Author: philg

Today was my 20th and last hour of helicopter instruction in Panama (tomorrow morning I’ll get on an American Airlines flight to Toronto, staying at www.metropolitan.com).  After a couple of autorotations in which one learns how to land the helicopter after the engine quits we proceeded up the Rio Chagres.  This is a national park, established to protect the rainforest in the Canal’s watershed.  In the past few decades Embera Indians have moved up from the remote malarial province of Darien, on the border with Columbia, to this region where the jungle environment is the same but access to health care and tourism jobs is much easier.

Our approach to the little village of grass huts involved flying up the center of the twisting river, about 10′ above the water, at 50 mph.  Steep hillsides with big trees constitute the banks of the fast-flowing Chagres and constitute a bit of a distraction for a beginning student.  Thanks to the lack of development in Panama one is safe from powerlines, those perennial killer of helicopter pilots, but we rounded a couple of corners to find people motoring along in dugout canoes.

The little Embera village that we visited contained 84 people from 17 families, each of whom lived in an elevated grass hut.  A traditional anthropologist might spend God knows how long paddling around looking for this village and then 12 months living here in one of those huts.  The  helicopter anthropologist sleeps in an air-conditioned bed in a modern hotel overlooking the Canal, takes a 30-minute flight into the village, and waits for Johnson, the one resident who speaks English, to come down towards the riverbank as the rotors spin down.  Here’s what we learned…

The Embera sustain themselves by catching fish in the river, killing wild pigs in the surrounding rainforest, growing some crops, and harvesting various wild plants.  They manufacture their own clothing, which is nada for the young kids, a loin cloth for the adults, and a beaded bikini top for women.  They make some cash by guiding cruise ship passengers on package tours and selling them handicrafts.

Technological comforts are limited to three hours of electricity per night and one channel of broadcast television that can be received through a gap in the ridge.  Cable and Wireless, the telecom monopoly that has been restricting Panama’s economic growth (it cost $7 to make a one-minute phone call from my hotel to Canada), installed a pay phone around which the Embera built a thatch phone booth.  It has been broken for six months.

There are no shops.  You can’t buy bottled water, Diet Coke, or any other packaged food.

At the center of the village is a single concrete building:  the schoolhouse.  The Panamanian government sends a teacher out for the wet season so that the children learn Spanish.  Imagine the dedication of this woman, a Latino from Panama City, to live in such a small isolated community in which many residents speak only the native Embera language.

[http://www.photo.net/philg/digiphotos/200401-panama-embera/ has some snapshots from the trip]

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The price of food and reasonable medical care have fallen so much that the world population swells to levels scarcely imaginable 200 years ago.  Whenever you get a bunch of people together in a tropical climate they inevitably seem to say to each other “Let’s go out and cut down all of the trees in the jungle so that we can grow crops or graze cattle.”

The last tropical rainforest left will very likely be the one right here in central Panama for it supplies one thing that is undeniably critical for the operation of the Canal:  rain.  The heart of the 80 km-long Canal is a big lake, 26 meters above sea level.  Every transit of a ship through the Canal requires that 52 million gallons of fresh water drain out of this lake into the Caribbean and Pacific.  The water is replenished from surrounding rainforest.  One thing that people in this part of the world have learned is that when you cut down all the trees it changes the local climate, generally cutting the amount of rain that falls.

Panama is one of the few places in the world where you don’t need a hippie environmentalist to talk up the value of the rainforest.  Here everyone knows what the rainforest is worth… $600 million per year in tolls.

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A Panamanian-American couple invited me over to dinner at their house the other night.  They are both well-educated and have excellent careers.  Their girls are 8 and 9.  I walked in the door to find an impeccably neat household.  No toys cluttering the floor.  Both husband and wife were relaxed and happy to chat.  Eventually an excellent meal appeared, cooked and served by one of two live-in nannies.  The dishes disappeared and the kids came into the room to hang out with the parents.

By dessert I’d figured out what was wrong with the picture.  These people had as much free time and energy to socialize as single childless Americans.  My American friends who are married with children are capable of straightening up the house and entertaining at home perhaps once every two months.  These upper middle-class Panamanians could do that every night if they wished.  Americans with kids are exhausted by the effort of driving them around and reshuffling the clutter.  Panamanians have their chauffeur do the chauffeuring.

All of the magic (two nannies and a full-time driver) happens for $1000/month.  A perfectly lovely house in a nice area can be had for $250,000.

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The hardest core person encountered so far on this trip is Eric Duquenoy (http://eduquenoy.chez.tiscali.fr).  He left France a little more than two years ago in a smallish 4WD diesel Mitsubishi, drove down through French Northwest Africa, shipped his car/home from Togo to Brazil, drove down to Ushuaia, Argentina, then came up the West Coast of South America as far as Ecuador before shipping the car up here to Panama City (there is no road link between Columbia and Panama and it is dangerous to drive through Columbia).  Eric is a 44-year-old former computer programmer who sleeps in a pop-up mattress/tent mounted to his car’s roof (similar to what you see at http://www.loftyshelters.com/).  Eric and I met in the old city this afternoon and he gave me a lift back to my hotel where I discovered the hardest core element of all in his story:  the Mitsubishi is unairconditioned.

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Flew from Miami to Panama City, Panama yesterday.  While sitting in a comfortable leather seat aboard an American Airlines 757 and eating a filet mignon lunch, I looked down at Cuba.  Supposedly they have everything to which we Americans aspire, i.e., universal health care and an excellent public education system.  Yet Cubans are dirt poor and it is we ignorant and infirm residents of the United States who designed and built the 757.  The comparison isn’t quite fair but really you’d think that the Cubans, being so well educated and blessed with a large and fertile country, would have done better for themselves.  Perhaps politics do matter, a sobering thought as Election 2004 sweeps across the U.S.

Graham, a Kiwi flight instructor from www.helipan.com, picked me up at the big international airport here (PTY) and, after a brief stop to change into shorts, we went to the small domestic airport and preflighted a Robinson R22 helicopter, removed the doors, and, with the Pacific Ocean at our backs, took off north along the Canal.  A moderate rain, unseasonable this time of year in Panama, pelted my bare skin though the gaping holes in the sides of the machine, now approaching its 100 mph (160 kph) cruising speed.  Soon the rain ended, however, and we were abeam the magnificent Miraflores Locks. After skirting the airspace over a prison and a rainforest resort we dropped down to 500′ over the jungle bordering Lake Gatun, the heart of the Panama Canal.  A few minutes later we were coming up on Colon, the big city and free trade zone at the Caribbean end of the Canal. After a quick glance down at the collapsed rusting rooftops of downtown Colon it is not hard to believe that this is the unemployment, poverty, and crime capital of the nation.

“… children run about in rags and the city’s largely black
population lives in rotting buildings.  … If you walk its streets,
even in th emiddle of the day, expect to get mugged.  It really is
that bad.”

— Lonely Planet guidebook (this is a publisher that thinks
   Columbia is a nice safe country to visit!)

Cruising at 80 mph west from Colon, 50′ above the breakers, we reached the mouth of the Rio Chagres, whose prodigious flow in the rainy season stymied the Canal builders.  This is the river that the pirate Henry Morgan used in 1671 to gain access to the original settlement of Panama City.  On the cliffs above the sea is the ruined Fuerte San Lorenzo, built to protect the Spanish gold trade from guys like Henry Morgan.  Adjacent to the fort is a partially fenced grassy area. Graham decided to put the R22 down there.  We walked around the fort for a bit, looked at the rusty cannon, and then fired up for the return trip to Panama City, landing just at sunset.

Then it was back to the hotel for a shorts-and-T-shirt dinner at a table outdoors, on a patio overlooking Canal-bound ships going underneath the Puente de las Americas.  The helicopter pilots talked about their jobs on the tuna boats here.  The 200′-long tuna boats carry a light helicopter so that the captain can go up and coordinate the action of little speed boats that collect the nets.  When the work is done the pilot has to land on a rolling metal deck, often spread with a net to provide friction.  “Sounds like landing on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier,” I observed.  “Oh, it is much harder than that,” the pilots noted.  “Remember that this is a very small ship and it goes up and down with the waves a lot more.”  Tuna boat helicopter pilots tend to be young and unmarried.

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One full day in South Florida so far:

• under blue skies and 75-degree temps, walked through extensive Japanese garden and bonsai exhibit, set amidst vast gated communities in Delray Beach
  
• toured the visitor center and botanical gardens of the American Orchid Society
  
• had a snack at sunset looking out over the Atlantic at the Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, whose bar is a wrap-around saltwater aquarium (mostly clown fish); you actually set your drink down on top of the acrylic
  
• went to Muvico to see the movie Monster, a brilliant portrayal of an average lesbian prostitute murderer, a glimpse of the Florida lifestyle outside of those iron gates and away from the private armed guards

Plan for today (Monday):  Vizcaya, lunch with a physical oceanographer, afternoon at friend’s mom’s parrot rescue operation, evening with some oft-removed cousins

Tuesday:  fly to Panama on American Airlines, get into Robinson R22 helicopter with instructor at http://www.helipan.com

Note to gourmets:  One great thing about South Florida is that you don’t have to watch the signs on I-95 carefully to figure out which exits have McDonald’s.  Every exit has a McDonald’s!  And a gas station.  And a couple more gas station/convenience stores.  And a couple more fast food places.  And a strip mall.

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There is an interesting discussion forum thread on Edward Tufte’s site right now.  It is inspiring because it shows that good things happen in the New England winter after all and it is also an inspiring use of an Internet discussion forum and photos on the Web.

Much as I love the depicted cold and snow, however, I think it is off to Miami and then Panama…

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After some rich New Yorkers got killed on a helicopter sightseeing flight in Hawaii, Hillary Clinton leaned on the FAA to tighten regulations regarding such tours.  In particular she wants the FAA to eliminate the ability of flightseeing companies to operate under “Part 91” (simple) and force them to operate under Part 135 of the regulations, which is designed for small airlines basically.  This will put about 700 companies out of the air tour business by the FAA’s estimate.  It is unclear that it will increase safety because (a) most of the big helicopter flightseeing operations are already Part 135 (gives them the ability to take people farther than 25 nautical miles), (b) most of the people who’ve been killed on air tours were killed by Part 135 operators, and (c) helicopters tend to be unsafe, even when piloted by experts.

Basically because some rich people got killed in a $1 million Part 135 helicopter Hillary Clinton wants to wipe out mom-and-pop air tour operators who fly little float planes or biplanes under Part 91.  The FAA has no statistics to show that the proposed regulations will make anyone safer and indeed hardly anyone gets killed on fair-weather airplane tours.  Here’s a comment that I submitted to the FAA via their Web site:

It would be nice if all aviation could be as safe as taking a Boeing 747 from one ILS-and-radar-equipped 12,000′ runway to another.  If we were to wrap additional regulations (Part 135 versus Part 91) around helicopter tours could they become as safe, per passenger-mile, as a ride in a 747?  From an engineering point of view, this doesn’t seem like a realistic short-term goal.  The NASA research report “U.S. Civil Rotorcraft Accidents, 1963 Through 1997” by Harris, F.D., Iseler, L. and Kasper, E. (NASA/TM-2000-209597, USAAMCOM-TR-00-A-006) concluded essentially that helicopters were impossible for human beings to control reliably without a lot of help from computers, computers that aren’t available until you get to helicopters that cost $5-10 million, 10 times the price of the helicopters that are typically used by air tour operators.

A pilot operating an air tour of any kind is already subject to more regulation than almost any American doing anything.  She needs to follow rules regarding visibility minimums, airspace, weight/balance, etc.  She needs to make sure that her aircraft is maintained at 100-hour intervals by federally certificated mechanics.  She needs to follow whatever rules are imposed by her insurance carrier.  She and her colleagues for the last 100 years have achieved a remarkably good safety record, partly because most pilots take the regulations seriously but perhaps mostly due to the fact that it is tough to get killed in a well-maintained airplane on a clear VFR day and if you take off and land at the same airport the weather isn’t likely to change from clear VFR to dangerous IMC.

Layering on Part 135 regulations might make people who love regulation feel good but it is tough to see what it will do for the public.  If all the existing Part 91 rules are followed, air tours are already very safe.  Instead of putting resources into processing reams of Part 135 paperwork, why not put those resources into (1) more ramp checks to make sure that air tour operators are actually following the existing rules, and (2) certifying inexpensive helicopter autopilots and stability augmentation systems?

In the United States an incumbent Senator is basically immune to electoral challenge.  Hillary Clinton seems to be in good health.  So we can probably expect to remain in office for at least another 40 years.  That’s a sobering thought for America’s aviators.

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Having recently read Path Between the Seas, I’m considering flying down to Panama next week to have a look at the Canal.  I’d appreciate it if any folks who’ve been to Panama recently can use the comment server or email to philg@mit.edu with hotel and sightseeing recommendations.  Once down there I’m considering continuing on to Belize to snorkel on the coral reef (what kind of shape is it in right now?  A lot of Caribbean coral has been dying recently I think) or maybe to Honduras to visit the Mayan ruins at Copan or maybe to Ecuador and the Galapagos.  I’ll also be stopping for a few days on the way down and back in South Florida.

[Oh yes… does one really need to take anti-malarial drugs to visit the San Blas Islands this time of year?  Those have some nasty side effects.]

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JetBlue recently started flying from Boston.  At $69 each way to Florida it is tough to resist so last week I hopped on a plane to Tampa.  The people who run this airline are geniuses.  In Boston they fly from the brand-new international terminal (E).  All of the flights to Europe leave in the evening.  The JetBlue flights leave in the middle of the day.  Thus there are no security lines and all of the shops, including a Borders bookstore, are empty.

The in-flight experience is comparable to the best Coach flight on a big airline.  You are moderately cramped on a new Airbus.  The 25 channels of DirectTV are depressing.  There is nothing interesting on, unless you want to keep up with the latest news in the Laci Peterson case.  There are no movie channels.  There are no music channels unless you count VH1.  Bring an MP3 player and noise-cancelling headphones.

Overall verdict on JetBlue:  brutally tough competition for the unionized airlines.

How about Florida?  Is it true that, as my neighbor says, “You have to regard every day spent in Florida as having been subtracted from your life”?

St. Pete is a lovely little town, close to a 50-mile bicycle rail-trail (Pinellas) at which you can rent a hybrid or recumbent bike.  Tampa has a good public aquarium and a fantastic steakhouse (Bern’s).  The Gulf Coast beaches ought to be nice but last week they were plagued with red tide, which means that dead fish wash up on the beach and you get an irritation in your throat.  Not too nice if you’ve booked your wedding at the $300/night Don Cesar Hotel.  It was also fun to go to Orlando for a day of theme park action.  The locals tend to dislike Disney theme parks, except for kids.  Everyone’s favorite seemed to be Universal’s Islands of Adventure, which has several world-class rollercoasters (The Hulk and Dueling Dragons (Fire and Ice)).  A day at a theme park is very loud and it was nice to spend the next day at some beautiful gardens in Orlando and Lake Wales, then visit the world’s largest concentration of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings at Florida Southern College (http://www.flsouthern.edu/fllwctr/index.htm).

While down in Florida I reflected on the fact that good weather is much more important when you don’t have a job.  If you’re going to sit in an office all day anyway, what difference does it make that it is cold or grey outside?  But if you’re retired any day that the weather is bad is stealing a day out of your life that could have been enjoyed outside on a bike, in a garden, in a small aircraft, etc.  When I pointed this out to a Floridian he said “Yes, that’s why God put all the Third World countries near the equator in warm climates so that people don’t mind not having a job.”

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