Mountains of the Macaw

3

Over a breakfast of huevos rancheros, Mitch outlined the day's plan.

"I've got us set for the morning commuter flight to Puerto Ayacucho," he told Amanda. "From there, we'll meet up with Roberto, and he'll fly us into La Esmeralda."

"I just got through to the mission," added Amanda. "They'll have a boat for us, fueled, equipped, and ready to go."

"That's great. Each flight isn't more than a couple of hours. We should be there by lunch. With any luck, we'll be down the Casiquiare and up the Pamoni by the end of the day. One way or the other, we should be back home by week's end."

Of course, things didn't always go as planned.

After checking out they hurried back to the airport. Mitch returned the rental car and they made their way to the Conviasa terminal with a good fifteen minutes to spare.

They needn't have hurried, though. At the check-in counter, they were informed that their flight was delayed "momentarily," for a "minor technical reason."

"Probably just need to replace a malfunctioning LED on some indicator," surmised Mitch.

Forty-five minutes later, they were given clearance to board. "Ah, breathing room," said Mitch, noting that the forty-six-passenger plane was only about half full. He let Amanda settle into the window seat as he stretched a leg into the aisle. The twin-engine turboprop whirred to life with the buzzing drone of a thousand hornets. Minutes later, a quick take-off run led to the familiar freedom of the sky.

"So, tell me more about this grandfather of yours," Amanda said during the flight. "He seems like an interesting guy."

"Grandpa Russ passed away a few years ago," began Mitch. "Emphysema, from all those unfiltered Camels. By trade, he was a photographer for National Geographic. But beyond that, Russell Cassidy left behind quite a legacy as a world traveler and adventurer. He did it all, from finding ancient Polynesian idols to sunken pirate ships in the Moluccas. And in Belém, he found those Spanish journals that set him off on his Venezuelan adventure that you read about last night. Monte de Fuego Verde, it was called: The Mountain of Green Fire. In his later years, he set up endowments for museums and educational institutions in some of the out-of-the-way places he'd been: New Guinea, Bhutan, Honduras."

"So, what happened in Venezuela?"

"He didn't make it as far as he'd hoped. He came down with malaria and barely made it back to Caracas in one piece. While he was in the hospital, he met a nurse, Rosa Ramirez, who would one day become his wife, and my grandmother. He went on to many other adventures, including others in Central and South America, but he only made it back to Venezuela one more time, and that was just to Caracas, when her father was dying. My grandma, she told me once that while they were there, she saw something in his eyes whenever he looked to the South. A longing, a green fire, perhaps, for that quest for Fuego Verde."

"And that's what you were doing down here a month ago," said Amanda. "You'd come down to pick up where your grandfather left off, continuing his quest for him, in his memory."

"Well, yes and no," said Mitch. "In the first place, I'm not my grandfather. I may have inherited his adventurous spirit, but I could never hope to accomplish half of what he did. I'm just a bush pilot. I fly well-paying clients out along the Keys or over to the Bahamas for their adventures, and in the process, I live out my own. It's a good life, and a happy one. But exploring the backcountry of Amazonas, looking for something no one else has found, except for a band of 'fierce ones' who would just as soon shoot you first with their fancy arrows? A bit beyond what even I'd get myself into. A fool's errand, my father used to call it. No, what I'd hoped to do was simply to see the region for myself, to take a tour like a regular tourist, and mostly to just be there, to reconnect."