This year, June 2014, Megan and I are off to Africa on a flying safari. Starting with five days in Cape Town, we will fly to Johannesburg where I will try to pass the Airlaw exams and the flying component to obtain validation of my license and obtain a South African VFR pilot license. Last year we planned to do this safari with four other pilots, but two, including me had open heart surgery and didn't go. We have hired a 1969 or 1970 Cessna C182 with aged instrumentation and a pilot/guide to accompany us, having heard of the difficulty with Customs, Immigration, understanding the Air Traffic Controllers, probable bribery, refueling and methods for protection of aircraft when parked and easily accessible to the wild animals.
Our flying safari takes us to a number of rather luxurious game park lodges and tented sites in South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe and will include a one day stay at Victoria Falls.
This will be hard to take, and a really tough assignment, but we are made of the 'right stuff' and I am sure we will be able to handle it.
After the flying safari, Megan and I are heading for Kigali and into the mountains of Rwanda to spend an hour with a family of gorillas.
We then fly commercially to remote dirt and clay airstrips near tented camps in the northern and north western Serengeti on the Mara River and Grumeti River respectively, to experience the annual migration of the wildebeest, gazelles and zebras as they head north to the Masai Mara.
For the last four days we head to the island of Zanzibar.
