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They flew north with the first hint of the sunrise, Silva at the controls and Daniela riding shotgun. However literal that was, she mainly faced forward and kept her thoughts to herself. Tanya sat with Chad in the second row of the three pairs of seats, narrow enough that her and Chad’s shoulders brushed with each little bit of turbulence. It was very distracting, so she did her best to focus out the window.
Oddly the farther they flew from the heart of the Andes, the rougher the terrain became. Personally, Tanya had spent far more time in Venezuela over these last years, so the typical low-lying jungle there was more familiar, with its peaks that rarely crossed five hundred meters.
In Tulcán and Las Lajas, the landscape was alpine meadow and plateau—most of it near three thousand me
