July 25, 1981. A Douglas DC-3, registration HK-772, takes off from Villavicencio bound for Carurú, deep in Colombia's Vaupés jungle. Nine people and fifteen drums of gasoline are on board. What should have been a routine flight turns to tragedy when a showboating maneuver sends the plane crashing into the treetops.
Of the nine on board, five survive. Four never come back.
This is the firsthand account of one of the survivors. A work of nonfiction about Colombian aviation in the 1980s: the DC-3s we inherited from World War II, the dirt airstrips carved into the jungle, the pilots who flew by visual reference alone, and the deals struck in territories the government never reached.
But beyond the crash itself, this is a story about the body's memory, about the randomness that decides who makes it home and who doesn't, and about what it means to fly again after brushing up against the edge of everything.
Essential reading for anyone drawn to the history of aviation in Latin America, survival narratives, and memoirs that reveal a country that no longer exists ? but left marks that never faded.
