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We sat outside on the patio in the dark and had a quick
breakfast of
. yes, you guessed it - coffee, bread and jam. In the pre-dawn light we caught a taxi to the airport. The guards were there as promised, one sleeping at the hangar entrance and the other next to the
trikes.
We packed our trikes quickly and taxied towards the
runway as the sun rose. The ATC didn't seem to know about our flight plan, but let us take off anyway. The weather looked strange, ahead of us it was quite cloudy, even some dark clouds and what looked like rain.
Rain in the Sahara, a rare occasion, I thought.
The town of Nouakchott was amazing to see from the
air. The brown flat roofed houses in brown streets. Everything is brown with almost no green anywhere. Towards the edges of the town the little box-like houses were actually built on the orange sand dunes.
We stayed low level, never going higher than 500 ft
and followed the road towards Kiffa. We decided to follow the road through this part of the world for safety also for safety we had five litres of water with us
but very little food.
The scenery was incredible, the orange dunes that
stretched out as far as the eye could see, camels and goats and Berber tents, the Berber men dressed in different shades of blue, the women in black or lime green or orange or pink. The countryside was incredibly
green for a desert - after the rains.
After an hour we were flying under low clouds and
ahead we could see rain. I climbed above the clouds to look where the big cumulonimbus clouds were and saw only one to the north. Olivier was ahead of me by about 500 metres when he said that he had hit rain and was
landing. He landed in the road next to a little hut and close by to a village of about 20 box-like mud houses.
As soon as we were down the villagers came running
the kids in the lead. They were very friendly, the young girls the noisiest. Olivier chatted to some of the men in French I was spared from answering the same questions we get asked every single day. We were given
a glass of strong sweet green tea. It rained heavily for an hour and as quickly as it had arrived, the rain stopped and although there was still a lot of cloud around, the way ahead looked clear.
We took off from the road and kept going east,
following the road. The weather was great; the visibility had improved to the extent that we were able to see at least 100 km ahead. We stayed low level, flying at between 50 and 300 ft. near the (only) road, always
within sight of each other.
There are days when we have had exceptional flights
and scenery and this was one of them. I will never be able to describe the exceptional conditions and scenery of the flight. For hour after hour the most unbelievable countryside unfolded before us. Olivier and I
agreed that the flight was the best flight of the expedition
and for me, the best of my life. The scenery just blew my mind. Can you picture an orange coloured desert turned green from recent rains, with no other
roads or even tracks, no cars, no fences, no telephone or electric wires just a few tribal nomads near their tents with their camels and a few goats. In some places there were black rocky outcrops of in incredible
shapes that Mother Nature somehow decided to turn into works of art. Through this incredible countryside the single tar road wound around the rocky outcrops and though the valleys as far as the eye could see, like a
long black snake.
During the course of the day we landed five times in
total. The second stop of the day was at a fuel station on the main road. We landed on the road and taxied up to the pumps and topped the tanks up. It was difficult managing ourselves with so many locals around us,
all chatting, touching, pushing and pulling. Some of the young girls of marrying age (I guess about 16) were presented to us as possible wives I guess I think they were for sale. We laughed and the crowd screamed
with laughter and delight, chatting louder than ever. Olivier bought some dates and long thin loaves of bread. We were in the air again within 20 minutes - a quick stop for us.
The third stop was at an abandoned airstrip close to
the road in the middle of nowhere
far from anyone. Well, so we thought. Within 10 minutes there were ten people with us, sitting in the shade of our wings and chatting loudly to each other. One old woman sat in
the sun and chatted to herself. Olivier lay down in the sun nearby for a while and I found a small bush to escape the chatter and the sun. We shared a cucumber and a litre of warm water.
The fourth stop was again at a fuel station on the
main road. This was our most entertaining stop of the day. Again the locals arrived, but this time we were surrounded by only about thirty people. There were three or four young girls of about 16 years of age who
were the noisiest. One in particular kept running to Olivier and I, pulling on our clothes and loudly chatting to us non-stop in her own Arabic language, looking at us straight in the eye. The other girls laughed
and joked and touched our trikes and our clothes and jumped back screaming with delight when we turned around or smiled or laughed. One of the girls stood in front of Olivier and with her left hand joined her thumb
and forefinger creating a circle and with the other hand moved her extended forefinger in and out of the hole indicating copulation. Olivier laughed, the girls screamed with laughter. The pump attendant had a tough
time keeping everyone calm he shouted at the girls and the kids and they ran back a few metres laughing. It was a short but busy and entertaining stop we took off from the road within 30 minutes.
The sun was quite low on the horizon when we decided
that we had better find a quiet place to camp for the night. We flew south, away from the road towards the most magnificent rock formations. After flying around the area for 15 minutes to make sure that there was no
one nearby, we started to find a good spot to land. Finding a good and safe spot to land is often difficult when there is grass, because it is not possible to inspect the potential runway properly when passing it at
75 km / h even if we go down to 5 ft above the grass. The ground was flat, but every now and then there was a hole or a log lying in the grass. We flew around and around trying to make a decision on which spot
would be the safest. Eventually, I lined up and landed on an open area that looked free of all obstacles. The 300-mm high grass was sparse, but even so, it was not possible to see the ground more than 5 metres
ahead. Olivier landed on my tracks and we taxied to the nearest rocks.
We put our carpets out to breath and Olivier tried to
get his carpet to move by saying some special Arabic words to it, but it didn't even budge, so after 30 minutes he gave up. I said the Arabic words to my carpet
- but Olivier said my pronunciation was terrible and he said the words directly to my carpet himself. The strangest thing happened - instantly my carpet (who I have named Aladdin, by the way) lifted about 100 mm off the ground and spun around and then settled down again. I got such a fright when it started to move, thinking it would fly away that I grabbed a corner and hung on bad mistake. The carpet threw me sideways and I fell over some rocks and hurt my shoulder. Olivier and I decided that we would not try to get these carpets to fly again until after the expedition in case we hurt ourselves and couldn't finish the trip. I am hoping to find an experienced carpeter who can take my carpet for a ride so that I can at least see how it's done and what it flies like. Actually it's quite exciting discovering that these magic carpets are not a myth. Later in the fading light we ate a few sandy dates, an orange, bread and drank some water.
We lay on our carpets listening to music from
Olivier's small radio/tape. I watched the stars and thought about the unbelievable day that we had just experienced. I now knew that if you wanted real adventure, Africa was the place to look for it.
Thunder rumbled in the distance and the sky lit up
briefly from the lightning of a small storm to the south. Slowly the storm moved away and the night became deathly quiet.
I watched a falling star streak across the night sky and made a wish.
Heyyyy step back Wilbur Smith!
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