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Martine took us to the ULM club with all our luggage.
With Christian's help we worked on the rectifier problem. We made new wires and new connectors and fitted a new rectifier, which we robbed off Alain's 912 DTA Voyageur. Alain was very helpful and said he would order
himself a new one from DTA in France. Serge arrived with a weather report. Eventually at about 3pm I started packing and by 4pm we had said our goodbyes and thanks for the hospitality and incredible generosity to
the many club members who had taken time off work to see us off, and were on our way south.
The weather was not great, there were clouds
everywhere and lots of rain – but it is the rainy season now and when it rains in the tropics, it really rains. After 30 minutes we passed the Equator for the second time on this expedition. Olivier called me over
the radio to say "hey, hey, hey, we have just passed the equator."
There was a huge thunderstorm on the coast near to
Port-Gentil, so we headed inland over the forest. The forest was incredibly beautiful, enormous trees reaching up as high as 100 ft - sometimes with red leaves. We spotted elephants here and there as the vegetation
changed to patches of savannah grasslands between the forest. The grass was a luminous green colour and covered the little hills and undulations in the ground so evenly it looked like a large green carpet. The sight
was incredible with the green grass, the forest, the rivers and the black stormy sky. There were small herds of Buffalo that ran for cover in the forest whenever we flew overhead. I also saw a monster crocodile in
one of the rivers and silently named him Fingers!
There was a tiny clear hole in the sky ahead of us,
which started to close up when there in front of us was the most magnificent brown runway. Down we went, landed and within 3 minutes of stopping our engines the rain came down. We stood under the wings and waited
for the rain to pass. Some locals arrived and offered us a lift to the village, called Mpaga, at the other end of the runway get some food. Olivier went with them while I watched the trikes.
We ate sardines, bread, lettuce and tomatoes – and
drank beer. After eating, we put the tent up and covered the trikes for the night. As soon as the sun set, the mosquitoes arrived in swarms. Inside the tent we took it in turns to swat them against the walls of the
tent using Brian Milton's book, which Olivier was in the process of reading.
Again Olivier said he felt he may be getting malaria.
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