2 March, 2012
Who would have ever thought it possible?! Well, me for starters!
Today is my last day working in Gabon (for this tour and possibly forever). I have done pretty well this trip – they have kept me flying madly and after a quick tally I see I’ve flown 77 hours this month! Not too shabby for the kind of work I’m doing, considering that 100 hours is the legal maximum that a pilot may fly in a 30 day period.
Below are very few, random pics to finish the tour off. What is NOT represented, for which I shall forever tut, sigh and roll my eyes at myself, are the many turtle tracks I have flown over the last two days, all the way along the beach to Banio. From the air its so easy to see how they dragged themselves straight up the beach, dug a hole and laid their eggs (patch of disturbed sand) and then dragged themselves back down the sand and into the water. Their drag marks are very clear as their shells have two grooves along the length which leaves a track, and of course their arms and legs (flippers) form a clearly distinct set of grooves at right angles to the direction the body is moving in.
And yesterday when I saw about 50 separate tracks up and down the beach my nice camera was in the boot, and I didn’t use the crappy one on the company phone because I figured I’d keep the nice camera with me today to get a good pic. Today I not only forgot the nice camera in the boot again, but couldn’t get a pic of the tracks because it was too blurred and I was moving too fast. And flying a helicopter. Nothing makes the passengers grab their seats than when the pilot holds the cyclic in the wrong hand (less stable) and then starts leaning half out the window, focussing on a camera in his other hand while the chopper starts to roll and dive towards the beach! So sadly, you’ll just have to take my word for it. Plenty turtles, plenty tracks.
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| Thin, boggy lake of freshwater one sand dune away from the sea | You know you’re in a mining town when the cables are this size! |
What I DO have a picture of is what I saw straight ahead of me as I was starting up in PG this morning. Just offshore, and reaching down out of a cloud towards the water. Two of them actually formed one after the other. I think they’re called water spouts? But for the sake of the story they were Killer Tornados!!
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| Tornado! Run for your lives! | The next thing Dorothy saw was a scarecrow with no brain… in Gabon |
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| Chinese New Year decorations in Ethekamba camp | Gabon’s traffic lights. Don’t think anyone takes any notice of them, though |
The little plane below putted in and landed at PG one day, just after me. He left it parked right next to my chopper for the night, and I can only thank his lucky stars (on his behalf) that I had already landed, because my downwash would have blown him over that fence behind him! Cleverly he had tied the wings to two big paint tins filled with sand when I arrived in the morning, so his balsa wood plane was safe. And you’re not gonna believe me, but I swear it was piloted by two military personnel – in military flightsuits!! The Gabonese Airforce is alive and well! I wonder if I could have been arrested for photographing a military vehicle…?
Snapped some lizards that climbed this pillar in the camp’s quad to hide from the rain as it started…
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| Little baby elaplane – couldn’t see where the Hellfire missiles attached | Ubiquitous lizards |
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| Small birds loving my rotorblades – and crapping on the windscreen! | Yet more showers to skirt |
And lastly, I tried to impress my sister and make her jealous with the array of French food in the local supermarket. Apparently there is a chain of “Casino” supermarkets in France, and everything in the supermarket is imported from France – and its stocked like any Pick n Pay / Tescos.
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| Saucissons… | …et fromage! |
Well, that’s it. I don’t foresee anything hysterical occurring on my trip back to Durban late on Saturday /early Sunday. I leave Libreville at midnight and arrive at 6am local time (5am for me) in JHB. Then 1Time has the pleasure of my patronage to Durban where I’ll spend one night and then OFF TO THAILAND on Monday evening!!!! I might be getting a little excited about it now but, whatever…
