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Aviation History
1932
1932 - 0003.PDF
FLIGHT, JANUARY 1 i »:»2 By prearrangement, instead of flying directly to Cozumel, we headed over the northern peninsula of Yucatan to pick up a large inlet marked on the map as being about thirty miles north of a ruin known as Kan- tunil. Upon arriving there, however, we found no inlet as marked on the map, which considerably hampered our getting accurately located. Finally, by flying south from this point to the ruin at Coba—which, incidentally, was also inaccurately indicated—we began to get some idea of the lay of the country, and had become sufficiently orientated for our flights the following day. With this knowledge we headed for Cozumel, where we landed on the water. Fortunately, it was not necessary to remove all the artillery and cutlery again at this point, the ship remaining with its nose on the beach all night. There is a native village on the island of Cozumel, known as San Miguel, the inhabitants of which are mostly descendants of the Mayan Indians. On the day of our arrival, they were holding some sort of native festival, and insisted that we go around to the town in a small motor-boat, a distance of about thirty miles on the open sea, to a dance there that evening. Although we were not particularly keen about the trip or the dance, it seemed about the only prospect of finding a place to sleep, so we headed for the open sea in a very small motor-boat. The " voyage " seemed interminable. The water was very rough, the night was pitch black, and our escort had the temerity to tell us that the water was all full of rocks. Aside from these little annoyances and the discomfort of being drenched to the skin, we had a more or less enjoy able time. We managed to get dried out when we reached the village (which, incidentally, does not appear to have had the benefit of civic promotion campaigns), and attended the dance in the evening, letter we were ushered to beds in one of the native huts on the island. The beds were quite comfortable ; the only interrupting element to sound sleep was a scorpion, which kept crawling around under Mr. Alden Mason's bed and in the monuug uu.dly decided to get into the bed. Fortunately, Alden wu able to catch up with it before it did any .iatn.i^. As we prepared to take leave the next morning, the General in charge of the village insisted on kissing us all before we left. This procedure seemed a little out of the ordinary, but, not wishing to seem ungrateful tor the hospitality of the night, we acquiesced. After which we proceeded once more on our thirty-mile journey on the open sea, including another unscheduled shower bath, arriving back at the plane delightfully wet. and all ready for the morning's work. Leaving Cozumel on the morning of December 4, we (lew southward down the east coast of Yucatan to a large inlet about fifty miles to the south. Most of this flying was done at quite a low altitude, in order that we might inspect the temples along the seafront. After reaching the inlet, we flew inland over the jungle, and then north to the lakes at Coba. We discovered that these lake bad been incorrectly indicated on the map by a distance of approximately fifteen miles. We endeavoured to Racer- tain their exact location geographically by flying compass courses from Coba and finding exactly at what point we struck the island of Cozumel. We would then fly to the southern point of Cozumel, follow a compass course to Coba, and finally from that point fly back to the northern point of Cozumel. Ultimately we had five compass bear tngs, and we were able accurately to fix the exact longi tude and latitude of the village. We also discovered that there are five lakes there instead of two as originally charted. After this first day of flying, we decided that the only way to pick out new pyramids was to fly very low over the tree-tops, clearing them by about ten feet ; the temples would then stand up in clear silhouette. Inas much as this was rather a dangerous undertaking, we concluded that it would be best, rather than tly consistently Beautiful Lake Petah, Chiapas, Mexico, the beauty of which can only be appreciated from the air, since it lies hidden deep in the almost impenetrable forest lands. 5 c2
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