Getting Hot

The temperatures are climbing here on the equator.  You can expect to be damp and slick in sweat within minutes of stepping outside, but it's not unpleasant, almost comforting, embracing.  Coming from a frigid climate, whenever one starts to sweat, you just peel off a layer or two, slow down a tad, open your jacket for a few minutes, but here in Gabon, already in shorts, sandals and a linen shirt, you just have to embrace it.

I'd like to see much more of Gabon.  Paul Du Chaillu, a young Frenchman and amateur taxidermist, lived with his father just South of us in the delta of the Ogooue River.  As his father traded with locals from the interior in the late 1800's, Paul spent his time collecting specimens and sending them on to the Royal Geographic Society in London.  One can only imagine what went through his head with his first sighting of a gorilla skull, the first ever, discovered on one of the boats bringing goods from deep in the interior.  He later mounted an expedition experiencing wild encounters with cannibals, snakes and tribal kings, searching for the mythical monster.  When he finally managed to secure actual gorilla hides, he mounted them and headed to London for the world to see, walking smack dab into the biggest scientific debate of the time; Darwin's theory of evolution.  It started just South of here, waypoint Sierra One, where we call in and out of the Port Gentil airport control zone.  I'd love to get into the interior, as there are gorilla viewing expeditions available, but the costs is prohibitive, especially considering the present market for offshore pilots.  

I had read Albert Schweitzer's "Reverence for Life" in my twenties, and it definitely shaped my outlook.  His philosophy was rewarded with the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, and he used his winnings to build a leper colony in Lamarene, once again deep in the interior along the River Ogooue, where Paul discovered gorillas decades prior.  The hospital is still a popular tourist attraction.  Damn, I wish a had a few extra grand and time with nowhere to be.

I'm still loving the flying, in the heat or not, it's always good to take to the skies.  I still score the odd afternoon at the beach.  Reading with my toes wiggling in the soft sand, or snorkelling in the warm waters of the Atlantic, gliding amongst clouds of iridescent fish and the odd barracuda, watching stingrays shimmy and hide themselves in the sand, or swim off gracefully, the odd tinge from remnants of a torn jellyfish tentacle.  Life is good.