San Diego — Captain Ramón Orta Vidrio, one of three owners of Aeroservicios de California, had left instructions for me to meet him in downtown Ensenada. Five minutes after we arrive at 7:00, Orta shows up in his black Suburban. The wind off Ensenada bay this autumn morning chills us as we exchange warm greetings. Orta, in his mid-50s, stands about 5´9.´´ He's a barrel-chested man decked out in brown cowboy boots, blue jeans, a blue cotton jacket over a white dress shirt, and a straw cowboy hat with a black band. He sports the trim mustache favored by many Mexican men of his generation. "Follow me," he says, waving his hand eastward. "The plane is in Ojos Negros."

Following Orta proves easier said than done. The 35-minute drive winds past the junkyards -- "Yonke" read the signs -- on the east edge of town, then up and over the coastal mountains and down into the 12-mile-wide, mountain-ringed Valle de Ojos Negros (or Dark Eyes Valley). The flat valley floor is green with growing crops and new wild grass emerging after five straight days of rain. Though large puddles still line the road, there isn't a cloud in the sky today. Halfway across the valley, a strange sight comes into view: a bulky airplane sitting 100 yards north of the road. At this point, Orta swings his Suburban off the highway and up a dirt road toward the plane. He parks near a singlewide trailer home out of which come running three little boys in brightly colored pajamas. Their father, the caretaker, follows them. As Orta chats with him, my eyes are drawn to the aircraft that dominates the flat landscape. It's a twin-engine propeller plane the color of an old Airstream travel trailer, except for the tail section and large vertical stabilizer, which are yellow. It's about the size of a Southwest Airlines 737, except it sits higher off the ground to give clearance to the mammoth three-bladed props.

"It's a Convair 340," Orta says as he walks up. "It was built in 1955 in San Diego. It belonged to the United States Air Force, then a private owner, then a Mexican company, now us."

"Where's the runway?" I ask.

"It's past the plane about 50 meters," Orta answers.

"Is it paved?"

Orta shakes his head. "We're trying to get a loan to pave the runway, but right now it's dirt."

I'm about to take off from a dirt runway aboard an antique airplane flown by foreign pilots in a foreign country with who knows what kind of aviation regulations. Orta seems to read the worry on my face. "We have to meet all of the specifications and service schedules of the FAA," he offers, "because it's an American-built plane. Plus we have to meet the requirements of the Mexican version, Aeronáutica Civil, in order to get a permit to operate. It's actually more stringent than the FAA. We have our own maintenance people, but any engine rebuilds have to be done in the United States. Legally, in order for us to even run the engines, we need to have FAA approval."

Today's flight to Bahia Tortugas and then to Isla Cedros is a scheduled weekly flight that Aeroservicios agreed to make when they were granted their operating permit. They started making the regular flight in September, five months after another small airline, AeroCedros, went out of business -- a victim of rising fuel costs. Asked how he plans to succeed where others failed, Orta responds, "By keeping costs down. We keep the plane up here in Ojos Negros because Ensenada only has one airport, which is military. It would cost us $2000 a month to keep the plane there. This land is owned by one of my partners. Today, we're going to fly to Ensenada and pick up passengers and some cargo; we have permits for both. But soon we're going to develop this land so we can start loading here and flying directly. That will save us a lot of fuel because we'll have one fewer takeoff. Also, this land sits at 2500 feet above sea level, while the airport in Ensenada is at sea level. We'll save on the fuel it takes to climb to this altitude."

Another cost-cutting measure for Aeroservicios: they won't have to hire any pilots. Orta, Captain Carlos Robles Linares, and Captain Carlos Cervantes del Río, all former airline pilots, will handle the flying themselves.

Minimizing fuel costs, Orta says, is the key to success. "Fuel costs 9 pesos per liter in Ensenada, 14 in Cedros." He points to a tank, about the size of a tanker truck's tank, mounted on concrete footings. "We have a permit to begin selling fuel here. So we'll be able to pay 8 pesos a liter."

Developing the Ojos Negros ranch into a cargo airport is phase two of Orta and his partners' plan. "This runway is longer than the one at Tijuana airport," he says. "This is three kilometers long, and we could still make it longer if need be. It could be a good freight airport. In fact, I'm having breakfast this week with a person who is interested in setting up a freight airport here."

The Friday-morning flight to Bahia Tortugas and Cedros is the only scheduled flight Aeroservicias flies at present. "But we do charters as well," Orta says. "We've flown some groups out to Isla Guadalupe," Orta says. "In fact, we have a charter to fly a hunting club out to Guadalupe to hunt wild goats. We also want to do adventure travel and ecotourism charters. We can use this plane to fly to Laguna Scammon and Laguna San Ignacio to see the whales. And we are trying to promote tourism flights to San Luis Gonzága, which is a peninsula on the Sea of Cortez. There are miles of pristine, virgin beaches. It is a nine-hour car ride from Ensenada, and we can do it in an hour."

San Luis is not a resort town. "There's one hotel with ten rooms, and it's always packed. So it's a backpacking, camping kind of trip," Orta says. "But we can fly down a mobile kitchen and offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

For the flight to San Luis Gonzága, Orta says, "We are planning on charging around $190 round-trip and having the plane there waiting for them for the two days. Very reasonable. The passengers can take all the drinks that they want, and then we'll provide the meals for $20 a day."

A trip to Isla Cedros or Bahia Tortugas is a little less, "$80 to $85 each way," Orta says. "But Cedros is not a tourist destination. The people we fly there are locals and people doing business there. There is not much beach, and the only things on the island are a fishing cooperativa and a salt operation."

At 8:45 a.m., about an hour after we arrived at the airport, Robles, Cervantes, and two flight mechanics show up in two Suburbans. "Buenas tardes," Orta calls to them, a sarcastic reference to their tardiness. The group drives past us and over to the plane. After another 45 minutes of loading and preflight checks, Cervantes and Robles fire up the two engines, and the rest of us enter the plane via a fold-down staircase about six feet in front of the spinning left propeller. Onboard, the plane has a used feel to it. But the 20 tan upholstered seats -- some of them arranged facing each other -- are comfortable, recline farther than an average airline seat, and have plenty of legroom.

Orta buckles in across the aisle from me. He's leaving the flying to Cervantes and Robles today. Once the ladder is pulled up, and the hatch is closed, the pilots rev up the 2850-horsepower, 18-cylinder engines. The noise and vibration are louder, lower-pitched, and more pronounced than they are on a jet-powered plane. We taxi to the east end of the runway, turn around, and begin lumbering westward down the runway. "Eight hundred meters," Orta says when the plane lifts off, indicating the distance it took to get airborne.

The flight to Ensenada, flown through the pass between two mountain peaks, lasts only eight minutes. The break to fuel up and take on 10 passengers, 25 or so cardboard boxes, and 10 pink cellophane-wrapped boxes of pan dulce lasts about an hour. At 9:40 we take off east to west and immediately bank into a left turn. Climbing gradually, we pass over the headlands that form the south rim of Ensenada bay. Todos Santos island looms to the right, about 15 miles out to sea.

Cruising at about 199 knots, at 9500 feet, we follow the jagged coastline on its southwest march. At 11:40, we pass the farm town of San Quintín as crewmembers offer coffee in Styrofoam cups and donuts out of one of the pink boxes. The crew has an informal feeling about it. The cockpit door is open, and half a dozen men -- some of them crew members, some passengers -- crowd behind it, chatting away. At 11:35, the plane veers right, away from the coast, which is soon out of sight. We're crossing the mouth of Bahia Ojo de Liebre -- Eye of the Jackrabbit Bay -- toward the point of land known as Punta Eugenia. It takes 45 minutes to cross the bay. At 12:20 we cross over the point, circle around 180 degrees to the left, pass over a town at the end of a cove -- both the cove and town are called Bahia Tortugas -- and land on a roughly paved runway just north of the town. The plane taxis to a parking area where half a dozen vehicles are waiting.

The landscape here is hard desert -- tan-colored sand, red rock formations, dunes, and scarce, scrubby vegetation. The town of 2000 owes its existence to the abalone and lobster in the local waters. About half the passengers get into the cars and head for town. The other half, plus a few new passengers, get on the plane. At 12:40 we take off and fly between two rocky spires at the end of the runway, like a football through goalposts.

We're headed for Isla Cedros. The three-pointed island rises 3500 feet out of the Pacific. Cedar trees, after which the island is named, crown its tallest peaks. It's eight miles to the island, and the landing strip is right on the coast, so Captains Robles and Cervantes fly low across the strait. As we approach the island, out of the window it looks as if we're flying straight toward the sandstone bluff. Only a second after we cross the coastline, the pilots set the plane down at the very beginning of the runway. The strip is only a kilometer long, and the Convair 340 needs all of it to land and stop. The landing is a bit rough, and I feel the adrenaline surge in my body as the pilots bring the big plane under control. We park in a paved area at the land end of the runway. Next to the parking lot is an open hangar under which sits a plane almost identical to the one we flew in on. It's coated with white dust. At the ocean end of the runway looms a mountain of salt, 50 feet high, covering an area equal to 10 or 12 football fields. "The salt is harvested in the lagoons over on the mainland," Orta explains. "It's brought over here on flat barges, then cargo ships, mostly from Japan and Korea, dock over here and load up with salt." Turning to the plane under the hangar, Orta says, "It belonged to AeroCedros. It's actually newer than ours -- it's a '59, and ours is a '55 -- but ours has been treated better, and it has fewer flight hours. Still, this other one has got some good use left in it. We'd like to buy it and run two planes, but we'd have to do it quickly, before the end of this year, because the salt blowing off that pile is killing it."

At 1:10 the plane is rumbling back down the runway. We lift off and bank to the left toward Ensenada, an hour and a half to the northwest. I notice a fishing village clinging to the clay-red mountainside rising steeply out of the water before the loud humming of the engines lulls me to sleep.