My next posting is looking to be a fairly sure thing, even though I'm well aware how quickly things can change. My fingers are crossed. I've recently received my ticket to Suriname, formerly Dutch Guiana, the "Land of Many Waters", or better yet, de Wilde Kust (The Wild Coast), after numerous discussions with the company travel department over routing. It's not all that simple depending on when you travel, but I save more than a day of planes and airports each way compared to my three years of travelling to East Africa. By all accounts, Suriname is a quaint little backwater nestled in the West Indies, with a dark and interesting history. I've read "Wild Coast" and "The Riverbanks: Stumbling After Eden in the Jungles of Suriname" and one of my favourite authors; V.S. Naipaul's "The Middle Passage", all set in Suriname, and I think I have an understanding of where I'm going. It seems like the drug running Suriname was known for has given way to eco-tourism, and I believe it's reasonably stable, especially considering some of the places I have worked. I'm packed and ready to head out now but I have another week before I'm needed on the roster.
It looks like I'll be a SAR Captain and instructor on the AW139 again, despite the recurrent training I just did on the Super Puma L2. There's a fair bit of training to tackle on this job, so I'll be busy, and that's always a good thing. I'm raring to get back to work. I haven't been flying since North Africa last fall, despite lots of simulator time, which is good value for training but it does not satisfy the craving. Flying gets into the blood and it's been too long since I've had my hands on the controls lifting off into the wild blue.....
But I'm still home for now, in one of the rougher winters Nova Scotia has seen in a long while, reading about Suriname, playing with my guitar and shovelling snow until month's end........
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