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Bogota is a lot different than the bush. A very modern city. This is Calle 10a (10th Street) in the city centre.

Avenida Jimenez in the city centre, after it was paved off for the introduction of Trans-Milenium, the city´s mass trnasport system of flexi-buses.

So much time was spent in Colombia and so many things happened there, interesting work, great friends and finding the love of my life, I have dedicated a page just to my time in that wonderful, fantastic, dangerous country that is Colombia.

Captain Stephen Lord Harrison with his Bell 206 Jetranger

Cropsprayers at Tumaco airport.

Puerto Asis in the south of Colombia

A lot of very low flying was called for.

The boys at work, doing their stuff, destroyingthe Cocaine crops.

A cocaine field.

Our protectors from the Colombian army.

The army blew up the cocaine kitchens, with spectacular results.

The Colombian forces were using a variety of aircraft from diferent countries. This is a Mili MI17 from Russia. It looks like a military helicopter but in reality it is a civilian transport aircraft painted green. It has no provision for weapons and no armour plating. Pilots surrounded themselves with bullet proof vests in the cockpit.

Unfortunately we fly boys didn´t have it easy. This Blackhawk crashed with a full complement of troops aboard.

This was the story about this crash:

20 Colombian Troops on Anti-Drug Mission Die in Copter Crash
By JUAN FORERO

Published: January 14, 2005

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Jan. 13 - Twenty Colombian soldiers were killed Thursday when their helicopter, a Black Hawk provided to this country's military as part of an American-sponsored anti-drug program, crashed during a nighttime counternarcotics mission, the military here said.

Army officials said the crash, which took place in the fog-shrouded mountains of Nariño Province in the southwest shortly after midnight, was probably caused by bad weather. The United States, which has provided dozens of helicopters to Colombia as part of a growing military commitment here, planned to send a team, including an investigator from the Federal Aviation Administration, to assist the inquiry into the crash, Richard A. Boucher, a State Department spokesman, said in Washington.

At least six Black Hawks have crashed since 1999 in this vast, rugged country, killing at least 67 soldiers and injuring dozens more, according to Associated Press reports of the accidents.

Mr. Boucher said that the Black Hawk that crashed Thursday was one of 16 that the United States donated to Colombia as part of Plan Colombia, a five-year-old program intended to destroy the country's drug crops with aerial fumigation. The United States has also provided or sold other aircraft, including UH-1N helicopters, to Colombia's security services.

Under the plan, Washington has furnished Colombia with more than $3 billion in military aid, most of it in the form of helicopters, crop dusters and training for Colombian antinarcotics troops.

The Black Hawks protect crop dusters from guerrilla snipers. Rebels shot down four spraying planes in 2003, and have also been known to bring down Black Hawks and other military aircraft.

Army officials said that the Black Hawk that crashed Thursday was operating in a region that is under the influence of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's largest insurgent group. But while Colombia's army commander, Gen. Reinaldo Castellanos, told local radio that the rebel group has a heavy presence in the area where the helicopter fell, he also said it was not likely that the guerrillas brought down the Black Hawk.

Colombia's army has been particularly active in the country's south in the last year, carrying out an offensive that has pitted 18,000 troops against entrenched guerrilla units. The army has managed to take control of villages that have never before had a government presence, but the operations have been costly, with several hundred soldiers killed or maimed by snipers and land mines.