Whales and Rats

It's quite reassuring to be working once again, especially considering the present state of the offshore exploration market.  And of course, after almost four months at home, it's invigorating to be taking these noisy beasts to the skies once again.  With a few thousand hours of Puma time under my belt, I'm surprised that it took me as long as it has to regain that feeling of being at ease, especially in a bird that I've shared many an adventure with.  But after many hours spent sitting in the seat, reviewing manuals and procedures and systems, playing with the myriad of buttons and switches, and flying long trips most every day, it all comes creeping back eventually, reconnecting all those Puma related synapsis firing off in my addled head.

The L2 variant of the French Super Puma is considered a stepping stone between the L/L1 variants that I'm well versed in, and the all singing, all dancing, ultra modern 225.  Yes, the L2 has a Flight Management System, but it's one the oldest ones you could possibly find in any aircraft, and while it functions just fine for enroute navigation, you can easily get lost in the depths of pages and key combo functions, as simplicity was not a priority when they put this puppy together.  There are glass displays, called Smart Multifunction Displays, but being first generation glass, I don't find them to be a huge improvement over the old steam gauges.  Managing the flight directors is a tad archaic, as it's very far behind the AW139's simplistic functionality, and in my humble opinion, the L2's technology is not much of an improvement over the L/L1's 4-axis system.  In many ways it's more complex, and thus, a higher workload, not something that's very desirable.  But as any Puma pilot will tell you, this is a "Pilot's Helicopter", one that needs to be flown and requires the pilots to have their shit together.  I must admit, I quite like it!

So we depart most every morning out of Gabon bound offshore for the deep water of the Atlantic, and I look towards the North-West and home, my house being but one hell of a swim.  We pass an area brimming with sea life, as schools of tuna and dolphins frolic amongst pockets of swimming sustenance, and playful hump back whales launch themselves high into the air and come crashing down in massive plumes of white water, and once again, I'm reminded of offshore Nova Scotia and home.  Any day you see a whale is a good day, and we've got the best view there is.

Evenings are spent together with other crew members in any one of the many restaurants serving Port-Gentile, some amazing, some not so much, but I thought I had found a quaint colourful favourite, serving huge mounds of fresh tuna at quite reasonable rates, only to have a rat scamper across my feet one night.  In defence of the restaurant, I was eating outside on their patio, so rats be damned, I'm still eating there regularly.  Tonight we've got a base BBQ in the works up on our hotel rooftop.  Life is good!

Fresh Caiman

Cafe De Wharf, Port-Gentile; a quaint little hovel nestled into the trees.  Located on a hectic corner where locals laden with all manner of luggage arrive and depart on ferries destined for villages up and down the Western Coast of Africa, struggling with their unwieldy bags amongst hawkers selling carvings and colourful African shirts, and piles of bootleg CDs and DVDs.  I was drawn to the menu's offerings of fresh gazelle and antelope, but unfortunately the only local fare they actually had on hand was caiman, a small alligatorid crocodilian common in these parts.  I found the taste rather unappetizing, like fish gone foul, but my guts were fine the next morning so I gather rotten fish is how caiman is supposed to taste.  I won't order it again.  The wild boar is far better!





Overall Port-Gentile is a lovely place and everyone likes it here, with shops selling any manner of brand name product, good restaurants serving scrumptious meals with French flare, friendly people, and quite noticeably when compared to East Africa, very clean.  I still have a lizard running around in my apartment, much like in Tanzania, so there's little doubt which continent I'm on.

But we are quite busy.  I have to reacquaint myself with the Super Puma, as I have a few thousand hours under my belt on the large French helicopters, but I haven't sat in one in nearly four years.  The L2 variant has enough differences and peculiarities that I spend most of my little free time with my nose in the manuals.  In addition, this is a new base and we are still unpacking and setting up the operation, and struggling with the daunting task of filing a flight plan, everyday encountering additional requests for yet more paperwork.  The procedure is like nothing I have ever seen, and you must see at least five people, often not where you would expect to find them, in a very specific order, to get everything in place, for each and every leg, so the SAR standby crew keeps themselves quite busy just filing flight plans for the following day's flying.  But at least I'm flying again!  Yesterday was an IFR trip in IMC up to Libreville, then back down to Port Gentile, cancelled and pushed back so many times that I was ready to write the trip off, but finally, happily, I was pulling pitch in an old friend and taking to the skies of Africa once again.......

Libreville, Gabon

The allure of Africa; felt long, long before I ever set foot on the continent, my nose buried into the writings of Hemingway, the diaries of Stanley, Burton, Capstick and Karamojo Bell, nourishing a youth's craving for adventure, ostensibly stagnating in rural Canada with wanderlust so powerful it hurt.  And now, even more so, having lived, travelled, hunted and hiked and biked all over this wild continent, Africa gets into your system and under your skin and one tries to intellectualize the seduction, and invariably fails, but those who have spent time here....they know.

This is my first jaunt into West Africa.  I truly wanted to see the Western coast of Africa, having spent time most everywhere else on the continent, while somehow avoiding a dreaded Nigeria posting, so Gabon fits the bill rather nicely.  Being smack dab on the equator, I expected it to be hotter, but it's considered winter here, and has been overcast and windy and overall rather pleasant.  I arrived in Libreville to discover that I'd be on my own for a few days, so after catching up on some much needed shuteye, I threw on a pair of shorts and some trainers and headed into town on foot.  I soon found the crowded downtown about an hour walk down the coast and then inland to the busier areas, first locating a small Airtel booth and I waited patiently with locals, trying to catch a teller's eye, there being no organized queue that I could fathom, and eventually scoring a sim card and some data for my iPhone.  The place feels very much like the East Africa I'm very familiar with, but cleaner and with noticeably far less stares than I would get walking in town by myself in Dar or Mombasa.  The food has so far been quite good, but this is the capital, and unfortunately we are just passing though.  I'm meeting with government officials today to help square away all the paperwork and inspections, then there'll be some maintenance flights, sign off some currencies, then ferry down to our operating base, and hopefully I'm settled into some sort of routine by this time next week.

Getting some use out of the bottle opener on my pocket knife.....

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Back to work!  The trip so far has been rather pleasant.  Air Canada was able to check my lone 23 kg bag all the way through, making connections far easier.  I've used up all my upgrade to Business Class points for the year, but I did score a coveted reclining window seat in the emergency exit row, the pair all to myself, for the long hop across the pond. The emergency exit leg room competes with Business Class's very expensive real-estate, but the food nor service isn't really in the ball park.  It did take over an hour to clear immigration at Heathrow and get checked into my day room in Terminal Five, just in time to catch an extravagant Indian Wedding, the bride and groom on horseback, escorted by a live band and a plethora of guests attired in bright colourful silks.  I managed a little shut-eye on the plane so I elected to hop on the train into town, and the Underground to Westminster.  Starting at Westminster, the Abbey and Palace, and of course Big Ben and the London Eye, the area was crowded and noisy with street closures for colourful spandex wearing cyclists competing in the heat.  I joined the queue of sunny Sunday afternoon strollers Eastbound along the South Shore of the Thames to London Bridge, quickly tucking into some quaint pub for some fish and chips and a pint.  I then made my way across to the Tower of London, and back along the North Shore, eventually along St. James's park to Buckingham Palace, and even had time to get my weary feet way back to the hotel for a quick shower prior to the next leg of my journey.  It was quite a whirlwind sightseeing tour on foot, often feeling like a trout swimming upriver, trying to politely navigate the sauntering crowds.  I'm sure I had more fun than if I had hung out at the airport all day.

My next seat wasn't nearly so pleasant for the eight hour flight to Addis Ababa, but I did manage to nod off, at one point jumping in my sleep and grabbing the leg of the large lady squashed beside me.  That made her jump too, and we both laughed, but I did notice her keeping a wary eye in my direction afterwards.

I thought of using the plane's toilet prior to landing, but figured I'd wait until we disembarked and I was nestled into the Star Alliance Gold Lounge, but it didn't work out that way.  All connecting passengers were whisked directly into the secure gate area, thankfully foregoing another painful security check, but there was a thirty-five minute queue for the only two Men's stalls in the entire gate area!  For some odd reason, the business class lounge and all it's opulence is located outside of the secure gate area, and one look at the heaving masses fighting their way through security on the other side of the glass wall convinced me to accept my fate and wait.  Now it's finally my turn and I've been uncomfortable for awhile now, only to open the stall door to a seatless, unflushed, extremely gross toilet with no paper.  Pretty rough, but when in Rome.  I  managed without touching absolutely anything, and then made my way to my gate to sit for a few hours, and write this.....