February, 1968, I first solo'ed in a Cessna 150 and shortly there after I received my private pilot's license. I had joined the Flying Fighters Flying Club. At the time we owned 4 aircraft. Spent the next year flying around California and Nevada I decided to fly to Puerto Vallarto, Mexico, a trip of about 3,500 miles round trip. A couple we were friends with (Barbara & Andy Anderson) said they wanted to go with us. Our club had just purchased a brand new Cessna 182 Skylane. A beautiful four seater plane. The picture on the right is me performing a preflight before I head over to the terminal to pick up my passengers.
The overall flight plan was to fly from San Jose to Palm Springs and spend a few days lounging around the pool at my Mom & Dad's place. From there we flew to Calexico to check in with the us government and purchase flight insurance. Next step was a short flight across the border to to Mexicali to check in with the Mexican government. After getting all our paperwork together and paying a fee at each of five desks, filing a flight plan (required) we were on our way. We flew from Calexico to Hermosillo. Hermosillo airport personnel throughly checked out our plane, gassed it up and had me post a guard while we were gone.We spent a couple of days in the quaint little village. We paid all the little fees and headed on down to Mazatlan.
So far our flight had been pretty uneventful until we arrived over the Mazatlan airport and noticed it had a huge white X with large mounds of dirt at both ends of the runway. After several conversations in our broken Spanish with the tower we were told the airport was closed and directed us to the new airport a few miles away. The new airpot was really new. It was brand new and huge but the terminal was still under construction. I think we were the first private plane to land there.
After spending a few days in Mazatlan we decided we'd head down to Puerto Vallerta where we spent a few days before heading back to Mazatlan. We stayed over a couple more days, packed up and started heading toward home.
The maps below show the legs we flew heading south on on this trip.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
So now let's talk about returning
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |