Puerto Inirida Colombia – A Trip Back in Time – April 19, 2013

“Robert Novell’s Third Dimension Blog”

Puerto Inirida, Colombia

Good morning and welcome back to the “Third Dimension Blog.” This week we are going to deviate from the norm and take a trip to Puerto Inirida in Colombia. I recently had a friend do a four day excursion, with one of his daughters and a number of friends, into the outback of Colombia to visit some of the oldest mountains in Latin America.

This area was originally explored, and introduced to the world, by Alexander Von Humboldt back in the late 1700’s/early 1800s when Colombia was a part of New Granada. What is New Granada you ask?

New Granada was controlled by Spain and consisted of Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, and Ecuador.  In addition to these core areas, the territory of the Viceroyalty of New Granada included Guyana, southwestern Suriname, and parts of northwestern Brazil northern Peru, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

Now, why is this important?

Alexander Von Humboldt was German and needed access, and cooperation, from the Spanish authorities in South America to make his trip a success. He accomplished this by obtaining Spanish Passports and letters of introduction that guaranteed him unfettered access to all of the areas on his planned visit and the rest of this story can be found if you click on the link above.

Now that we have dispensed with a short history lesson on Colombia take a minute to also look at the information on the “Humboldt Current” off of Peru, and how it factors in to what we in the U.S.A. call “El Nino,” and yes Alexander Von Humboldt was the man who discovered this anomaly.

Now, back to my story………………………….

Felipe, his daughter and friends, visited Puerto Inirida about a month ago. There were a number of airplanes involved, general aviation is alive and well in Colombia, but in the photos found at the link below I have only featured Felipe’s RV-6A.

Felipe had his RV-6A shipped into Colombia about ten years ago and assembled locally. He is currently contemplating buying an RV-14, the newest in the RV line, which is an extremely nice airplane.

An interesting note to Felipe’s trip was that even though they were shadowed by the local police from Puerto Inirida, probably wanted to be sure that all of these city folks didn’t get in trouble, he also told me that about thirty Marines, in combat gear and in a long boat, appeared out of nowhere the day they were in the village. He is not quite sure where they came from and while it was reassuring to have them close by it was also a little concerning that they felt the need to be there. This I can understand especially when you consider the FARC are still active in areas adjacent to Venezuela.

Click on the link for the photos, enjoy the video, and remember to stop by next week when we are going to talk about………………. Have a good weekend and think “Gatekeeper.”

Robert Novell

April 19, 2013

Photo Gallery