27 December, 2011
For the last few days I have been vocalising my astonishment at the lack of rain since I got back to Gabon. Seriously, there has been nothing apart from a few drizzles for a few minutes and I miss the heavy downpours and massive thunderstorms when holed up in my container at night. So you can imagine my delight when last night it rained properly. Still not as big as I’d like it to get, but heavy enough to make me sleep wonderfully. However, the flip-side to a massive downpour at night is that come morning, the forest is so humid from all the moisture, and warm from its great insulating properties, that a low foggy cloud quickly develops over the canopy, making flying a little tricky to say the least.
Departure for Coucal was delayed a bit while I waited for the cloud to lift. When I finally took off I almost returned immediately. The cloud was still almost touching tree-tops. But it was only a thin, foggy layer, and patchy, and as I flew away from Coucal, towards the lake, I realised that it was easy to get above. Now normally this is a stupid idea for a number of reasons. Firstly, if the engine dies and you’re above cloud, how can you see where to aim the helicopter or judge your height as you come down. And secondly, what if when you get to where you’re going the cloud is solid and you can’t see where to descend through it, and what obstacles, in addition to the ground, are below you. I had plenty of fuel to fly to destination, return to Onal and even fly to Port Gentil if needs be. And, as I said, the cloud was quite patchy, so I could see through it at the jungle below. I decided to carry on and if the cloud got too thick, I’d just return. Onal was opening nicely anyway.
I only had one passenger, who seemed uncomfortable in an aircraft, to say the least. He did a very visible “sign of the cross” across his chest as if to show me that he belonged to God and if I injured him in any way, God would be angry with me. The trip there was uneventful and by the time we got to Coucal the sun was shining brightly. The passenger did what he’d obviously been sent to Coucal to do, found me, and we loaded up and took off again for Onal.
Now the weather had turned quite badly and there was massive rain everywhere. As always, however, its possible to just skirt around the heavy rain (that you can’t see more than 5m into), but on getting closer to Onal it became evident that my helipad would be somewhere in the middle of the massive wall of rain. I called ahead, and again fluently explained my predicament and my intentions. “Too much rain. I look to land somewhere. I call you back.”
The rain was pouring down now, but not heavy enough that I couldn’t see where I was going and I could see the hills beyond the lake so decided to aim for the lake and see if I could get around the rain and sneak into Onal from the opposite direction. My passenger at this stage had clearly given up crossing himself and just closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He wasn’t bluffing anyone. I could see him flinching when the rain pelted the windscreen loudly.
After flying almost the whole way around the lake I noticed that I could sneak down onto the Onal airstrip (about 5km from the camp) and land there until the cloud lifted high enough for me to get to the helipad. No sooner had we touched down than my passenger leapt out, flagged down a passing bakkie and got a lift back to Onal. He had had enough flying for one day. Shame, poor guy. He must have been terrified seeing cloud and rain all around us and without a headset I couldn’t even explain what I was doing. All I could do was give him thumbs up and point at the weather ahead, which I’m sure must have just convinced him that I was insane and suicidal!
Once again, the sun is out and clouds are starting to move off. And I’m done for the day. Tomorrow is a very long day flying literally over most of the country – so could really do without clouds delaying my progress.
Never tempt fate by pointing out what hasn’t happened….
Other than that my only news is that I flew over what looked very much like a couple of chimps the other day. Far too fast to get a picture of them, but cool to at least have spotted them!
And finally we have had a whole new set of helipad green and red lights installed (I think some of the older ones weren’t working either through bulbs blowing or water getting into them). These ones are all LED lights and look quite impressive. I just need a flight which ends a bit late like happened last tour so I can try to get better pictures than the last ones. Perhaps tomorrow…
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| Some big noo-noos | Spiders just looove hanging out at camp with all the lights. Their webs are loaded with bugs! |
These are just a few random pics. This is a bush in Coucal right next the TV room. Loaded with spiders. My camera refused to focus on the big one on the left, assuming every time I tried to focus that I was looking at the leaves on the left of him. If anyone is interested, the white streak of dense thread through the middle of his web is to stop birds flying into his web by accident.
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| A military moth in camouflage fatigues… | How cool is this plant!? And its practically everywhere… |
That moth was massive and amazingly camouflaged. Just needs to rethink what it sits on a bit… The next is a video I can’t upload from camp (not allowed) but will do so when next I'm in town. There is a plant all over the place here, called Mimosa pudica which is seismonastic, meaning it responds to touch. Very cool! It opens its leaves out like solar panels when the sun is shining, half closing them if its too hot, and closing them if its overcast or something (like rain) touches the leaves. Even the little stalks holding the leaves collapse if touched. The video shows me abusing one such plant to illustrate how quickly it reacts.
