SEAM - SKRG
Ambato Chachoan - Aeropuerto Internacional José María Córdova
We just stopped in Chachoan to refuel and took off right after that. The weather was not great during landing and I did not want to wait for it to get worse. These VFR-only regional airports do not have great weather services, so I was not sure how the weather conditions were going to develop.
We took off in the wrong direction (south instead of north). The purpose of this is to use some of the valley’s length to climb before we head into the mountains. This is a good technique that buys you some time when the climbs are tough. A straight-out departure would have put the mountain ranges right in front of us, and it’s always better to have a good margin of safety when it comes to distance between your plane and the ground:
As you progress north through the Andes, two things become obvious: one: the mountain range becomes narrower, which is always a good thing. If you need to bail out from the mountains due to bad weather, you are just a couple of minutes away from either the coast on the west or the tropical jungle on the east, where the weather might be better for a safe landing.
Two, the terrain gets less dry and arid, and becomes more jungle-like. This becomes obvious when we hit the Colombian tropical rain forest on our way to Medellin:
Medellin is Colombia’s second-largest airport after El Dorado in Bogota. This is the last stop we do in the Andes. After this, we are leaving South America for good and continuing our trip into Central America:
