Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Cloud Base Mayhem. I thought that music, a little classical version of the Pixies' Where Is My Mind, those of you who enjoyed Fight Club, I thought that was pretty applicable to today because your mind is going to be blown after hearing this story by Paul Guschlbauer about his overland expedition, flying a bush plane with his wife from the northern tip of Alaska to the southern tip of South America. That all started, I don't take any credit for this whatsoever, but I'll tell you a little back story. So back in 2009 or 10, I can't remember, I think 10, 2010, was sailing from Mozambique down South Africa, down the east coast around Cape of Good Hope with a buddy, Jake, who's a bush pilot up in Alaska.
It was just the two of us. That part of the world is even more famous than Cape Horn for shipwrecks. You get this super strong northerly current coming out of the Mozambique Channel and you get these southwest busters that come up from Antarctica and huge seas, very, very commonly get more than 80 foot seas there. Lots and lots of shipwrecks because there's not a lot of places to hide. You got, you know, like Durban and East London and a few ports. But anyway, pretty harrowing trip, big, big seas, a lot of wind. And Jake was sicker than a dog. He was really suffering. He's a bush pilot up in Alaska, not really a mariner, but he was an awesome co-pilot there and great crew member. And then we spent some time in Cape Town and then continued on up to the Cape Verde's.
He was with me for that whole time. And we talked a lot about big plans and big adventures and, you know, dreams on that trip because we had a lot of weeks together just isolated on a sailboat. And he talked about flying a bush plane from Alaska down to South America. And I kept encouraging him. I was like, dude. You got to do that. That just sounds amazing. Oh, my God, what a sick trip. And then fast forward a whole bunch of years and Paul Guschlbauer and I got to know each other in the 2015 X-Alps. And then when I started thinking about the Alaska project, I'd been thinking about it at that point for many years, but looking for a partner. Some of you have heard this story, but I was really wanting to do it with Paul and we weren't able to do that because of Red Bull in a weird way.
That's another story. But that winter. He started telling me about, you know, that he was getting his, you know, small pilot's license. And I was like, what, in Austria, why would you know, you can't do it there, man. You got to do it in Alaska. Anyway, you guys have heard this story. I introduced him to Ken, who was my kind of fixer and the Bush pilot, our main support for the Alaska project. And he was the guy that was flying around the crew, the film crew. And Paul did a lot of flying, but he had just basically just gotten his sign off right before that project started. By the end of the project, he had like more than $300,000. And this whole dream of Jake's wife from the Northern tip of Alaska down in the Southern tip of South America really took hold with Paul. And then he got married and I'll let him tell you the rest of the story.
But your mind is going to be blown. What an amazing adventure, adventure and journey. And I think they flew through 13 countries, but I'll let him tell you all that. So prepare to be wowed. This is not much of a paragliding story. But certainly. Ties into paragliding and ties into just freedom and just bitching adventure. Super cool. Very, very, very inspiring. I'm pretty envious. On the last show, I mentioned a little bit of housekeeping here for a bit. On the last show, I mentioned that we are leaving Patreon. That is happening. I appreciate all your feedback. Everybody was pretty psyched about that. And everybody said they'd switch over that I heard from. So haven't had time to do that. We just did a big mission out to Santa Barbara.
I'm out here for a month. To train. So I've been kind of busy dealing with snow at home. We've had a massive February and then getting the family out here to Santa Barbara to train for a month. So I haven't had time to switch us over and have the whole subscription service on the website and everything. But that will happen shortly. Those of you who are on Patreon, just stick with it for a bit and we'll get that switched over. So I'll announce how that's all happening in a in a future podcast.
The other bit of news I forgot to tell you about last time when I was down in Columbia. Spent quite a bit of time with Hugh Miller. I've done quite a bit of stuff over the years with Cross Country Magazine and Ed Ewing. And they're pretty psyched to be the publisher of the book. We've been talking about doing this for a while. Once we get to 100 episodes of the podcast, we're going to do a kind of a tools of Titans book about the podcast. So each each chapter will be broken down and certain categories like risk and safety and all the things we talk about on the show and kind of have whoever's really tapped that topic. The best. And probably multiple per chapter, but try to put it together in a really organized way. So it'd be a, you know, very good instructional book, kind of the best of the best from the podcast.
So once we get to 100 episodes, which will be by my math right after the X out, which will be perfect, I'll need some time to unplug and just rest and recover. So that'll be about when I'm writing that and hopefully we'll get it out in kind of early 2020. So psyched that Cross Country's taking that on. We're going to do that. We're kind of all dialed in for that. And, you know, they're obviously really good at publishing. So I'll hand that off to them. But so stay tuned. Oh, reminder to that. Many of you ask about the music on the show that like that. Where is my mind that open this one? You can find the Spotify playlist for all the music we have on here on just do a search for cloud based man or go on the website class cloud based mayhem dot com.
And you'll find that Spotify link. That is it for housekeeping. Psyched to be out here in Santa Barbara. I'll be doing a couple of shows live over the next few weeks here with people that are flying around this part of the world. And I've got a whole bunch of great stuff lined up with Maxine Bellaman, who just wrote that great book, Performance Flying and a whole bunch of other great guests coming up. So keep your ears tuned to future podcasts and enjoy this amazing talk with Paul Guescher Bauer about the his overland expedition. Magdalena, his wife, and a little bit at the end about the ex-alps. Little teaser. Enjoy. I
am super stoked to have you on the show to talk about this thing. I was following you, of course, on Instagram the whole way down there. And I've actually kind of felt like I had a little bit invested in this because, you know, your friend Jake and I spent a lot of time on my boat years ago, sailing from South Africa, from Cape Town up to the Cape Verde days. And this was kind of his dream. And then you guys, you know. Then this all came together a few years later for you. And so just must be totally thrilling. I thought where we might start that makes sense is just to describe for those that didn't watch you, which I can't imagine. I think everybody did. But for those that didn't see what you've just completed, give us the kind of resume version of what you did, and then we'll go from there.
Okay. Well, hi, Gavin. I'm happy to talk to you and to talk to you. Tell you a little bit about that project that I did. It's already my second time on your show, which is great. I'm happy to see how it develops. It's really cool. It's good for every pilot that you're doing this. It's really a positive thing. Back to the project. Well, it was a little bit different kind of idea. And the idea was to use my little Piper Super Cub, which is a boat. It's a bush plane, which is built and designed in the 40s, 30s, 40s of the last century.
So it's a very old plane, very slow plane, and fly it from the most northern tip of Alaska down to Patagonia. So all the length of North and South America. Following the mountains, of course. There's lots of mountains in Alaska. And then there's the Rockies. And then the Andes start at some point. So it's a very mountainous project as well. Mountain flying project. And, of course, I brought two paragliders with me. A little bit of mountaineering, mountain running stuff. And my motivation was to just discover cool places on the way.
And were you, you know, I know the answer to this, but you were with Magdalena for the whole thing? Or just part of it? Or how did you work that out? And also describe the plane a little bit more. I think people need to understand why you chose the Super Cub and what you can bring in it. I've spent a lot of time in a Super Cub. They're pretty small.
Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, the two questions and the answers.
Actually, the real answer, if I think about it, is for both questions the same. It's what I had and what I could afford to bring. And it was both perfect, I would say.
Magdalena and the Cub.
That's great. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of weirdness in that answer, but also a lot of truth. It's very, very hard to understand for people if they hear airplane flying from North to South America. It's not like you, it's not the same understanding like you have. Yeah. Because you have been in a Super Cub. People think of airplane, the minimum, like the smallest they think of is a Cessna. There is nothing smaller than that. But what they usually think of is like a little Learjet.
Just look out at the clouds and then you land on a nice runway after a four-hour nap. Yeah. They asked
us because they didn't see our plane. They said like, oh, are you going to stop anywhere on the way still before going down to Ushuaia?
Probably yes.
That's so funny. I remember being with Ken up in Alaska one time and he was like, you know, these, a lot of these bush pilots are cruising around at like 5,000 feet. What the fuck are they doing up there? All the stuff, everything is down on the ground. You know, you never want, you never want to be a hundred, more than a hundred feet off the ground, you know? And I remember flying with him, just getting a whole new appreciation. Like you're flying on the ground all the time. That's where you see stuff. You know, why would you go anywhere? Why would you fly higher than that? And he always talks, he always makes fun of all those guys up there. Like what the fuck are they doing up there?
Yeah. No, I totally wanted to do that and I tried to do that as much as I could. But of course some regulations and some things I couldn't do it. But so the cup is the plane that I bought two years ago in Alaska and it's an Alaskan, typical Alaskan bush plane. It's small, but it's very robust. It can go to places that you couldn't even think of that an airplane could land because it has big tires, strong gear.
But yeah, on the other hand, it flies very slow because if something flies slow, it lands short usually. And it's for, for its size, it doesn't, it carries quite a lot of weight. But on the other hand, it's not a lot of weight.
It's basically me and Magdalena, my wife, who I will just, we'll talk about in a second. And then we could bring, if we had full main fuel tanks, besides that we were allowed like legally to bring around 20 to 30 kilograms, which is like a hundred pounds extra weight. So besides that. We, we couldn't always only fly with the main tanks full. So we had, and I had another double set of the same tanks again. And if we filled all those up, we were of course way over the maximum weight from the beginning on without even putting any weight in it.
So it was always a big, big challenge of, of, of weight. And yeah, a lot of weight makes also a plane not fly that good anymore. But yeah. That didn't matter. Sometimes I was not always pushing the limits. But the other, the other thing that's even more important, I think is that, yeah, I did it with Magdalena, my wife.
We, it was great that we did it together. Many people might think, yeah, you're going a big, big adventure and you're doing this in a small plane. How could you hang out with your wife all the time? I think we just saw it. As a real project, like a work. And it was a long project. Six months. It was only the time that we were really traveling. There was two months of preparations before. And I think in the end, if I would have done that in any different way, our relationship would maybe not even exist anymore. And like this, it's, it's even, it's even better than it was before. And it was really challenging for both of us.
But yeah, it was, it was the perfect, perfect way to do this because we will go, we'll get to that point that money was a big issue as a paragliding pilot to, to fly a plane down to South America. It's not something you would easily think about. But like that, doing this with my wife, of course, that saved a lot of money too. And yeah. In the end, it was just perfect.
Talk about some of the challenges. And then I'm trying not to ask two questions at a time, but I keep doing it. How much did it cost for the whole project? If you could shed some light on that, cause I'd be fascinated. I know you burn. Is it, what is it? Is it 55, five gallons an hour? How much, how much fuel do you burn? So how much fuel did you burn on the whole project? And what does that cost?
Well. This is. This is a very sensible, sensitive point. The whole, the whole fuel spending and money spending thing. I've, I've learned that on the way as well, especially with paragliding pilots and especially with not U.S.
Because in this sense, maybe they are more used to big trucks and stuff like this, but there is also a big group of people out there that think that it's very uneconomic. To fly an old airplane around, especially as a paragliding pilot who likes to fly without any wasting any energy and waste and putting out a lot of how do you say gases and atmosphere. But so yeah, to, to come to the facts, we, I spent around seven gallons per hour. And if you do that. If you do a little bit of math behind that, it comes down to the same, pretty much the same amount of fuel that I use for per mile.
The fuel, how do you say that in English? Mileage. Yeah.
Miles per gallon.
Like normal car.
So looking at it like this, it wasn't that bad of an impact. We all travel. And if we travel with big jets. We even make a lot worse thing to the, to the environment. But, but back to the numbers. I spent in the end around, I guess it was around 12 to $14,000 on fuel on that trip. Wow. That's way
less than I thought it would be. Huh?
Cool. Yeah. It was not, it was not that bad. Yeah. Sure.
But there's one thing that, that always, that is very important. Like anybody who is listening to that should, and if he, if he has a Globus, how do you call that?
Globus in English? Globus? Globus? Maybe? You know that world map that you have? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Looks like a world. A globe. Yep.
You should take that and, and just have a look at what we did on that Globus trip. Globus, because that is the only way I figured that you can really see how big this distance is. Like it's incredible far. If you're looking at the whole world.
So yeah, that looking at it like this, it wasn't that bad of an expense. Of course I had to buy the plane at some point I had to, um, feel it's like rebuild things, uh, put the right instruments in to be able to fly in all through all those air spaces and um, have the right equipment to be safe on a trip like this.
Paul, what, what was the total distance you flew? Cause it wasn't just, you know, you didn't just start at the Northern tip and go to the Southern tip in a straight line. You know, you, you, you had a really, really good adventure and you know, you came here in Sun Valley and we paraglided for a week and then you went to Burning Man and you know, you, you hopped around and really tried to see a lot of places. Within that six months. So what was the distance? What was the, do you have all that? Do you have those statistics?
Um, I have it, uh, an estimate in my, my, in my head right now, but, um, uh, I wouldn't like say, okay, that's the exact number, but the, the direct line, um, let's start from there from Barrow, Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina is, uh, 18,000 kilometers. So that would probably be 13, 14,000 miles. So something like that, uh, we almost followed that basic line, I would say. I mean, of course there was a little bit of, um, like going back and forth, but, but the only real, um, like not going out, going out of the, of the straight line was basically going to Colorado to tell you, right.
And then going back out to California and my Reno, it was the only, um, this, this VH station, um, kind of, um, otherwise we went straight down. And then what we did, we went, um, like a third of South America back up to, um, park land and park the plane at, uh, on the, um, little airport in La Cumbria close to Cordova. So I would say it was a total of 24, 25,000 kilometers.
Wow. In six months, I need my calculator. So what about, about, about what distance would you do every day?
Yeah, we, we tried to like, if we went, uh, flying again, we did like four to in South America, a little longer, but four to six hour flights. Um, so that's, that's up to 800 kilometers, um, yeah, 500 miles, I would say. Average 500, a little bit more. Um, so this is what we, what we tried to do if we really want to get going, um, to the next place. And it is, it is kind of a challenge to, to know, okay, when, if you want to really get down there, you have to go at some point because so many places are so tempting to, to just stay and enjoy and get in deeper into the country and like, like get to know the people better.
And, and you find a perfect flying spot. You want to go fly there all day long. I mean, it's a, it's a compromise. It's always a compromise. If you, if you look at all those places that are on the way through all North and South America, you could spend a lifetime just checking them out. I mean, you know, it from sailing around the world so many times you could do that forever as well. I guess you could just like, okay, this is a cool place you, I will really want to get to know it. I'm going to stay here for, for two months. Yeah. And then move on or something like this. So yeah, it's, it's a, it's a balance between, I want to really want to get this done. I want to reach my goal and not to get lost in, in like just the adventure on certain places.
Now
that you're, you're done and we're going way off my planned route here with questions, but that's just fascinating to me because I, I think of it as a lot like sailing, you know, it's as what I learned. Sailing was that, you know, that the only speed that it was reasonable to do it at was very, very slowly. You know, when I hear people say, okay, I'm going to circumnavigate in two years, I say, God, you're going to miss everything. You know, that's no, that's, that's, that's, that's not nearly enough time in retrospect. Now after you and Magdalene are home and you've parked the plane, do you wish you would have taken more time or was it really, I mean, I know a big part of that was just the economics.
Definitely. Economics was a big part of it. But I think, um, for this trip, I would not take more time. It was just right because, um, right now I'm kind of like, I can't even, how do I say, I mean, you either take five years or you do it in half a year. I think that's like the only ways to do it because, um, now I'm back and I, I, I had, we focused on getting to the goal. I mean, this was a project was for me to make this happen, you know? Yeah. Um, and this is what I achieved and, um, I didn't want to just travel. It was not just only a travel and enjoy project. It was really, um, I really also wanted to challenge myself and I really, on every aspect I went to the, to my personal, like maximum performance that I could do.
I mean, many people told me, well, how was the holidays for six months? You know? Yeah. And I'm like, okay, that's
just not Paul Gutterbauer. They don't know you.
Yeah. I'm kind of happy that they got this impression because it seems that I made good photos or something, but, uh, for me personally, it was really challenging. I mean, only one, or I can give you many examples, but one is also, you know, that combination of, of trying to, to fly a paraglider wherever I go. Um, um, um, higher level than just flying down a mountain and, um, and then on the next day flying to a completely unknown place that I've never heard of before that I have to prepare really in detail to focus on, on the route on, on, I don't know, the weather like everything.
Um, it's really, it's challenging, you know, that one example is definitely when we arrived at your place. In Idaho, uh, you, you wrote me that message that this is the day of the, the, the cross country day of the year, and we can, we're going to fly 200 kilometer triangle the next day. And I was like, for the first time in my life, flying that little airplane through the, through the high mountains of Idaho, the back country when it was super hot every day. And it was a lot of things for me to learn, like, you know, with that airplane, you, when it's super hot. You don't get, you don't easily fly over six, seven, 8,000 feet, you know, and that was a big engine. The next day I arrived there and you're, you're at six or seven in the morning, we're going, we're going for the cross country triangle, you, you have to be ready.
And I had no idea where I am, but what's going on is 5,000 meters or whatever it was. That's, that was the big challenge. Okay. It was a lot, a lot of, of things in one and a half a year for sure.
Yeah. I mean, so we're, I'm going, I'm going to ask you about some of those scary moments and the biggest challenges and stuff, but if we, if we re and that was a, that was an amazing day here. You know, that was the best day of the year we had. That's why I was so excited that morning. I was like, we gotta go, man. We gotta go. That was really incredible. What a day. But when you think, you know, when, when you came up and supported Dave and I on the Alaska project, you know, that spring, you were really just getting into flying as, as I understand, you know, you're just really learning. That was 2016. And then you just bit off something that I think most Bush pilots would, you know, maybe dream of but you know, most obviously have will, will never do it. You know, what was before you and Magdalena set off from Ken's house last June, what were the biggest fears, you know, what were the biggest kind of like.
Like trepidation about the whole thing. Was it mechanical? Was it personal? Was it just the unknown of like, you know, I mean, I think of all the things that I just don't have a clue about, like, I mean, I do from a boat standpoint, I don't know how they change with a boat, with a plane, but like borders and you know, the drug problems in Mexico or whatever, what, what, what was it that was kind of like, Ooh, I don't know.
Yeah. There was so much like a free actually exact, pretty much exactly. Three and a half years ago, I got my pilot's lessons, my private pilot's lessons. And then I first, I wanted to get into aerobatics. So I did aerobatics lessons right away, but then I figured that at first I have to learn. Just basic flying and fly a lot of hours. So I was looking for the perfect place to do that. And that's why, why, because of you, you helped me a lot with that. I got to know Ken and flew there with you. And. That was my, my first real, like lots of hours that I could collect flying. I had no idea about bush flying at all, but, uh, Ken, obviously he teach me a lot.
I taught me a lot of things, like it was incredible, but, um, the, the big challenges of course, like I just, after basically it was right after arriving in, in Alaska, I already had the idea of doing this trip, which I. Which. The idea I found it with, um, with Jake and because he also, you know, he always talked about that and somehow like, okay, why let's do it. Let's do it together. And, and then he never, he never did it. All the other people that wanted to do it with me never did it. So I ended up doing it alone, but, um, I didn't matter. It was, but like you, you think of an idea like this and, and obviously with a, as a pilot who just flew a little bit in Austria had just got his private pilot license.
And flew in Alaska where you don't even need a transponder or anything or talk on the radio, like nothing. Basically you can do whatever you want. You can really focus on flying. If you, if, if then you come up with that idea, okay, I have 14 countries to cross it. They're like two, like 12 of them, or yeah, 12 of them are third world countries basically. And, uh, yeah. So, so only that, that idea of crossing all those borders and the idea of, okay, they, they all, it's only Spanish from Mexico on and, um, how do I get fuel? How do I, you can make it, I could, I made a, I tried to make lists in the beginning and the list, which is like ridiculous.
So I figured out at some point, okay, that's not the way to go. This is not, it's not going to work that I'm going to change. I'm going to check all those points and be ready for everything that comes along like this. Um, the only way that I could do that is like, um, to trust that, uh, trust myself in general, like add a little bit of trust, but get it down to, I think it was four points or five points. And those four or five points, um, when we, when I tell you all those points, um, I will know exactly how many were. But that's, that's the, I wrote them down on a piece of paper. I still have it here and I thought, okay, if I, if I can check all those points, um,
I can just go and do it and it will not be a problem.
Okay. That sounds exciting. That's an exciting list.
It was a super exciting list, but on the other hand, it was not, it was a very, very obvious list. You know, first of all, uh, it was about me, myself. I wanted to. To know that I'm ready for this, which meant, okay, I need the right licenses, um, which meant that I need, uh, to do, um, to have a full, um, us license. So, uh, because I only had a European license and, and I had a based on American license, which, which was very complicated. So I wanted to have a full, uh, us license. So I did a commercial pilot's license. And I knew. From. From other stories that I read that it's very good to have instrument rating. So I said, okay, one point get the rights, get all those ratings.
Um, the second point was my airplane had to be ready. Okay. So I put all those like, okay, airplane needs all the right equipment. And um, uh, third point was, like I said before, it's, um, more than half the way, like starting from Mexico on for. For 1300s, only Spanish speaking. So I, I knew that I had to be sure that I can manage Spanish, uh, radio communication, aviation related. So that was, that was one point I, I, I, I can, I learned Spanish before, so that wasn't big problem, but I wanted to make sure that I'm, I'm done with that. I'm sure that I can do that. And.
And the fourth point was. Um. Um, a credit card with enough money on it to get going.
So, um, I thought that was, that was actually, I wanted to credit in case the one doesn't work. But, um, so it's just a list of four points, super easy. You can easily, you can easily prepare for points, but, um, getting the licenses meant for me. I actually got a credit card from the company that I had to go to. I went to San Diego for almost five months before the trip, like starting in January. Uh, no, sorry, February, 2018. I went to San Diego. I did super fast instrument and commercial ratings. Um, then I went to Alaska. I worked every day for a month on my airplane together with Ken to get the airplane ready.
Um. And besides that, of course, I tried to find sponsors and convince them that this is a cool project. Nobody could, of course, imagine how that project should look like and what could be the outcome for a sponsor. And like, it's super hard to sell something like this because it's very complex. It's not a super simple story like a usual project. OK, I'm going to go to this mountain. I'm going to climb a route, this special route, and then I'm going to fly down. Super simple. But this is like it includes 50 simple projects in one big project that is already not simple or something like this. It was hard to sell for sure. And then the other thing I did, I went to in January 2018, I went to Argentina to meet Andy for the first time.
I also decided that this would be the final goal to reach. This airport after reaching Ushuaia, and I also flew there in one of his planes and just realized, OK, my Spanish is good enough to be able to fly there. So, yeah, so by by exactly, I think it was the 20th of June and the plan was to leave on the 21st. I was no, it was the 22nd because we left on the 22nd. I was ready. That was four points.
Wow. It's pretty tight timing. So when you know what was the I think people have a perception of what would be, you know, like what was the thing that made you bang your head against the wall? What was either the scariest or the just the toughest part of the whole trip?
Looking at it afterwards now, if I see the whole project, it definitely was this. This is the idea of doing this as a project, which is which means to me that I'm I'm selling the content and I'm I don't have the money to do that. I never had it. I'm just a paragliding pilot. I always say. And this was definitely the biggest challenge to somehow make it happen, you know, like to realize this dream without having any money, basically, which sounds super strange. But I had two points on the trip where I really had no money anymore.
The one was at the border to Canada already. And then the second time was in the halfway down Chile. And both times I knew that, OK, I got so far that and I knew that I had to get going. And had to get that far to convince possible sponsors to trust in that project and let me get keep going. You know, it was really, really stressful. Like thinking of this, like just just doing the whole trip without that stress in the back of my of my head. I think it would have been a different experience.
Very and probably easier. But on the other hand, you never know. How how you would have done it if you would have done it without this like pressure that that pushes.
Did you have any? Yeah, I mean, I think we could make a whole show out of just that side of it. That that's that's tough. And maybe at the end here, we'll talk about how how that's turned out or maybe how it might turn out. But did you have any, you know, truly scary experiences either mechanically with the plane or with any officials or landing in a plane? Any kind of like, oh, God, this this could be this could be the end.
I have a tent. I have this strange tendency to always forget those moments. If you ask me if it was scary at any time in the four times I already did it, I would tell you, no, there was never anything scary, which is not true.
So in that project, probably it's a little bit the same. But but thinking of it, I was super nervous. It was not dangerous at all. But I was extremely nervous before crossing the border to Mexico, because like all everybody, almost like ninety nine percent of the people I talked to in the US said, OK, if you fly to Mexico, it's it's going to be the end. You know, the Mexicans are really strange and they're going to burn down your plane. And it's going to be impossible to fly. So I went to Mexico and, you know, and then actually I went to Mexico and it was the best part of the trip. Like, I love Mexico. Yeah, Mexico is awesome.
Still my favorite country was before. But but in that time, I really got nervous and I just didn't know what's going on. And I pushed back the day of finally crossing the border a lot of times. But in the end, we did it. It was all good. And we flew also past all of this area where there's a lot of. Drug prob like, how do you say drug traffic going on was also a little bit weird. We landed at one airport where there was like strange, big like Mercedes's with dark window and then a lot of police cars following it like that went in and out of the airport. And we were just there parked with a little plane, the perfect drug smuggling plane.
Probably it was weird, but we just stopped for getting fuel and and then further, further down one time that comes to my mind. I have I have a map in front of me, which is good. It helps me a little bit. We went to Guatemala City. Guatemala City is pretty high. The airport is pretty high. I think it's a six, seven thousand feet or something. And. I wanted to go directly to Costa Rica to avoid two countries, El Salvador and Nicaragua, because they are not super safe. So I wanted to fly right over those countries and the combination of having a super heavy airplane with lots of fuel on and the high altitude airport and.
And the high temperature we took off on this huge airport, which, yeah, you have seven for seven lands. There is like the main airport of Guatemala City that we took off, not not towards the sea, but towards the mountains, because that was the only where the wind came from. And I took off and I flew and flew and I didn't climb at all. And it's like, oh, my God. We're just not climbing. And then there is the big, big, high rising buildings of Guatemala City in the front of the airport to the right. And we're basically just flying through through the little plane.
At some point, the guy, the person on the controller on the tower says, OK, now, now you should really climb. And I think, yeah, yeah, I'm climbing. I'm climbing slowly. Well, in the end, it was all good. It worked out just fine. But it was a it was very different than planned because we wanted to take off at six in the morning. And because of fog and and officials that wanted us to change one letter letter on the on the paperwork, we it took me to us almost until nine. We until we could leave the airport. So temperatures were higher and winds changed. And so, yeah, things like that.
That was a little scary, but I got better at these things. And, yeah, it was just one of those experiences moving on from there. We we crossed the egg to Ecuador and like in general, like this is an area where there's a lot of humidity, Central America, lots of low clouds. Sometimes we. I had to fly like just thinking of now I get this story. We know we landed on the Atlantic side only one time and I was in Panama and then we had to cross to Panama City, crossing to the Pacific side again. And the clouds looked the weather looked OK when we took off and then it got lower and lower and we were basically like almost skimming the wheels on the on the ocean already.
Because. The clouds and the rain, everything was so low. And then at some point I had to cross to the other side of the mountains and a big, pretty big mountain. So from zero, I just climbed straight up to more than 10,000 feet, which is pretty high for that plane to climb over the mountains and then just flew slalom through the through the cloud and then back down on the other side. So but that was the first a first little taste of of. The cloud was to come with clouds and mountain flying further on. But that was also very impressive flight. And then, of course, flying over the Panama Canal and landing in Panama City was pretty impressive.
Yeah, that's an amazing part of the world. Going through the Panama Canal was one of the highlights of going around the world. That isn't that's an impressive feature. It's incredible. The howler monkeys.
And my plan was to fly along the Panama Canal from. That's why I went to. The Atlantic side. And I wanted to fly down the coast and then follow the Panama Canal to the Pacific again. But because of that weather, I couldn't do it. But yet somehow that canal has some has something interesting to it. I don't know, something mystical.
It's it's not what you imagine either. I mean, it's really wild, even though there's this huge canal and big ships going through there and you're you know, and yet you're in you're in the middle of the jungle. It's it's it's. It's an interesting part of the world. What about getting through the Darien Gap? Is that not that big a deal with the bush plane? You just fly across because that was always one of these things that I always wanted to do by foot. You know, it was a but it's you know, there's been some pretty interesting stories about getting through that part of the world. You know, they've never connected that highway because of the drug trafficking. And so it's you know, it's pretty wild through there.
Yeah, it was planning wise about the flight. It was definitely the most challenging and exciting. Well, we together with flying down in Patagonia, this was the most exciting part because we were we were looking at the weather for two weeks constantly every day. And the big thunderstorms just moved from the west to the east over that section.
And so I had to find that one little moment that when I when I took off in the morning, when I take off in the morning, the cloud just. Just moves away far enough into the into the land, into Colombia, so I can fly through that one and the next one that is already out in the ocean and then make it down to to Colombia so that and that in combination with knowing that there is just nothing except the deepest jungle underneath you was, like you said, very, very exciting, very, very exciting. And it's a six hour flight in that. I'm a small plane from Panama City to Cali, Colombia, which made it even more exciting.
Oh, yeah. You got to make it.
Definitely going to make it and you can't turn around, you you can't land anywhere. You the mountains are super high. They even when we when we arrived in in Cali, it was super, super exciting. I have a cool photo of me standing next to the next. To the little plane, and I'm surrounded by a group of 10 people from migration, military, police, customs.
And they were already waiting for us because they they made something that is called the Código Estrella, so like a star code or something that they put on us because we were gone from radar and radar. And
we were like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And we had a radio
contact for more than four hours flying along the coast of Colombia. Oh, man. Good
thing you didn't get shot down.
It's so weird because, of course, I couldn't fly high enough to be over those high mountains because they're pretty high. And then the weather also was super strange and it was super cloudy and rainy. And so they really got worried that we are really bad people. But we land and we're like, yeah, cool that you're coming out. We don't have to go in. and see each other i see everybody i see all those uh offices they all came to see us
probably probably not something you'd get away with in afghanistan that's that's amazing i mean for sure you look like bad people if you're you know if i was sitting in an office and track kind of tracking you because you couldn't really track you you'd be like okay these guys are up to no good
yes it's um but it's all the uh how you uh your mental thing and like how you approach the situation if you're if you know that you you didn't do anything wrong you just know it's going to take forever if you arrive okay that's going to be fine you just take it easy and things are going to work out you know they can't they can't really do anything to you i mean yeah you what what if you know what if they say okay they take away where you plan your your airplane on my airplane well then it's part of the story and i can't i can't do anything against it so the the key was to to stay calm and just like not not get um how do you say like yeah they of course not they can't do anything like jokes with you yeah but still like you have to take it easy and just let them do their work and yeah that's it and
how much how much did you i mean because like when you came here you know you got out of the plane and we went for a huge flight and uh you know you had all your gear i know that was part of the mission was to do quite a bit of paragliding too how much flying did you get in
well in the end a little bit less than i expected honestly um because the the flying was just way more um exciting the flying of the plane was way more challenging than i thought but i flew in a lot of cool places and i mean i flew in every country i flew all those famous places for sure and uh how many i i can't tell you the hours but of course if you fall if somebody followed and this was also one point if somebody followed that trip he was like probably like okay he just flew the plane you know that's all he did um that's not true but if you want to make all this distance you just think of making that distance in a car you also have to spend a lot of time in the car to get to the places where you fly a paraglider so um this is what i what i keep saying um but i flew in iquique in in argentina i flew at your place in mexico in a couple of places in in costa rica in in guatemala i climbed volcanoes um it was full
full of full of cool um paragliding moments for sure and mountaineering how
do you think the i saw a post recently of you training in in austria and you were talking about that you know you you feel like the that six-month expedition has also really helped you prepare um for the next X-Alps how how do you equate the the two because i i always tell everybody the story about that time when you came out and you did a food drop for uh when when dave and i were stuck uh at at heart mountain and you came out with one of ken's friends and you know he's like at six grand and you're at 14 grand and he calls you on the radio and he's like paul what the hell how did how did you how are you up there and you're like i'm thermaling what you know come on and uh you know like your experience with a paraglider obviously has really benefited you as a as an airplane pilot but how is it reversed because it sounds like it's also
a lot about paragliding from flying your airplane yeah
definitely um let's start with that like for example in in in patagonia there was a lot of wind we flew through through really high mountains and i think if without my knowledge of flying in the mountains with paraglider i we probably would have crashed somewhere down there because uh it was just incredible it felt like in the worst situation that you couldn't remember with the paraglider it felt exactly like that we were we were flying i don't know just straight um in front of us is there is a little ridge you think it's just a little ridge you get to the ridge and we just can't make it over the ridge you know i was like okay i can i can do anything i can only turn around and get uh altitude again like in the paraglider and try again so i go back it goes up like crazy we're like in the big uh um wave kind of phenomenon down there shoots back up to 11 12 000 feet and then i turn around to that same little ridge which is like super small now in front of me and only 10 miles in front of me and i can't make it again like it's you can't even imagine how how i felt like i was in the middle of patagonia there's just nothing around for hours of flying and you you play around
trying to make it over it it was it was really crazy and i think without that experience of and that knowledge of okay there's always a way that you can use the wind to get somewhere um i would have never made that that flight down there because um that is one thing that um if if if people are not um flying a small airplane themselves the the power of a plane like this is very very limited i i think it's the same i think that the comparison is totally valid between a paraglider and that plane because the only difference is that that engine is just a constant um extra like uh glide ratio that you have you know in in calm air you can climb but as soon as there is a lot of you will sink even with that engine or not and um and also with that kind of plane you don't
take off at an at an airport and just fly straight to the next destination and and then you always if there are mountains you really have to choose your line you you have to find thermals to help you be more economic on the way or at least that's how i always try to fly like you said in that example before um so in in general like overall i would say this experience those almost 300 hours i spent flying that plane for the mountains um was will help me or helps me plan a paraglider as well like vice versa it's the same thing um hours in the air um except for maybe jets that are at 20 000 40 000 feet um in the mountains are experience for for everything did
you did you find like especially in patagonia where the terrain is big and complicated and just big it's just huge in patagonia did you find that you're i mean i don't know even know if it's something you were able to realize at the time or maybe now that you've been home but did you find your kind of global understanding of the weather really increased like your mountain like reading the mountain weather really was was really benefited by by those experiences and and if so can you articulate how
the
cool thing the cool thing about that that engine that is there like i said before it's just that constant thing that pulls a little bit a little bit um is that it has one big advantage you can like in normal mountain conditions on a thermal day i i can try things you know i can go to places that i can't go with the paraglider because if i go there i'm probably if it doesn't i'm just gonna land and that's it then then i have no chance with the plane i just go there and see okay well there is a big lee side but it's pretty quiet in the directly um and there's even a little bit of lift cool that works because i feel it in the plane and in case it wouldn't work i would just turn around and say okay well that didn't work i better take the other a longer route um so playing around like this in the mountains is
is super cool like it it it helps a lot it it's a way to to learn a lot of things i think so
it sounds like it it has impacted how you fly a paraglider i
think so i mean um wherever i went in in big uh like ikeka went for cross country flying and then and then also with andy um i flew and i felt like i'm flying better than before but so i didn't feel like okay well i didn't fly for a probably don't fly that good anymore it definitely felt the other way around i felt like okay this is super simple for me now um so so i i am i'm sure i benefited from flying the plane down there in the mountains that's
really cool um this next question is one that i always hated answering so i'm going to change it a little bit but people always ask me what was the favorite you know what was your favorite thing of sailing around the world and i was like god you know i can't there isn't one thing but what was my
favorite thing of sailing around the world and i was like god you know what was
magdalena's favorite if you if you you know without asking her if you could just guess or maybe she's already told you but what do you think her her best experience of that six months was wow
that's a super tough question because the other question people ask me all the time i
know but i hate that other question you're just like oh i don't know it's like it was all good
that was all good but i had to find an answer to it because like i said but he's asking me so i would have been prepared but um i think for her it was the whole the whole thing that it's that that is it's possible to to do something like this together with your partner and like go through the ups and downs and i um that's just the overall thing that i think that that stuck to her like that's that's what she says right now that she that it was super tiring for her but also like doing something like this something like that and i think that's the thing that i think big and stressful and everyday challenging um is what was for her and she's very like like that she she thinks a lot about things and she's very um quiet a little bit about things like this um so i think that was that was that thing that that was really the coolest thing for her but looking at places what she thought uh was the best i could i could just open the door and ask her probably
she is in the other room um she doesn't i would have to scream for her i think i think one one thing that was really um very cool like like you said like there's like you know basically there's so many things that happen so some i'm starting to think and then okay this this and this and this what i'm gonna what am i gonna say now but uh we we both together tried to climb a concagua the highest mountain of north and south america and um this was also a very very cool uh experience for the two of us and i think also for her because i remember that moment when we like i had i had to obviously hike as slow as i ever hiked on the mountain but uh a little
different pace yeah we
had a little different pace at um pace but that wasn't the goal to climb that mountain fast it was just a goal to climb that mountain um so it didn't matter how much time we take between the two of us the the camps but i remember we climbed up to uh 5 000 meters together and um and she's like they are surrounded by all these ice walls and beautiful beautiful area um and he's like wow that's just the the most impressive and beautiful thing i've ever seen and for me who is somebody who loves mountains and i i really want to share that with her for me it was incredibly lucky moment to hear her saying that that she's like wow this is this is now i understand why people go to the mountains more you know so maybe that was the good best moment i mean i don't know
i like that one paul when you and it's maybe too early to ask this question because i know you guys are still you know you'll be processing this for a long time but was there any like has there been any real shift in who you and magdalena are as people as a result of the trip you know like has it maybe when you think back to before you started in alaska and now how has it changed both of you it
has definitely changed a lot of things and i'm i'm happy that you're asking this right now because i wanted to say something in general still and i think it it's could be even an answer to your question right now um one thing that i really saw or maybe it's not that the perfect answer but it is it is a very important thing for me um and it for sure changed me um we flew all the way from up there to the bottom of south america very low like basically never higher than three thousand feet above the ground i would say so and then we also flew all only when when the weather was good so we could always see the ground underneath us and we were flying in a speed of 150 or 140 kilometers per hour so 85 miles around 85 miles all the time and then you have a lot of time to see the world moving by below you very slow and you can see every detail and you can see how the world changes all the time slowly and you get a very very good impression of how everything is connected and how in the end i have to say that how small that world is because we flew really on a straight line basically halfway around the world and i can tell you like i know exactly how every part of that that way that we did looks like from from above and it's it's small it's not very big and that the world is very small and we are so so many people running around on that and everybody is in his small little world and then he he has enough money he gets to the to the chat and flies to i don't know from europe to thailand and he gets out of the chat and he thinks he's in another in another world you know like completely other world because you get on a on a big chat and then you you're the only thing you want to um do is like sleep or whatever and make the time go um pass as fast as possible so you're in that other world and then you have you you you never have the chance to realize that there is a connection between those places and it's not super far it's just like yeah it's not another world and and uh that really that really is a is a very important thought i think that everybody should should think and understand that it's super it's a super small world that we have and we have to take care about it like as we take care about our own house or our own place uh we we don't mess it up we mess around with with so many things in the world because it's you think okay well that's that's in another world that's over there that has nothing to do with me um but it's not like that and this is this is for sure something that changed my my mindset um about many things um and also of course people might say okay well you you did this with with uh with an airplane with an engine okay this is not the point for me you know of course i spent i drive a car i i don't know i take the big airplane as well i'm not super environmental friendly for sure my footprint is not perfect but um but it's just important to to understand how how everything is connected and and that we're not we don't have endless worlds only because we jump into a chat and fly to another world
yeah those borders mean nothing don't they they you know you went 13 different countries that are all separated by these borders but they're not they don't separate us they don't separate the people the nature the the anything it's it's all we're all part of one that one world yeah
exactly and um this is very this is something that that um changed both of us for sure we we have i mean we i can say okay i'm doing something very different right now but once you change your mindset you're also changing what you're doing so yeah back to your question we we changed
that's nice i like that um i i gotta ask this one it's an easy one but i imagine it's not such an easy answer um you know it what next your your your planes down at andy's um you know for me i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure there was a real delineation like at the end of the sailing it was like i'm done i'm i i'm done with that i mean i still love the ocean i still love sailing but it was time to move on is it time to move on or you've got other big bush plane projects well
for me um starting to fly airplanes was was uh something that i needed as a big big far in distance um goal to to also be motivated for x-ups you know for example i just needed something like when i first took part in the x-ups in 2011 um after that i was like okay well that's done for me you know i did i took part in this um this is what i wanted um and i needed something that it motivates me motivates me to to work on for the future and part of that way to that big big goal for some point in the future i can't even tell you when i want to reach it and also what exactly it is that's the fun thing about it but anyway um red bull x-ups all those times i took part and that i'm still taking part um is part of that way and also this project was was part of that development and um this
is just it was just one step i i have no like exact i can't even tell you right now exactly what's my next bush plane project um i just know that that i will not stop flying airplanes and not stop flying paragliders only because i did that um one thing one thing that i'm doing right now is i i found a place in alaska in the wranglers national park that i want to buy or that i'm already part part owner owner of it and i want to build up something like a like a cool base base camp for people and i want to build up something like a like a cool base base camp for people and i want to people who are interested in in flying bush planes in getting to know alaska you know go paragliding go
explore more and um this is something that motivates me also for the future to like show to show that place to more people and like share that experience if
that's if that's in mccarthy can we uh privately have a talk about that
yeah oh
oh it's five five minute flight from five minutes flight from mccarthy but you can also take a four-wheeler uh half an hour and you're in the center of mccarthy and it's such a cool it's incredible yeah i'll show you
that's a neat part of the world cool well we'll we have we have much to discuss there that's neat so so the so the the the short-term future is the plane will come back to alaska yeah
it took me a while to decide on that first i wanted to sell it first i wanted to do this and that whatever fly it back but um now i'm i have decided that i'm just gonna bring it back to alaska because it's an alaskan bush plane and i like alaska and i'm gonna have a lot of fun there with this plane so i'm gonna send it back i recently posted a video on my facebook channel um flying through a canyon and touching the water amazing and it got more than a million views right now whoa um yeah i totally got viral like it's incredible but the problem is like people like for for bush pilots for all those pilots is super normal but the commands on that video like it got viral so it it reached people that had no idea of this they got super scared they're like he's gonna die tomorrow this is gonna be his last flight he has like it's gonna be what if what if he has other traffic coming for the other super stupid like what if there is a what if there's a down draft what if what if what if what if like ah i can't even i can't even look at it anymore at the comments because it's just it's just making me so crazy like they're so people can be so so weird this is not a super dangerous stunt i mean it looks crazy and there are always risks but there are also risks if i fly across alaska on my own low you know like
i was i was close close to taking that video down again but i mean it's stupid why should i take that video down i don't do anything anything bad like really nothing like there's no person around i'm not harming anybody i'm just i'm doing the same thing that i did a hundred times in alaska every day i did it like ken says why would you fly anything higher than that the only big difference that there is a canyon okay that made it a little bit more scary but like yeah so i thought okay why should i care about it but it has almost 2000 commands so you don't want to start looking at it no
no no that's just just a waste of time wow that's that's exciting that was a cool video so that's pretty exciting paul last last question we can't can't let you go without asking about the X-Alps this is your fifth one um you changing anything i mean other than you you've just had this big you know six month expedition in the bush plane and that was obviously a lot of training but any different approach because we talked about this a bit on the last show um but you know you're you're a little bit older you're a little more mature you've got four behind you um how are you approaching the next four months any differently than you have in the past yeah
it is it is actually different um so far uh i did it four times like you said i i was referred three times i was sometimes fighting in even more in front than the third place indiana was third um so and i'm not gonna do this forever x arps i'm not gonna say right now that this is gonna be the last one but it might be the last one that i'm doing um so the only thing like for the mindset that that changes for the mindset right now is that the only thing i really want to do is win it so because i was already a couple of times um if i'm if i'm worse than that it's also okay but the goal should be to to really be in front and and that's how i'm preparing right now as well i'm just trying to think of all the all the experiences that i had of of all the experience how i can use it and train very professionally and just be really ready for the race i mean you know yourself you can never know how it's gonna go but uh you can do your very best to prepare and that mindset for sure helps me to to do a good job right now in the next four months
paul thank you uh that was a super treat i just uh i was fascinated following it uh you did you guys did a really good job documenting it i'm sure there'll be you know a longer version of that at some point but um we'll have all the links to that in the show notes for those of you who are listening go check out the footage and the pictures it's just unbelievable but i on completing such an epic project and uh see you here in a little bit for the X-Alps and and and good luck i look forward to uh to racing with you again i'm
very happy to hear to hear those words from you because feedback is very different you know it was it was a very controversial project at some points for me as well um for the outside world feedback from the outside for me myself it was a dream just i'm self self-confident enough to say that um but it's good to hear it's just good to hear that feedback and um i'm happy if people check it out i'm gonna um finish my youtube series about it pretty soon i did it so far it's online until mexico which is already quite exciting but i didn't get the time to do all that to finish all that up but that's a way to really get a good impression of of how we traveled and how we how we adventured the last half year
cool my youtube channel cool
yeah well we'll have all the links to that in the show notes hey that that i do have to ask you one more question then because i just i mean think of it um you did these amazing vlogs uh for the last X-Alps will you do that again and and do you feel like that doesn't really get in the way of of your performance um
no i'm i'm not gonna do that again uh it was it was great for the last time it took it even took some pressure off me uh last time it was like uh okay i'm i'm at least gonna do my work very well besides um the the performance of during the X-Alps last year both went pretty good um this year i'm not gonna do it i'm i'm i also think that maybe many pilots are thinking about it so many other people are maybe doing it um i'm for sure not gonna disappoint my followers and those who are
um to hear what i'm experiencing during the race but it's not gonna be in the in the way of a vlog like last time
cool well okay
disappointed yes
no they were great i just i i really enjoyed doing those and you know when you came here and gave that talk it was it was fun digging back through those and putting together that talk that we did for you with you and that was that was that was really fun i think it's um i i think it's a race that you know when you you're following on live tracking and everything it really which is great and they do a fantastic job of that but it misses so much and you know that misses kind of the meat and potatoes of the whole race and what's going on behind the scenes and that was really nice to see with the vlog and i've i've often just wondered you know on the one hand i can see your point that it helps and that it it kind of takes your mind off being serious and that's what we need to do to fly well and that you know that's good it's a it's probably a nice distraction um and at the same time it's also you know something you've you've got to do so i wanted to see what you thought about about that because i you know i know it's a lot of work but yeah
it was a lot of work i mean i had one person that was with me only editing those videos um besides that i constantly had to think about the taking the camera with me explaining all the time what i'm doing you know um yeah so so i decided for myself not to do it in that way but there's gonna be this almost the same kind of information um for people who are following me um i'm just gonna have a little bit different way to do it
different approach cool well paul i've taken up plenty of your time uh i again super appreciate it thank you so much and uh we'll see you here pretty shortly in salzburg yeah
when are you coming uh
may 20th
perfect yeah let's do something together thanks for having me on your show again cool
you soon see
ya i
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