This blog message is written from a small 3-bed hostel room right at the beach of the beautiful island of Caye Caulcer just off the Belize coast. This is probably as close to paradise as one can come; white sand beaches, 28 degrees Celsius in the air and a similar water temperature, friendly people and we have just enjoyed a fresh grilled fish for dinner. Life is treating us well.

Flightplanning towards Belize

Belize lies on the East coast of Central America and borders to the Caribbean Sea to the West, Mexico to the North and Guatemala to the West and South. The population of some 260 000 inhabitants occupies an area that includes the worlds second longest barrier reef among other things. This reef we plan to explore a bit further with some scuba diving tomorrow by the way. Belize is a fascinating mix of Creole, Mexican, Maya and British culture and it is the only country in Central America with English as official language.

Today we flew the 800 NM distance from Zihuatenejo. Most of the flight was carried out at 15000 feet over the mountainous area in eastern Mexico. The last few flights we have used oxygen almost every flight and so was the case today. As we approached the Guatemalan jungle we commenced our descend and finally we did a visual approach to Philip S W Goldson Intl at Belize City. We had an interesting event with the IFR chart information today where both the coordinates and the frequency of a VOR beacon (a radio aid used for en-route navigation) was incorrect in both our paper en-route charts and in the GPS database. The result of this was that it there was no way to detect that we were flying off the official airway. After some discussions with the Mexican air traffic controllers the error in the chart information was identified.

Written by Martin

Boat taxi to Caye Caulcer

Posted by: Osamu Manabe
As a pilot and also owner of a hearing aid battery retail operation, we wish you the best and a safe flight. That is a cool plane! From all of us at www.localbattery.com