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S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 43 O ut of Puerto Jimenez, aboard a Britten-Norman Islander, a nine-passenger, twin-engine aircraft flying since the mid- '60s. Made in England but assembled in Romania, they had an outstanding safety record until lately. The fuselage was garishly painted— Technicolor mermaids, sea turtles, dolphins, and such. It could take off in a quarter-mile and cruise at 10,000 feet at a 140 knots for 800 miles if lightly loaded and properly fueled. This one was neither. The navigation system was a handheld GPS device attached to the center of the steering wheel with Velcro. There was some mighty fine fishing thereabouts, but most of the fishermen—a motley lot of Gringos, Englishmen, Swedes, and Germans—were targeting trophy sails and blue marlin. After two suppers of local chicken and skanky sausages, garnished with stories of fish but not fish, I reckoned if I wanted to eat something freshly caught I would have to catch it myself. So I headed for a rock pile on the north side of the Osa Peninsula. Fried snapper, snapper baked and broiled, mahi—dorado they call them down there—every way mahi can be served but sushi. I ate my share of raw fish in the Bahamas, but don't pass me another piece lest I am lost at sea. I managed to snag a couple of hundred- pound sails and one blue marlin in my spare time; caught, measured, photographed, and kissed them all goodbye. But alas, no fish could be flown out. They weighed passengers and luggage on a rusty bathroom scale before boarding, and ciphered with a stubby lead pencil on the page of a tattered notebook. Normal flight was out of Puerto Jimenez over the mountains to San Jose, but there are few normal flights in Costa Rica. We were diverted to Quecos to pick up another group of fishermen, so we flew over the lovely Osa rainforest, then skirted the Pacific edge, a bright, shining ribbon of beach below, row upon row of green bananas, citrus, and palms on the right, and on the left, the deep ocean cobalt blue The terminal at Quecos was a glorified fruit stand—tin roof canted just enough to shed the rain, chicken-wire walls, a horizons by roger pinckney When God is your copilot, you pray God Gets it riGht. beer cooler, and a Coke machine. Slightly more assuring than the terminal at Puerto Jimenez, which was adjacent to the cemetery. Both airstrips were gravel surrounded by tall and deep green jungle, great clouds of dust, and a hailstorm of pebbles when we touched down. The pilot taxied to the terminal, cut the engine on the entry-door side, and let the other engine idle. Throw the right switches and juice from the running engine would start the other one. Passengers filed out of the fruit stand terminal, and the pilot began to mumble, cussing very softly in Spanish. I knew the lingo. The Savior, the Holy Mother, all 12 apostles, Almighty God, St. Expedite, and St. Jude thrown in for good measure. St. Expedite was the patron saint of urgent causes; St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless ones. One of the passengers was Goliath personified. He must have weighed 350 pounds. The load was redistributed; all passengers disembarked, shuffled. They funneled Goliath into the back seat shaunl/istockphoto.com