Mystery Planes

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          A stretch of road near the Spanish Lookout airport (Cayo Dist.)

  In an earlier article I mentioned how the flat, smooth limestone roads of some Mennonite communities have been the site of burned up drug planes. There has been an increasing amount of nightime illegal plane landings all over the country of Belize, more so during the last year and 2018 seems to be setting a record for these mysterious drug planes. At least the record on the few discovered planes. The story is the same on all of them, the plane lands in the early hours of the morning, the passengers and cargo (drugs) vanish into thin air and the plane is discovered later partly burnt. But the reason I'm mentioning it in this blog is due to the fact that some of these airplanes land close to or within colonies of Plautdietsch Mennonites. For example, in the western region of Belize, in the Spanish Lookout area, there are many who can testify to hearing planes flying very low around midnight or between midnight and the early hours of the morning. Not just once a month, but many times a month. Which brings the question, exactly how many plane landings actually happen per year if only a dozen of those are actually discovered and reported? Nobody knows, nobody cares, and nobody dares to find out.
  Now I will NOT offer any personal opinion or thoughts concerning that fact, I only mentioned it since I'm writing about the Mennonites and some of these nighttime planes have a deep affection for Mennonite climate.

A burnt plane discovered near the Mennonite community of Blue Creek (Orange Walk Dist.)
Photo courtesy of Channel5 Belize

  This article was updated in January 2019

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