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Embassy day again. First we headed to the Angolan
embassy where we eventually got our visas after trying to get them for a total of 4 days and 2 embassies now.
For the last 5 days we have been royally taken care
of by our hosts at the ULM club at Libreville. Every evening we were entertained at someone's home or taken out to the club or a restaurant. We intended staying just a day or two to get our visas, but in the end
were delayed by the staff at the embassy of Angola and by a national holiday. On the positive side we had the opportunity to get to know the club members, to enjoy a few days flying with them, to share their lives a
bit and experience living in Libreville. Of course the French/Gabonese hospitality meant that Serge and Martine looked after me at their home like I was a long lost brother.
Our visas from the embassy of the Congo took just 2
hours. Later in the afternoon we went to the club to fill up the trikes and to try and fix my rectifier regulator problem. On Monday I fitted a new rectifier which only lasted about 20 minutes before burning out. I
made little progress with the problem.
One thing that we did fix on my engine was the one
ignition failure. With the help of a few club members, we found a broken power wire on the one electrical circuit. The wire had broken because I, in my wisdom, had attached the left-hand carburettor to the braided
ignition wire in an attempt to keep carb steady during start and shut down. What I didn't think about was that the continual vibration from hours of flying would eventually break the wire. Aviation Engines in
Johannesburg sent me, by DHL, all the electrical parts that I could possibly need …. good service, but not needed, luckily.
Later we went to dinner at Jacque the
hunter/artist/carpenter's house. It was a very interesting to hear why he had both hands mangled and was missing fingers. His right hand was mangled from a hunting client shooting him in the hand when he tried to
stop the client from shooting an elephant by sticking his hand out. The elephant was fine! He lost some fingers on his left hand while hunting crocodiles at night – he was dangling his hands in the water on either
side of the wooden traditional canoe to try and keep cool when a croc decided to take a bite of his hand! He had a huge semi-circular bite mark on his back from a gorilla giving him a bite because he made the fatal
mistake of looking at a big male gorilla straight in the eye. Then he had a big gash on his neck from a leopard taking a swipe at him - Jacque thought the leopard was already dead, but it was just pretending. He
said that he also had damage to his Willy ….. but that was just from wear and tear!
Olivier mentioned to me that he wasn't feeling very
well and wondered if he was getting malaria!!!
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