My Own Private GPS

How lost are you really, when you think you’re lost?

Peter Garrison

Wednesday, June 17, 2026 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

The author’s airplane sits on the grass near the ancient temple site of Tikal in Guatemala. [Credit: Peter Garrison]

Key Takeaways:

A pilot and passenger faced a dangerous situation when they got lost over a vast Guatemalan rainforest after taking off without checking the weather and encountering severe storms that rendered their navigation useless.
Forced to rely on a crude pencil mark on a road map and dead reckoning, the pilot meticulously followed an estimated heading, which miraculously led them directly to their destination, Flores.
This experience, along with similar later events, led the pilot to ponder whether experienced aviators possess an unconscious, innate navigational intuition that can be remarkably accurate even in dire circumstances.

See a mistake? Contact us.

The runway at the ancient temple site of Tikal in Guatemala was no more than a wide place on a dirt road. My airplane, less than a year old, was an alien being beside it, glowing against the shades of the forest and the faces of the inhabitants like a marble statue freshly sunken to the bottom of the sea.

From Tikal it was to be an easy trip south to Guatemala City. But we needed fuel, and for that we stopped nearby at Flores. The airport, it turned out, was out of fuel. By the time we had arranged to buy some—just enough—from a private forestry firm it was midafternoon. Impatient, we took off without checking the weather, a cumbersome process those days.