South America
In February 2018, we flew our Cirrus to Colombia and Ecuador, through Mexico and Central America. It was a total of 9,000 nm, 65 hours on Hobbs and 23 days trip. We visited Cartagena, Bogota, Popayan and Cali in Colombia and Quito and Guayaquil in Ecuador. On the way there and back, we also visited Guatemala and Panama and stopped for fuel in Costa Rica and San Salvador. The Cirrus is an amazing travelling machine; when you think it took us only 2.5 days, with moderate amount of flying per day to reach Panama City from San Francisco.
During the trip, I experienced a bad magneto on takeoff in Latacunga, Ecuador, which forced us to first scramble to find the part and a mechanic for repairs and than change the plans to compensate for the delays. For us, an optimum schedule is one day of flying and one or two days of visiting, which we were able to maintain until the mag failure.
We were flying with friends, in a small group of three airplanes and enjoyed visiting the sites together.
If you are interested in reading more about that trip, please check out my Blog
