TRAVELLING MORE THAN EVER BEFORE

BUENOS AIRES, THE ARGENTINE CAPITAL,
ONE OF THE JEWELS OF LATIN AMERICA

At first it was kind of nice, going places with all expenses paid, travelling first class and staying at five star hotels, I confess, was really fun when I was 40, but, when such travel means you have to leave your family behind more than two thirds of your time, I can tell you, it soon gets into your nerves! That was the case with me. Between my trips to Argentina and my visits to the Cayman Islands I was away from home more than it was humanly tolerable.


THE CAYMAN ISLANDS, A PARADISE
FOR SCUBA DIVERS

Even for a young guy like me, staying away from the family most of the time was not pleasant at all, to put it in a mild way. The whole weight of growing the kids, of caring for the three young ones in the family was falling on Fanny’s lap, it wasn’t fair to say the least, though, much to her admirable endurance and character, she never complained. True, when I was at home we tried to make up for my frequent and prolonged absences by going places, visiting friends, going fishing in the summer or skiing in winter time. My wife was very understanding of the whole situation, however, the kids started to complain more and more, especially the youngest one, two year old Angie, who sometimes didn’t even recognized me when I returned home after being away for three or more weeks. So, without saying anything to anybody, I began to think about looking for another job in the winter of 1983, however, I just send my first application for a job in July. It was for a position as an analyst in the World Bank, in Washington D.C. My application was never answered, nor did I make an effort a follow up on it, I was just testing ground. Behind my lack of real desire to leave was the fact that I was being paid an excellent salary at Northwest, a salary that was certainly well above the market for comparable positions, so it would have been hard to match it in any other job within my scope.

THE SEVEN MILE BEACH IN
GRAND CAYMAN, THE CAYMAN ISLANDS

Between trips to Buenos Aires and Grand Cayman, the months went by; the skiing season of 1982-83 was great, as there were over 70 inches of snow in the mountains in the Salt Lake City area for most of the winter. My family and I enjoyed that skiing season together most weekends and holidays. We found a family who cared for Angie on Saturdays and Sundays and off we went to the mountains. Mariuxi and Rafaelito (10 and 8) were good skiers by then, and participated in the company’s skiing club contests. They were very happy kids. Maria Paula Angeleri, who was spending the winter with our neighbors the Bemis, was always in the mountains with us, she loved skiing and therefore she was having the time of her life too. In fact, Maria Paula used to spend a great deal of her time with us, where she always felt at home.

Our Argentine operation was not changing very much from what had been for the previous ten years. Naviera Perez Companc, the majority partner in the Entre Lomas Oil field joint venture, was always doing things the way they thought was most beneficial to their own interest; with no regard whatsoever for the interest of their minority JV partner, APCO ARGENTINA. By then it was time to start what is called in the oil production industry a “secondary recovery project”, and, therefore, it was time to “reinvest” the profits generated by the Entre Lomas milking cow. Again, APCO Argentina was a almost a completely passive witness to the important events going on in the field. For us, it was like saying "hey, we are rich, very rich, but, unfortunately we can’t have our money, our partner says it has to be reinvested so we can become richer at a later time"
In the summer of 1983, we decided to take a vacation in Ecuador, so in early July, off we flew to Guayaquil. We were five in the family, our kids did not have a good memory of how Guayaquil was like, and we were all excited to go back to our country, to our home town and to see the relatives we hadn’t seen in several years. The weather however, played a bad trick on us. As we arrived in Guayaquil, the El Niño atmospheric phenomenon, which manifests itself with torrential rains and very hot temperatures, as well as hotter than normal sea waters, was blasting with no mercy the Ecuadorian Coastal Region where Guayaquil is located. It rained and rained, and rained, day and night, thundering and lightning were an intermittent part of our daily lives, it rained cats and dogs, there were mosquitoes and all other kinds of hot and humid weather insects every where, in sum, Guayaquil had become itself the nicest place to be away from, and so away we went. We changed our plans and decided on having our holidays in Quito and Buenos Aires, where we found a lot better weather to accompany us. Though we didn’t say it, we all felt that Guayaquil was not a nice place to spend our vacations any more, at least not our summer of 1983 holidays.
Spanish Cove our Caribbean scuba diving resort, also under my jurisdiction of controllership, was showing a negative bottom line, although not seriously negative, it was a reason to be concerned and to monitor it more frequently. Though we couldn’t say it was a seriously bleeding wound for the parent company, Northwest Pipeline, there were reasons to monitor it closer than in profitable times. Aware as we were, that this was our CEO’s favorite toy, we needed to make sure that things were running in an orderly and business like way, after all, he used to come by at least once a month, flying the company's plane and accompanied by his wife and other important business associates, so it was in the order of the day to make sure everything was marching very much to his satisfaction.

THE CAYMAN ISLANDS, GREAT
BEACHES AND SCUBA DIVING

As the year end holidays approached, on December 22, 1983, after completing my review of the books of Spanish Cove, in Georgetown, British West Indies, I was scheduled to go back to Salt Lake City via Houston. The night before my departure for the continent, I was approached by Buzz Murphy, the manager of the resort and Barbara Murphy, his wife, who asked me to take with me a pack of things they were sending to their family in the US. I said of course, I can do that for you and I took the sealed package weighing about five pounds and took it to my room where I placed it in my suitcase.



CAYMAN ISLANDS DIVING AT ITS BEST


The day after, in the morning, Buzz took me to the airport in Georgetown and off I started my flight to Houston. Once in the airplane, I handed a copy of the local newspaper and started to read it. At first there were no news that attracted my attention, but, all of a sudden, in the third page of the paper, I saw this large headline: “CAYMAN ISLANDS ARE A TRANSIT PORT FOR DRUGS GOING TO THE US". I immediately started to read the article where they reported that for some time, the US DEA had been capturing small cargoes of cocaine originating in Colombia, as they were in their way to be smuggled by people flying from the Cayman Islands to Houston, Miami and Atlanta.
Suddenly, I was scared to death!, what if the package that was given to me the night before and that was in my travelling bag was cocaine that Buzz and Barbara were sending to the continental US, using me as their mule?. I suddenly felt like vomiting, I was anguished to the point of desperation. For a moment I felt like talking to the one of the crew members to tell her my story and my fear, but then, I felt horrible for making such a terrible pre-judgment about people I thought i knew damn well. I thought I was making a serious mistake, after all, I had known Buzz and Barbara Murphy for over a year, and both of them were very nice, hard working people whose friendship and respect I had gained over time.
I had this very serious dilemma in my mind, it was almost like “I’m at a horrible risk, and my family is too, if the package I’m carrying in my suitcase is cocaine I’m dead meat, my family and I will pay the consequences of my stupidity, but if it’s not, I’m making a terrible judgment on two people I know and respect very much”. “What should I do?” I didn’t know which side to take, I had been thinking about which way to go and haven’t taken a decision until the crew announced we were approaching the Houston airport, at which time it was too late to try talking to any member of the crew, so I decided that I would stay put, I will just pray to God that everything was alright and that in fact the package contained Christmas presents for Buzz and Barbara’s family in the US. And praying I did.

In my next posting: WHAT DID THE PACKAGE CONTAIN?