A Good Day's Flying

It was a good day's flying yesterday, once again taking to the heavy humid skies over the lush jungles of Gabon after enjoying a few weeks of a splendidly crisp Canadian autumn.  Mornings of frost and cold feet, breathtaking hues of deep oranges, reds and yellow as our East Coast hardwoods shed their foliage, signalling the coming of winter, I'm now back to the heat, back to the equator, back to Africa. Due to local airport construction and notamed daily closures, we set down on a jungle strip to the south to spend a lazy afternoon languishing in the heat.  There were no taxis to be had in the little village whose sole raison d'être is black crude, so we flagged down a smiling local in a beat up Toyota, windows permanently open or closed or missing entirely, doors tied shut with yellow twine, that drove along tilting heavily to the right and pointing about thirty degrees left of track as we creaked down the surprisingly perfect tarmac.  We negotiated a fee to find some elephants, known to be everywhere around town, in people's back yards upending garbage cans, stepping on flowers, creating harmless mayhem but loved nevertheless, and our new friend took in the hapless tourists for a tour of the area.  He recounted tall tales of elephants everywhere; why just that morning twenty crossed the road to the airport delaying scheduled flights, gorillas walked about regularly, scaring the daylights out of the lady folk, beating their chests before disappearing into the dense foliage, and he'd seen a panther only a few days before.  We rolled our eyes but listened politely, as his good nature was infectious.  We used our fancy pilot uniforms and a bit of self-imposed importance to sneak through security into one of the oil company compounds, our mode of transport raising eyebrows, then once again, flashing smiles, acting lost, feigning innocence, we managed to score some fine grub for ourselves and our driver from the oil company kitchen.

The afternoon flight back to base was to be one of my best flights in a very long while, right up there with flying Search and Rescue exercises with the Surinamese Coast Guard, landing on mountain pinnacles with a wood bladed Bell 47, long lining with a 206, water bucketing...ah hell, it's all awesome...but yesterday's flight was special.  As we careened over the Gabon jungle in our Super Puma, and crossed marshes with herds of water buffalo and elephant, rivers with crocodiles and hippos, I smiled....happy beyond reason.

Back at base no one has been able to locate the cel phone left by my back to back.  We can't find it anywhere, even though we know where it was supposed to have been left.  We figure it's time to give up when I get a call from the missing phone, with some unknown fellow demanding 20,000 Central African CFA francs for it's return!  We refuse to send the money as requested and ask our wily friend to come and collect the money himself.  Could he be so stupid?  He is, and he does, and obviously we all recognize our own night security guard.  Needless to say, we recovered our phone, didn't pay a cent, and he lost his job.

Off today and watching rugby with the boys, maybe hit the beach later.  Looking forward to another good day of flying.....