Pushing Through To Surinam

On this date seventy-five years ago Amelia Earhart flew from Caripito, Venezuela, to Paramario in Dutch Guiana or Surinam.  In her words we hear Amelia's sense of optimism which will hold her for forty years on the island of Nani in But This Is Different http://butthisisdifferent.com.

"Rain clouds hung thick about Caripito as we left on the morning of June third. We flew over jungles to the coast, and then played hide-and-seek with showers until I decided I had better forgo the scenery, such as it was, and climb up through the clouds into fair weather. An altitude of 5,000 feet topped all but the highest woolly pinnacles.

In such a maneuver lies a recurrent delight of flying. Often one can find the weather wanted, at one level or another. As on this and many other days, the pilot sees the rain slant against the land below. Horizontally, distant views are blotted out; vertically, clouds droop to shroud the shoulders of mountains, or weep upon the jungled plain. but how many of the earthbound realize the relative nearness of sunlight above the cloud-covering? how many know that perhaps only three thousand feet above the gray dank world my plane, if I will it, may emerge into sunlight over a billowy sea of clouds stretching away into blue infinity.  Sometimes the climb is greater, sometimes the airplane cannot top the towering formation of a storm. But no matter whether separated by ice or snow or rain or cold gray mist, the pilot knows the wall-card motto is meteorologically true, "Behind the clouds the sun's still shining.""

The photograph shows the Lockheed Electra leaving Caripito for Paramario.