Aircraft: Cessna 210K - CXBHN.
Date: August 4th, 2024.
Flew above water for 5 hours straight from Grenada to Cayenne (French Guyane), slept at Cayenne and continued to Macapá (Brazil).
Spent 5 hours at Macapá. Had to go to an office at downtown and waited a couple hours for it to open, only to realise the custom's officer was the same guy we saw at the airport, same guy who told us we couldn't do it at the airport. Of course, our parking exceeded what we had already paid, and it took us 40 minutes to pay 5 BRL (0.8 USD). In addition, there was no fuel available without prior notice. Macapá was a disaster.
After all that, we managed to sqweeze a couple of hours and landed at night on Marabá. The next day seemed surreal: tailwind and clear skies across all Brazil. We took the opportunity to fly around 9 hours that day, making 1 stop at Aragarças. This stop was the best: landing at a municipal airport means no landing fees, fast refuelling and happy locals waiting for you.
After 9 hours we landed almost at night at Foz do Iguaçu. Everything was going well until the fuel truck guy refused to refuel our plane becasue we didn't have stickers on our winds displaying "AVGAS 100LL". What seemed a joke at first heated up into a couple of discussions and more waiting, until someone working at the airport brought us the stickers (which are totally useless because any hose corresponding to another fuel would not pass through the wing's fuel cap).
Overall, flying through Brazil (making multiple stops) is difficult and tedious: international airports are extremely expensive and offer terrible services, flight plans are presented via an unreliable application, and procedures are very bureaucratic. On the good side, making stops at municipal airports reduces costs, waiting hours and annoyance.
Music from #InAudio: https://inaudio.org/
Track Name:
- Alright (Infraction)
- Returning Home (Infraction)
- Geography (Infraction)