it for myself."

Roberto hesitated for a moment, then sighed. "Okay, you the boss. But if that storm comes in, we're goin' back to La Esmeralda. You're a pilot yourself. You know."

To underscore his point, those dark clouds were backlit by a flash of lightning.

Mitch did indeed know. But he'd come too far to turn back now. Following in his grandfather's footsteps was the point of this trip, after all. He compared the landscape below to his grandfather's journal as Roberto guided the float plane over the crest.

"Hey, check out this mountain," Roberto said as the first drops of rain spotted the windshield.

It was an almost flat-topped mesa, the kind called tepuis in Venezuela. As tepuis went, it was relatively small and unremarkable, except for the waterfall issuing from a crevice about three quarters up on the southeast side.

"What in the world?" As they passed over the uneven summit, Mitch was staring down at a massive void, roughly circular in shape, dropping into an emerald green darkness, seemingly from summit to base.

"Sinkhole," explained Roberto. "One of the mysteries of the tepuis."

"It's like something out of The Lost World," said Mitch as he grabbed his camera. "I wonder what's down there?"

They had time for one pass before the rain began to pick up. "We're heading back," Roberto announced.

He banked but as the plane came around, it was bucked by a sudden gust of wind. "Hold on tight, amigo. It's about to get rough."

Mitch popped a stick of Beemans into his mouth, a nervous habit inherited from his grandfather. It helped to ease the tension when the flying got dicey. He hoped Roberto knew what he was doing. The kid couldn't have been much older than twenty-two. He scanned the sky ahead and the forbidding jungle below when something caught his eye. "Hey, look at this—" he began.

But Roberto cut him off. "Take a picture. We're outta here."

And now the sky unleashed its fury as a hard rain pelted the windshield and the wind came screaming down from the highlands like an equatorial jungle banshee. Roberto tightened his grip. "We gotta put down and wait it out."

"Make a run for the river," Mitch advised, as an abrupt crosswind punched the plane, lurching it to the left.

Roberto countered with rudder and control yoke to the right. The bottom dropped out of Mitch's stomach as they lost a hundred feet of altitude. Roberto goosed the throttle and eased the nose back up.

It was only twenty minutes back to La Esmeralda, but the sudden storm left them not even time enough for that. Towering cumulus clouds boiled all around, boxing them in and leaving no safe route other than down. The river, the only possible landing site, lay directly into the teeth of the storm. The fierce wind seemed to be coming from all directions as lightning made the dark clouds even more menacing. The poor little plane pitched about, a mere plaything of the winds. Mitch rode the turbulence with a seasoned attentiveness, his hands and feet intuitively reaching for the yoke and pedals that weren't there. He wasn't used to being the passenger. Still, he remained as focused as if he were the one in the left-hand seat. Roberto was nervously humming the theme from Star Wars, as he wrestled with the weather for mastery of the little plane.