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 recounts getting lost over the dense Guatemalan jungle due to unforeseen weather, a malfunctioning VOR, and initial navigational carelessness after an unplanned fuel stop.
Faced with dire circumstances and limited resources, the pilot successfully navigates back to Flores using a hasty dead reckoning calculation based on a minimal map sketch.
The uncanny accuracy of this improvised navigation leads the pilot to ponder whether experienced flyers develop an intuitive, subconscious "inertial navigation system" that aids in precise dead reckoning.

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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.