"SOUTH TO SOUTH"
The Full Story
BUENOS AIRES – REYKJAVIK – CAPE TOWN 1999

FIGURES OF THE FLIGHT

Total distance covered: 43,000 km Total duration: 8 months ( 27 March – 27 November 1999 ) Departure point: Buenos Aires, Argentina. Arrival:  Cape Town, South Africa Average speed: 97km/h Total flying hours: 460 Countries crossed: 33 Continents: 3 ( America, Europe, & Africa ) Biggest challenge: The North Atlantic crossing The biggest difficulty: The Bureaucrats The 3 toughest countries: Cameroon,  Nigeria & Denmark (Denmark because of the difficult permit to obtain for the flight over Greenland). Most fun countries: Colombia, Argentine & Canada Most dangerous countries: Colombia, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Angola Smallest country: El Salvador, 8124 km2 The Biggest: Canada 3 851 807 km2 Most incredible landscapes: The Greenland Icecap, the Sahara in Mauritania after heavy rainfall, and the Atacama Desert in Chile. Minimum ground speed: 3 km/h Maximum: 203 km/h Longest time in the air: 8 hours  25 minutes. Over the sea from Greenland to  Iceland on the 7th of August 1999 Longest distance over water: 880 km Over the sea, from Iceland to Scotland Most expensive fuel: 2 US$ per litre (Greenland) Cheapest fuel: 4 US cents per litre (Angola) Total amount of fuel burnt per machine: about 5500 litres The 3 best cuisine: Morocco, France, and Gabon The 3 worst: USA, United States & North America (excluding Canada)… Most frightening experiences: Violent Windshear near Boston, flying into storms in Cameroon & being chased by the Air Force in Colombia.

2 Trike type Microlights,  2 pilots,
without ground assistance.



The 2 Pilots:

Mike BLYTH, South African, born in Johannesburg on the 25th of October 1953 (46), 1.80 m tall, 70 kg. Married, 3 children, lives in Johannesburg.
5'000 flying hours experience, World Microlight Champion in 1992 (Spain).
Entrepreneur.
Licences: Ultralight / microlight Instructor.
 
Olivier AUBERT, Swiss, born in Geneva on the 11th of November 1956 (43), 1.74 m tall - 73kg. 2000 hours flying experience. Single, one daughter. Lives in Geneva & Bushmanland, Namibia. Photo-journalist and Safari-tour operator.
Licences: Hang-gliding, paragliding, microlight instructor, and PPL.


The 2 Adventure Machines:

Trike type microlight (using weight-shift controls/hang-gliding type wings) powered with the new 100 HP (75kW) ROTAX 912S, 4 stroke, 4 cylinders, air & water cooled. Dual ignition.  Consumption per hour: about 12 litres. Main tank: 85 litres  (for 600km range about) + extra 77 litres tank (for the Atlantic crossing), giving a total range of about 1200 kilometres.

1.)   Aerotrike "COBRA 912s" (Blyth)
Registered in South Africa: "ZU-SKY"
Made in South Africa
Designed and built by "Rainbow Aircraft" in Johannesburg/South Africa.
Wing: Aeros/Ukraine 16.2 sq.m.
Speed: Minimum 60 kph, cruising 100 kph, maximum: 120kph.
Total take-off weight 450kg. Empty weight: 220 kg.
The Cobra was the first prototype of its kind at the time of departure and it has been specially designed for long expeditions.

2.)   DTA "VOYAGEUR 912s" (Aubert)
Registered in South Africa: "ZU-ARC"
Made in France
Designed and built by DTA in France, designer: Jean Michel DIZIER.
Wing: Dynamic 450 15.5 sq.m. by  Ellipse/France.
Speed: Min: 62kph, cruise: 100kph, max: 135kph.
Total take-off weight: 450kg, empty weight 230kg.
The"Voyageur" is probably the most robust microlight on the market. This particular unit (ZU-ARC) was built in 1995 and already flown during the 1995 "Cape to Cape" expedition.

Special equipment:

Ballistic parachutes, radios, GPS and one transponder.
Price of each machine, all included: about 35'000 US $ (220 000 Rand)

Number of pictures taken : 4500
Video: 30 hours (that will be edited into a 60 min film)

Budget for the expedition:

All included except the machines and their transport to Argentina: About US$30,000  for the 2 pilots over 8 months.


33 Countries flown in and over…

South America (5): Argentina – Chile – Peru – Ecuador – Colombia.
Central America (6): Panama – Costa Rica – Nicaragua – El Salvador
Guatemala and Mexico.
North America (2): USA and Canada.
Europe (7): Denmark (Greenland)  - Iceland – United Kingdom – France – Switzerland - Spain – Portugal.
Africa (13): Morocco – Mauritania – Mali – Burkina Faso – Benin - Nigeria – Cameroon  –  Equatorial Guinea – Gabon – Congo Brazzaville – Angola – Namibia & South Africa.   


Previous microlight expeditions & records:

Mike & Olivier: "1995 Cape to Cape" expedition: 20,000 km from Cape Town to the North Cape with 2 microlights. (Microlight World Record of distance at this time and up to 1998)

Mike:
1997 Southern African Expedition with 6 other microlights. 6000 km
1991 Madagascar round expedition (solo)
1992 World Microlight Champion (Spain)
1994 World Microlight Championship (Poland). 2nd place.
 
Olivier:
1994 Cape Town – Windhoek – Bushmanland 2500km (solo)
1996/97 Geneva - Barcelona – Agadir (Morocco) 4000 km (solo)
1997 Expedition in Southern African Expedition 6000 km (with ground crew)
1998  Casablanca – Algiers – Tunis – Palermo – Geneva, 5000 km  (solo).

Help & Support: (thanks to them all!)
Equipments, accessories, transports & tickets, brochure, logo and assistance:

DTA France, Aeros Ukraine, Rotax Austria, Swissair & Swisscargo Geneva, Aviation Engines & Accessories Johannesburg, Rainbow Aircraft South Africa "The North Face" Italy, Fuji Film Zurich, Europhoto Geneva, PointBreaK Geneva, BMW Johannesburg, Specialised Business Systems South Africa, Sakounishkaya Consulting Corp. Geneva, ASAcommunication, France, ReynArt Design, Geneva.

This flight covered 43'000 kilometres and became the longest ever Microlight flight and the new World Record. The previous record was held by Brian Milton (UK) who covered the distance of 37'000 kilometres during his 1998 circumnavigation flight.


The Story…

Part One: "Over The Great Americas"
By Olivier Aubert 


Forgotten how many things I had packed into it, I had a fright when opening the long wooden box. "Mike! How the hell are we going to carry all this stuff?"
If I have serious doubts, I usually refer to Mike who always has a reassuring thing to declare.
The crate was full to the top, the flying machine was covered with bags and other items, and unpacked It was even scarier.
Mike's box was not at the airport when we went collecting our flying toys, probably lost somewhere between Africa and South America. The supervisor of the Cargo dept. checked his computer and said:
"So far, we have no shipment of this sort. Call me tomorrow!" The box and the wing arrived a week later. Surprisingly, Argentinean customs seemed delighted with our "road vehicles" carnets and stamped it all with smiles and kindness. Expecting at least a day or two for usual arguments, we were wordless.

To start a flying expedition of this kind, General Rodriguez was the friendliest place we could have dream of. Situated 60 km outside Buenos Aires in the farming area, Rodriguez was more of a party field than a real airdrome with its usual rigid rules. Every weekend, the pilots were bringing their wives, the bambini and baskets of food. The planes were more often displayed silent on the grass than roaring up in the sky. We loved the place at very first and made friends with everyone around, especially Ernesto the boss of Aero -Latinas school and his instructor Santiago, the local playboy. Their sparkling enthusiasm gave us an extraordinary boost!

Our aircraft were probably the two best ultralight machines in the world capable to endure such a demanding task. Both were fitted with the powerful 100HP Rotax 912's engine, very strong undercarriages, good performing wings and extra-long range tanks. We were going to fly for many hours, many days, many months and we needed reliable aircraft with low maintenance profile. There was enough to worry with the devilish bureaucrats, unpredictable weather, and else. The machines had to be on our side, totally devoted and faithful. After some epic packing, loading, de-packing and re-packing, we voted a special budget for the Argentine post office. We had to send about 40 kilos of exceeding luggage to the USA, mainly the rafts and survival equipment for the sea crossings.

About to take off from Buenos Aires, Japan's Civil Aviation was still asking a ridiculous amount of money for our clearance. Siberia was also giving headaches. The cold and vast desolated territory in the dollar-starved Russia would be a tough place to fly. Fortunately, these two places were far too far to worry about.  One day, one of us mentioned a solution:
" If Japan remains tough on money, why don't we just fly East to Europe and Africa instead?"

DEPARTURE!

The first obstacle was natural. The Andes were standing high across our route. Following warnings and the failure to find oxygen bottles, we abandoned the high route to Santiago de Chile and went South to Patagonia.
On Saturday 27th of March, we took off from Buenos Aires, heading South to Patagonia. The weather forecast, with plenty nasty thunderstorms, wasn't that marvellous, but at least, we were off the ground, flying in South America, heading to Australia or somewhere else, and that was a wonderful feeling.
Four hours later, we made an emergency landing. Storms all around and rain pouring. We were soaked before the tent was up and spent the first wet night of the trip.
Three days after departing, we had covered more than 1400 km. We had flown over magnificent scenery and already had a good shake in the turbulence of the famous winds of Patagonia. At the foot of the Andes, we landed at San Martin de Los Andes, a ski resort for the rich Argentineans. I was stunned to find a piece of my country's landscape cut off and pasted on the flanks of these exotic mountains.

"You cannot go to Chile!"
Said the airport chief in army uniform.
Dammit! It did not take long for the painful bureaucratic assault course to start! My crippled Spanish was just starting to recover from a twenty years hibernation, not of any significant help yet.
San Martin had no custom and immigration facilities. Therefore we took off for San Carlos de Bariloche, a larger ski station having officials. Bariloche was another prototype of alpine paradise, in the centre of a wonderful criss-crossed system of valleys and blue lakes.
We lost two days getting clearances from the Chilean air Force and finally took off for Puerto Montt our first place in Chile.
The engines were purring at ten thousand feet over the high peaks, but I felt worried, remembering the words of Julio, a pilot at the local club:
"In this area, high winds can start at any moment and the turbulence can be real bad. We only fly our Cessna a few hours every month. It's too windy!"
It was our first challenging flight. The cold was biting hard and it took us three hours, inching our way between high snow covered peaks and ragged valleys before we could spot the coast in the distance. The scenery was breathtaking but engine failure here would have been fatal.
We just made it across, before the strong wind from the Ocean stormed the mountains. The feeling to reach the coast was truly lovely, even if the landing in Puerto Montt was critical due to rough turbulence.
While waiting for stamps, the wind grew stronger. We took off like helicopters and zoomed up the coast for a further 450 kilometres, assisted by a wonderful tail wind.


ALIEN ART

Mr. Erissman, the Swiss ambassador in Chile was waiting for us at Santiago airport. We knew the friendly man from our previous expedition in 95, when he was posted in Nairobi. Chile was another spectacular place where to fly, especially in the North over the coast of the magnificent Atacama Desert with the high cliffs of compact golden sand falling into the blue Pacific. At the border town of Arica, we took two Norwegian girls for a surprise trip into the desert, but I swear to god, we behaved ourselves like monks!
But mostly, behaving like monks doesn't pay at all as the following day we got severely hit by the Peruvian customs. In Tacna, some self-pleased officials grounded us for five days, requesting us to pay an exotic deposit for the machines. We fought hard on the issue, and I reckon that my Spanish had improved significantly during those days of bargaining. For a while, the scornful looking custom officer wanted to charge us over a million dollars for the deposit, getting his zeros mixed up.
Our embassies in Lima had a very opposite approach. The South Africans were keen to assist Mike while the lady at the Swiss office put down the phone. If Mr. Erissman did not kick the bottoms of his northern colleagues, we might still be there.
We made a two days stop over at Nazca where once upon a time, UFO's had landed a bunch of artists from their far galaxy to decorate the desert floor with endless lines and gigantic beasts. Well, this is one theory, "ma se non è vero è ben trovato". What a magic place!

Our stay in Lima was extremely pleasant. Thanks to Felipe Solsona and his daughter Huenu who had organised it all. We had a great welcome party at the ultralight club of San Bartolo, outside the city. We voted for a cultural break to Machu Picchu, the mythical site in the high mountains. We momentarily abandoned our trikes at the club and jumped in one of the country's museum rated 727 and flew off to Cuzco at the centre of the old Inca world.
On the second of May, we left Lima with a passenger. Huenu sat with Mike while I familiarised myself with cargo transportation. This was the first time we ever took someone with us during an expedition and these few days in trilogy were the most refreshing. When we approached Chiclayo five days later, we had a stroke of adrenaline. We spotted several MIG 29's backtracking on the single runway. The tower finally confirmed that we were at the right place and that Chiclayo airport was both civil and military.

COKE IN STOCK

Wherever we had mentioned the singing word "Colombia", we created a torrential rush of concerns and warnings.
"Colombia is fun but dangerous!" was the quintessence of all statements.
Before departing Geneva, I had contacted the flying community of Cali, following a friend's advise. Gerald, married with a Colombian woman, knew well that country. He was the first to worry about us flying "these things" in the guerrilla-infested Colombia.
"You have no bloody idea about what is going on there! Yes, it is the best place in South America, but they could blow you out of the sky, just for the fun of it"
"What about Salsa dancing schools?" I replied.

We had a flight plan made from Ecuador to the first town in the Colombian coast called Tumaco. We passed over the Equator line a few times just in case and celebrated it, screaming in the radio. This was a six hundred and fifty km flight, mainly over jungle and mangrove swamps, the perfect time for you to hope your engine was not a Monday morning creation. There was hardly any place to put the machines down.
The airstrip in Tumaco was a sharp cut into the deep forest. The operator gave us the landing instructions with a slight American accent, which somehow felt good. Taxiing to the apron, we saw troops running toward us. Despite their hostile appearance with Ninja look and heavy weaponry, they all seemed cordial and relaxed.
The controller coming down from the tower approached us saying:
"Welcome to Colombia!" Followed by a stunning:
"Would you like some cocaine?"
We looked at each other puzzled.
 "No thanks, why?" Mike replied curious.
With a sparkle of pride in his eyes, the enthusiastic man declared:
"This is the factory man! Welcome to the factory!
I felt my legs quivering and my temperature rocketing up. Had we landed in one of the cartel's kingdom? In fact, I never studied where exactly cocaine was produced in this wild country.
We finally understood what the guy meant. The factory was Colombia, the whole country.
We slept next to the machines on the calm aerodrome. Patrolled by the Special Units, this place was probably the safest in Tumaco or maybe the most hazardous. During the night we had to pitch the tent in a hurry. Waves of mosquitoes were attacking us like suicide planes. Lots of them succeeded to get in before we pulled the zips. The night was tropical and humid and we fought a tough war with the clandestine buzzers. The tent was like a sauna with mosquitoes. It was one of those wonderful nights.

ZERO ON FUEL!

It was the beginning of the wet season and rain poured badly along the coast. After three hours, we decided to abort the flight and look for a suitable beach to land on. Mike climbed between lower clouds and called Cali with his powerful unit. In our usual manner when trapped in such situation, we radio a sharp message and only acknowledge if the answer is convenient to us. Then, we switch channels. We found this procedure the most appropriate.
We pulled the dripping microlights up the lovely beach and prepared the evening.  Bivouacking in the untamed Nature was one of the things we were wild about. We had a great supper made of tins of sardines in tomato sauce with a mouldy loaf of bread washed down with our last litre of "Gato Negro" the famous Chilean red wine. Rain poured all night.

"Mike! My gauge is on zero! I won't make it to Cali."
I was high above lush valleys, somewhere in the lower Andes, desperately looking for a suitable field. We had pulled hard on the throttle since the coast, climbing all the way over the thick jungle, and our Rotax had sucked a lot of liquid, a typical fuel miscalculation. Mike was also getting dry and joined the searching expedition. All the fields were small and sloped.
After buzzing several minutes around the valley, we found a stretch good enough for an emergency landing, not minding the take off.
Coming lower, I discovered that the field was on a steep slope with a rougher surface than I had expected but I had no choice, my engine was consuming the last drops.
I had to put all my rage and skills into that landing, scared to ruin the trip. I pulled hard on the control bar and dived over the farm's corrugated roof, aiming for the first meters of grass and instinctively applied full power to "lick" the slope with my undercarriage.
The touch down was hard and the rolling extremely rough, but I knew my trike was one of the strongest on the market and that gave me confidence.
Mike had time to radio Cali that we would be delayed due to the clouds hindering our route. I caught the last piece of his message, which was pretty informal: "We call you later when we have your runway in sight, we won't be long".  If there were complains, they would reach our switched off units.
I came to a full stop and ran to indicate Mike the best way through the deep holes I had just missed by chance. He managed with his usual brilliant style.
I walked down the field to meet the grinning farmer and asked him where the nearest fuel station was. He came with me, insisting on carrying the two empty cans. He guided me through the fields in the luxuriant valley until an old bouncing lorry appeared on the broken track. There were perfumes of flowers and freshly harvested fields embalming the atmosphere and I wished Mike could have shared that little expedition with us. But someone had to stay with the two machines and as I had previously been voted the Spanish expert by Mike, I was naturally volunteered for the mission. The village was very pretty with the sloping narrow streets lined by small white limewashed houses. People were smiling at me and I could never imagine being kidnapped in such a peaceful place, and it felt great. One and a half-hours later, we were back with the old and rusty Dodge cab we hired, with sixty litres of fresh petrol in the boot. .
The take-off was a kamikaze rated operation. Once belting down the slope at full speed, there was no second chance, no way to stop . We were high, the air was hot and humid and on top of that we were heavily loaded. All the ingredients were in the basket to create our own little aviation disaster. I was quite frightened inside but Mike was as usual confident about the length of the field and the happy ending of the situation and that boosted me. I went first and darted at full speed into the slope, eyes almost closed. The bouncing trike finally lifted up. Ouf!
Breathless I watched Mike rocketing down the field, but when I saw him banking I knew he was airborne and fine.

 ALL WRONG ON ZERO ONE!

"You are clear to land on zero one!"
Radioed Cali tower.
Mike was about touching down when we suddenly realised that the big white numbers at the threshold of the wide tarred runway were "zero six" and not the announced "zero one".
"What's that now? It's a military airport!"
We immediately shot up with full power.
"Mike! This is the wrong place. Let's get out of here and quickly!"
On the ground, I could glimpse on the agitated uniformed figures running around corrugated buildings. I though of a kicked anthill.
I checked again my GPS and found that Cali International was a further 20 klicks away.
"Damned it!
Mike disappeared somewhere in the sky as I tried to put my ideas together after all these confusing episodes. We had definitely jeopardised our arrival in Colombia. Officials would now have all in hand to undergo a thorough interrogation and perhaps more than that. The conditions were turbulent, and I tried to concentrate on the flying to make the last minutes right and blunder-free.
I was about relaxing when I had a dreadful fright. A plane rushed in front of me.
"Holy sh**! A near miss!"
A wave of burning adrenaline rushed through my body.
"Hell! That was close!"
I watched the plane that I could now identify as a Cessna 182 making a steep bank. I twisted my neck to follow his progress and realised it was aiming back to me!
I screamed into the radio;
"Get the hell out of my way!"
The plane's crew kept silent.
Again, the Cessna came so close that I could clearly see the helmeted pilots in their flying gears and the markings on the fuselage. The round sticker with the coloured rings made it clear.
"Damned! The Colombian air force is chasing me!"
The pilots were obviously trying as hard as they could to get me back to the shattered anthill.
I dived as close to the ground as flying configuration permits, jumping over fences and watching for power lines. The "one eight two" repeated her dreadful hunting rounds seven more times. By chance, the pilots seemed not daredevils enough to risk such a low performance with their fast machine. I dodged around the fields trying to anticipate and counter the plane's manoeuvres while keeping positive on my track to the airport. The remaining nautical miles indicated in the corner of my Trimble were diminishing at a very slow rate. I was about to loose my second litre of water when I suddenly spotted the huge international runway. The chasing plane gave up the fight and Mike reappeared on my left wing.
On the apron, Randy Hurtado joined by some amigos was waiting. It was a delight to meet him after all these mishaps. At least we would have someone out to bring oranges to us and make all arrangements with a lawyer.
Randy said that his friend at the tower called to tell him that we were on our way.
"You really do have friends working here?" I asked relieved.
But before we had unpacked a single bag, a pitch black army chopper with a machine gun on one side landed fifty metres away from our tikes. That was obviously for us.
Randy bent his back under the idling rotor and went chatting with the two pilots.
After two minutes, the helmeted men waved to us and took off.
"How the hell did you do that?" We asked in choir.
"This is Colombia my friend!" Grinned Randy.

We stayed a week at Randy's, socialising with a new bunch of incredibly nice people and doing a grand service on the Rotax engines. We met "El Gato", the party man of the flying club. He showed us Cali by night and the best Salsa bars. Very impressive I must say!
Everyone looked well after us until we left for Panama City. Colombia was not the safest place in the world but we had no trouble. But outside the cities, the guerrilla could be anywhere and there were lots of kidnappings and murders all over the country. As advised, we took a direct route to the coast and followed the beaches until we arrived in Panama.
Sadly, we left South America behind us, both wishing to come back here one day, especially Colombia, The Place.
Reaching Central America, we had covered about nine thousands kilometres. Our engines had worked for over one hundred hours and still purring like kittens.

Tall dark-windowed buildings, neat refrigerated cars hissing softly on large sparkling avenues, Panama appeared like a little America. I immediately noticed the absence of potholes on the roads, which is an unequivocal sign that marks out the states that have either a booming economy with an acceptable rate of corruption or a flourishing drug or/and arms traffic industry. The famous Panama Canal was declared no-go zone for all aircraft, which did not stop us making a slight roundabout for photo purpose while heading out of the country.

Arriving from the sky, Costa Rica looked like a perfect heaven destination for the worlds holiday fanatics in search of exoticism. We landed on the Nicoya Peninsula where we met Guido, an old African friend who had set up an ultralight school near the beach. Waiting for further permits from BaseOps, we spent a week there filming, checking the machines and enjoying the "dolce far niente".
These permits consisted of a line or two with official numbers from the concerned Aviation Authorities followed by some supportive words from the British team. As the expedition progressed, these permits became like tickets to Paradise.
Ultimately, the one for Japan was never issued, and that was when the planned Pacific Rim Expedition turned to be an Atlantic one, ending in Cape Town.  From this particular moment, our minds started to focus obsessively on the map and the extensive blue areas between lands called "Ocean" which soon or later we would have to cross.
The whole of Central America was in peace at the time we arrived. Some years ago, flying across this part of the world would have been very hazardous, especially with our slow machines. Despite this happy situation, we decided to catch up on time. We departed Costa Rica on the sixth of June and arrived in Mexico on the seventh. We flew over Nicaragua, part of Honduras, El Salvador, followed by Guatemala, and finally landed in Tapachula – Southern Mexico, all in one day.

TORTILLAS & PANZERWAGEN

After a good resting night in a Mango plantation owned by an ultralight fundamentalist we went over the Sierra Madre de Chiapas mountain range and flew all the way to the Maya centre of Palenque, three hundred kilometres towards the East. Palenque was one of the Magical Mystery places I definitely wanted Mike to see. I still had great memories from a previous visit in 1980. We explored the famous pyramids from the ground and the air and landed next to the Agua Azul falls for a swim in the turquoise blue water. Mexico was an enchanting country to idle about, but much stricter on the bureaucratic aspect than most of the countries we crossed. Also, the heavy presence of federal troops armed to the teeth and charging down the narrow streets with their weird "Hummies" - (the "Panzerwagen" looking vehicle that became U.S. war-movie star after the Gulf conflict) - was not such a pleasant performance. Rumours of uprising guerrillas in the Chiapas province caused this parade.
To cut down all potential refuelling stops for drug smugglers flying from the South, the Mexican army had closed down most of the nation's airstrips by obstructing the runways with rusted farm equipment and drums full of concrete. Every evening, we were "forced" to land on the beautiful beaches of the Gulf. What a punishment!

WELCOME TO THE U.S.

I had no visa to enter the United States of America and the potbellied immigration officer did not appear in his best mood.
"We can sell you a visa for one hundred and sixty seven dollars otherwise you go back to Mexico."
This was a straightforward statement with little room for ambiguity.
In fact, there was a much cheaper way to get a visa by driving on the bridge that stretches across the glorious Rio Negro. So, we left Brownsville and flew back to Mexico.
Our first stop-over in the USA was in Johnson, Texas, on a neat little airstrip well equipped with lights for late landings. We walked to a recommended place to eat called "Sportsman's bar" and though the menu was displaying mouth-watering pictures, the food we ordered had to be awarded in unison: "Most Revolting Meal of the Expedition". It had to happen once.

Three days later, we arrived in New Orleans and spent some nights in the music bars of Bourbon Street, the fun place. There were many air force bases along the Gulf coast, meaning we would have to talk a lot. To my great pleasure, Mike was appointed radio operator. He struggled a lot, swapping frequencies every few minutes and adapting in a hurry to the changing style of the air traffic controllers. Very grateful, I followed in silence.
The U.S.A. is the number one flying nation of the world, no doubts about it. There were so many airfields in our permanent vicinity that my GPS was getting berserk when I activated the "nearest" airport function.
It is a real pleasure to fly outside controlled airspace because rules are most simple: "Keep your eyes open and talk when necessary".
We stayed four days at Kitty Hawk to pay homage to the Wright brothers who started it all. In New York, we recovered our rafts that had just arrived from Buenos Aires, and flew around Lady Liberty before heading to Massachusetts. At this stage most of my thoughts were dedicated to the North Atlantic. It was a scary subject to think of and some nights I was unable to find sleep. Mike went through the same emotions.
Maine was the most refreshing state we had visited during our short passage in America. We landed at "Merry Meeting" airfield managed by a bunch of joyful pilots. Everyone was cheerful, curious, and through its rustic style, the little town of Bowdoinham was giving an agreeable hint of detached happiness. We loved the place immediately. Bryce Muir, a resident artist helped us to find the extra fuel tanks we needed for the long sea crossing ahead and offered it as a personal tribute to our expedition. 
We moved sixty kilometres to a bigger aerodrome called Knox County where we spent a week preparing the last bits and pieces for the North Atlantic mission. Mike had to drive all the way to Buffalo for his Canadian visa.
We shared the pilot quarters called "the Boy's Club" with a fine gang of pilots. It felt like we had to catch up on parties before getting geared up for the long and perilous journey through the Grand North.    

10 MILLIONS $ THIRD PARTY!

Sitting in the bar at Shefferville aerodrome, the man spoke French but in a style not normally associated with that language. I was struggling to catch and puzzle his words together. What the affable Beaver pilot was trying to tell us was that he would never fly here without floats, insinuating that we - with our wheeled flying lawnmowers - were either slightly deranged or totally mad, but reckless in any case.
Shefferville was far out in the North of the Quebec province of Canada and to reach that remote town made us fly the longest distance of the trip, 880 kilometres, hovering over the mythic St Lawrence and across the vast stretches of forest sprinkled with thousands of blue lakes.

We arrived days later on Baffin island, totally captured by the stunning beauty of the landscapes and exhausted by the stress of the long hours over the huge and inhospitable country. There weren't many places to land safely in case of an engine problem. The weather conditions were getting more extreme with unpredictable winds and colder temperatures. The pilot with his tortured French was right, Canada was a floatplane country. 
In Iqaluit, a district fishing town and Inuit centre, formerly called Frobisher Bay, we met Cam McGregor and other members of the Polar Flyer Club and stayed with Sandy Tufts, one of the town schoolteacher. Iqaluit was the last stronghold of civilisation before Sondrestromfjord in Greenland and we knew we had to prepare ourselves well because from here on we were going to fly over some of the planet's most remote places and over endless miles of ice cold water.
Baseops was fighting hard with the Danish Civil Aviation to get our flying authorisations. It took days. The Danes were never keen to let uncertified aircraft like slow flying microlights inch over their giant ice-capped island. Before us, only two other trikes have crossed Greenland and both successfully, meaning microlights had a 0% accident record over the huge Scandinavian territory. 
As Eppo Numan in 1991 and Brian Milton in 1998, we were inevitably faced with the ultimate Danish bureaucratic deterrent, the infamous and horrifying 10 millions dollars third party insurance cover request. For a while, my spirit and optimism went liquid… Mike took it as a personal battle while I taught Sandy about Swiss cuisine and organised our daily meals and home tasks at the cosy wooden cabin.
Helped by Baseops and few other peoples in the UK, Lloyd's of London finally accepted to issue us with a short contract and a day later the green light was given by Copenhagen. Thanks to Mike who spent lots of energy on that issue, it became our greatest victory against bureaucrats ever. We were ready and motivated, but the weather turned real bad, forcing us to wait another five days.

During the last weeks, my engine became more and more difficult to start in the morning. We tried all sort of things without success until Mike found, as always, a bright answer:
"Let's remove the prop and see if it starts without!" And off course… it worked. It seemed it was a problem in the gearbox.
From thereon and before each leg across the Atlantic, I would awake with the sun, run the engine without the blades until warm, replace the prop and go. There was nothing better to do anyway because the nearest Rotax workshop was in the UK, three thousand kilometres away.
 
End of Part One

Part Two:"Across the freezing Atlantic"
By Mike Blyth   


I wake up and roll over in my sleeping bag to see if Olivier is awake. In the approaching dawn I see him fussing about, making coffee and rolling up his mattress. Behind him I can see a glacier glistening silver between the blackness of the volcanic mountains. Mosquitoes buzz around my face but apart from one half-hearted swat at them I ignore them. I am quite used to the bastards, having lived with them now for 5 months.
I suddenly remember where I am and slight panic surges through me. I hope I don't swim today! More than that I hope I don't die today! We are at the little airport at Hofn in Iceland, our leaping off point for our greatest test – nearly 900 km across freezing seas to Scotland.

I leap up and dress quickly. It's freezing out of the sleeping bag. I put on all the warm clothes I have and wander over to Olivier's trike to get my coffee. Olivier always makes the coffee – I do other things like the video camera work. We don't talk apart from exchanging fuzzy good mornings; it's early and we are both half asleep. Although exhausted, I hardly slept last night; my brain running wild with thoughts of today's flight and the previous flying days.
I move away from the trikes and look southwards in the direction in which we will fly and in my sleepy state I think back on the last five days of flying.
We had waited in Iqaluit in northern Canada for six days for better weather. When the large high-pressure we were watching moved over Greenland, we knew that we had about four days for the mission.
The flight to Broughton Island above the Arctic Circle took my breath away. The memory of high, snow covered mountains towering over us, cliffs of rock and ice, stark, rocky valleys and five beautiful glaciers that flowed into one huge glacier and disappeared into the clouds filled me with wonder.
From Broughton Island we flew over icebergs and ice floes to Sondrestromfjord in Greenland. The flight had been our first long day over open sea and the stress was exhausting.
Then the desolation and incredible beauty of the Greenland icecap really caught us by surprise. Olivier said it was the most amazing flight of his life. The seven-hour journey had shown us lakes and rivers so blue that we felt like we had added a new range of colours to our sight. The air was so pure that we could see every etch in the small mountains around Kulusuk, nearly 300km away.

On our way to Hofn along the fascinating coast of southern Iceland, Olivier had landed on a beach to talk to the pilot of another microlight and had become stuck in the soft sand. A tractor was summoned to tow him to hard ground while I continued on to Hofn.
We have had good luck so far and there is no reason for it to change. Actually I think that we make our own good luck!

We pack the trikes very carefully, checking the straps over and over, making sure that there is absolutely no chance of equipment coming loose and going through the prop. While Olivier is enjoying what is supposed to be his very last cigarette I climb up into the control tower and check the weather. The satellite pictures and the reports look good; some low cloud, light rain near Iceland, but the best of all is a ten-knot tailwind all the way. From below, Olivier shouts to me to phone Scotland, which I do. The Controller at Stornoway says the weather is great. I guess great means no blizzard. I file a flight plan, underlining the Search-and-Rescue part and give our total flight time as eight hours. We have fuel for 11 hours, so that gives us a three-hour  safety margin.
I am desperate to get into the air and run across the tarmac to my trike. Olivier's engine is already running and he is busy getting into his flotation survival suit and snow boots. I walk over to the grass verge and force myself to have a last wee.
As I struggle to get into my bulky survival suit, I look at Olivier and can see a look of determination and anxiety in his eyes. I don two scarves, three pairs of gloves, a balaclava and huge double-lined boots before walking over to Olivier. Above the roar of his engine I shout:
"you ready?"
He nods and give me a bear hug.
"You do the radio," he says. My radio is the more powerful of the two.

With some effort I climb into the trike. I check for loose equipment left and right, pull the choke on 'full' and turn the starter key. The whole trike kicks a bit and the engine roars into life. Scanning the instruments, I see temperatures and pressures are normal; everything sounds and feels good, the engine is purring. I pull my helmet on and check that the radio is working. I then attach the shoulder and lap safety belts. The bright red parachute handle is in place with the safety pin removed. I lean forward and attach the guide rope of the life raft to my right leg and my survival rations, water, flares, radar reflecting kite and location beacon to my left leg. I flick the switch for the GPS and check the route, distance and times.
In my mind I quickly run through my ditching procedure while the engine warms up. If the engine fails, the chances are it's for a very good reason such as running out of fuel, so I will not spend too much time trying to restart. Turn into wind. Helmet off, belts off, raft and survival gear into my lap. Pull my legs out from under the instrument panel and swing them to the right. Check that I am free from all belts and cables and ropes and slide my bum to the right hand edge of the seat. Concentrate on flying the plane. Look ahead to judge height above the water. If there is time, make another attempt at restarting. About 10 feet above the surface, roll forwards and sideways into the water. Be prepared for the shock of impact and for the stabbing cold of the water. Forget the trike, it's gone! Pull the lever on the raft to get it inflated and roll into it from the side. I must be out of the water within 15 minutes or it will be the day that I die! Switch the Emergency Location Beacon on and then wave to Olivier to go on. By this time he will have my exact location and will quite soon get a 'mayday' message via an over-flying airliner to the nearest country for my rescue.
I tap my breast pocket where I have my passports and the last of the cash wrapped in plastic. OK, I can do it, no problem!

The Air Traffic Controller confirms the frequencies that we need to use and reminds us when to start talking to Scottish ATC. We line up on the runway next to each other and with a slight nod, rocket down the runway side by side. I lift off a few metres before Olivier does, but he is alongside me within seconds. Wingtip to wingtip we claw for altitude before leaving dry land for the vastness of the North Atlantic.
My heart is racing as my eyes dart from Olivier to the dark clouds ahead of us to the GPS and the instruments. I look around for the fifth time to make sure the 70 litre auxiliary tank is full.

Quite soon we settle down and work at flying straight and level, avoiding the rain and wispy clouds. It's freezing. We are definitely the coldest we've been on this trip. I look at the GPS and see from our speed that we have a headwind and try to remember what the wind charts had indicated. Did I get it wrong in my anxiety to get going? I look down at the sea to get the low-level wind direction and I am shocked to see monstrous swells with white tops and wind streak lines. Just then the numbers go up and soon our ground speed has moved up to 65 knots. I give a position report to Iceland Control - latitude and longitude – and he tells me to call at exactly the same time every hour until he passes us on to Scottish ATC. The controller is very friendly and tells us that everyone at Iceland Control has heard about our flight and they are all holding thumbs. Holding thumbs! It unnerves me that the controllers hold thumbs. Maybe they are hoping that if we do ditch it will be in Scottish airspace and not in theirs.

I watch the GPS like a hawk, keeping track of the miles and the minutes ticking slowly by. Olivier is usually all over the sky – up, down, left, and right… I am constantly looking for him, but today he is steady. We fly at the same height so that we have exactly the same winds. I watch him on my right as he moves around a small cloud. Slowly he edges further away and when he is about 2 km to my right he calls over the radio; "where are you?" 
"About 2 kilometres to your left and about 500 metres behind you and kind-of on track." I watch him banks towards me and soon he is zooming up close on my right-hand wingtip. He looks at me and raises his hand. I know that inside his mitten he is giving me a thumbs-up sign. With that sign I know he is feeling good and his trike is running well. I wave back.

We are now 360 km away from Hofn and I make my third radio call "Iceland Control, Sierra Kilo Yankee, position report!" I call several times but there is no reply. Just then, very clearly and quite loudly, I hear a very English voice say, "Sierra Kilo Yankee, this is Speedbird 467, I can relay to Iceland for you if you like." A British Airways airliner must be overhead us somewhere. I look up and see a vapour trail of a jet heading west, high above us.
"Thanks Speedbird 467, please tell Iceland Control that Zulu Uniform Sierra Kilo Yankee and Alpha Romeo Charlie are at 62 degrees, 33 20 North and 12 degrees 12 44 West and will report again in one hour."
The hours tick by slowly. We talk about the cold. Today I am really suffering. I move the control bar backwards and forwards quickly to get my heart rate up and try to warm my hands and feet that are extremely painful, but my visor mists up. We are just passing the halfway mark and are now above the clouds at 7 000ft. I look down through a small hole in the clouds and there beneath us I see a fishing trawler. It's the first boat we have seen all day, and I take the opportunity to start the fuel transfer from the auxiliary tank to the main tank. If I have a refuelling problem then I want to be near a boat for a quick rescue. After a few bubbles run down the clear hose, the fuel flow goes smoothly. I am thirsty and reach down for my soft-pack water bottle, but it's frozen solid.

Approaching the Island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Olivier relaxes a little into his usual style, diving down through a small hole in the cloud and weaving left and right. I follow him, keeping away from where I guess his wake turbulence is. Hey, it's great being a bird.
And there it is, just ahead of us: Lewis Island, so close that if my engine quits now I will still be able to glide onto the top of the cliffs above the shoreline. "We made it, we made it!" I scream into the radio. He answer quickly: "Tonight we are going to really celebrate the conquering of the North Atlantic!" The Air Traffic Controller at Stornoway airport joins in: "Well done! You two are quite crazy, I don't know if you know that!" Boy it's good to hear such a strong Scottish accent. For Olivier it's a special celebration; he is the first pilot ever to fly across the North Atlantic in a completely open aircraft.

The landing is going to be quite tricky. As I turn onto finals I look once more at the dancing windsock and decide to touch down a little past the tower and fire-fighting garage to ensure that I do not fly into rotor turbulence. The controller calls again. "Sierra Kilo Yankee, you are number one. Cleared to land Runway 27, wind 24 gusting 30, 030, QNH 1021." I reply while concentrating hard on the flying "copy that, thanks."

We are down. In the parking area the wind is kicking the wing in my hands as I come to a stop. I put the windward wing down until the tip touches the ground and tie the control bar against the front aerofoil tube. There are a few photographers running around Olivier and me as we shake hands and then spontaneously embrace. "Lets unpack and get to a pub. I am starving and thirsty." For effect I add "and horny!" Olivier laughs. Charmaine will arrive in London in four days time and my hormones are telling me that it's about bloody time!

End of Part two

Part three: "Let's go to Timbuktu!"
By Olivier Aubert   

Since we left the coast of Iceland, we mainly flew south. The outrageous ecstasies and agonies of the North Atlantic experience seemed already well embalmed deep in our souls like venerable priceless mummies. Europe was recovering from the craze of the latest mass-exodus, baking in the mild post-summer lights, slowly moving into the decaying autumn. I always loved that season and when I radioed Mike to tell him that September was one of the best periods in Northern Africa, not yet cold and still warm, he sounded delighted on his joyful established style.

Our trikes were definitely overloaded when we took off on a beautiful day from Annemasse near Geneva. It was the ninth of the ninth, nineteen ninety-nine, a date impossible to forget.
I twisted my neck to see my brother Reynald confidently installed in the rear seat, and immediately noticed that the boy obviously had taken for granted the particular quote - "it is never too warm up there" - thrown out during our party the previous night. The Dear Old Boy was extensively wrapped up in suits, scarves, dark-faced helmet, mittens and balaclava, and for a short while, I wondered if that fearsome looking Michelin man was smiling or ready to bite me in the neck.
The wing felt heavier than usual, clumsy on steep turns and I thought that we were definitely smashing through the legal 450kg max take off weight limit established by the flying institutions. But who cared about rules at this exalting moment? Neither me nor Mike, who had his son Greg sharing his small aircraft. I was too happy to be heading to Morocco, one of my favourite countries, and to have Reynald as travelling companion was history. Last time we adventured together was during a breakout in the Algerian Sahara, ten years earlier.
It was an outstanding day in our lives. We were fully geared, high spirited, with wallets substantially refurbished and we were going to Africa, following a never-ending summer.
On our way to Gibraltar, we tried to avoid the critical mid-day turbulence, keeping in mind our overweight. My parents had only two sons, and we were both flying the same overloaded aircraft at the same time, and that scared me at some stage.

We left Europe on the 21st of September, in time to escape the rough weather that would soon seize the old continent. To cross the Gibraltar Strait, we had three life jackets for four, trusting our faithful Rotax.
That day, a strong "Poniente" blew us in less than twenty minutes onto the deserted beaches surrounding Tanger "la Blanche".  Morocco was gleaming as usual, we were in Africa and knew that we were going to make it to the Cape.



The visa must have been invented in Africa. The more Banana is the Republic the more difficult it is to get the visa. To combine the duties and pleasure, we chose beautiful Rabat as a place to stay for several days.
On the first Monday, as expected, Nigeria was already performing its usual uncooperative attitude and refused to issue a visa. After a week touring the embassies, I won the visa competition eight to seven and our passports looked like philatelic books. In Rabat, it was time to say goodbye to our passengers. The day we left, we discovered unfolding the wings that hundreds of snails had squatted in our sails.
Morocco was one of the nicest places we have seen along our route. But aviation of leisure is almost extinct, hassled down by strict rules imposed to civil aviation for high security reasons. And to keep drug trafficking under control, private helicopters are banned in Morocco, and ultralights with their "short-take-off-landing" potential are not really welcome.
 
On the fifth of October, while achieving the thirty thousand kilometres, we passed over the Tropic of Cancer. We were nicely cruising along the empty beaches of the Atlantic, edging the largest desert on Earth, when we looked to the East and realised that the Sahara was stretching its vastness to the Nile for six thousand kilometres.
We landed at Cape Juby where the famous French Aeropostale held a base in the 30's. We were busy unpacking our gear and preparing a one-night camp when we spotted far in the dusk, a bouncing car approaching. We soon recognised the familiar metallic -grey painted Jeep of the Royal gendarmerie coming to meet and check us up. This was just routine procedure in the ultra-policed North African Kingdom. The gendarmes were extremely kind as usual, and before leaving us, they chased away the pack of kids that surrounded our camp. This was our first desert night under the billion stars.

We arrived in Nouakchott on a Friday in October, after four long days in the air. We had covered an encouraging two thousands kilometres since Essaouira, the Atlantic Pearl.
Mauritania was easier than expected. The officials did not bother us too much when we brought our papers and genuine smiles were on all faces watching our unloading process.
The very strict Islamic laws that used to rule Mauritania and the daily life of its inhabitants seemed to have tremendously softened as the years passed by. Dutch Beer and French Beaujolais were available at hotel bars, and during our night sortie on the following Saturday, young Moorish girls were proposed to us against green bucks or French notes. Africa is the mother of all continents when it comes to shaking habits, doctrines and beliefs.

Mauritania is a desert country with lots of sand, almost only sand, and if there wasn't the ocean to stop it, Mauritania would probably stretch its dunes all the way to the Caribbean.
I strolled through the Sahara many times but I have never seen it like this. Weeks before we reached Mauritania, the whole country was blessed with record rains. The following days were Magic. No sooner had we taken off from the capital and left the coast behind us, we were already flying over a boundless sea of dunes.

The make-up of the Sahara this day was unique. The abundant rain had soaked the ground and left a verdant carpet sprinkled with flowers. The darkish brown dunes were popping through the fine grass like attractive fudge cakes.

As we dawdled along the deep desert, we encountered the first Bedouin settlements with their immaculate white tents and herds of goats running around as we roared passed.
The refuelling stops in small villages along the only country's tarred road were epic operations. Hundreds of effervescent peoples were running to the hand operated petrol pump, screaming and you-you-ting, and ultimately touching everything including the sweating pilots in their flying gears. This was total Extravagancia!
If these exceptional situations were precious moments in life, they also were critical and stressing. We were very much concerned about the parting procedure once the fuel would be paid and lids closed, and the dangerous propellers slashing through the invisible, so close to the agitated villagers. We had to start the engines right at the pump since our machines were too heavy to be pushed away from the crowd, and because the crowd would have followed the nomadic process anyway.  

A day later, the conditions got worse. Visibility came down to a hundred metres at the most. The air was filled with a zillion of particles, dust in suspension, volatile sand, it was like heavy fog. To avoid the lethal "white-out" situation, we had to stay in constant contact with the relief by flying a few meters above the ground while permanently keeping each other visual. Time to play and hovering over the boundless sandpit was over.
Late afternoon, we arrived in Nema, the Eastern-most town in the country. We progressed nicely as we had averaged 600 km per day since we left the Ocean, and Timbuktu was almost at hand.

While busy dealing with an exhilarated congregation and fuelling process, a shattered looking Cruiser stopped by. The police did not know how to handle such unusual visitors and got suspicious. Calls to offices and officials were made and the situation got more intricate. When they intended to keep our passports until the next day, my internal system "BAD" (Bureaucratic Alarm Device) started to ring strikingly. This meant danger! With terror, I pictured us grounded for days, waiting for a hypothetical decision from Nouakchott. To outfox the man, something radical had to be done fast.
By a hair's breadth I managed to convince the puzzled man that we would stay overnight at the town airfield and come early in the morning to talk to his chief, adding that we wouldn't sleep well without our passports. He handed back the two endangered booklets.
That evening we evaporated into the Sahara, flying as far as the ultimate light of the fading day allowed. In the twilight, we landed on a lonely mesa overlooking a dry riverbed fringed with acacia trees. Once the engines were shut down, the silence was absolute and we cherished the glorious feeling of being fugitive birds.

Gliding above the Niger River and arriving through the air in Timbuktu was much more spectacular than by crawling in the loose sand with a suffering Land Rover. I had never imagined that one day I would be hovering over the old Tuareg town in a microlight.
Timbuktu had not changed a lot since my last visit in 1985. It was still the same old lazy dusty, declined and mysterious hamlet that attracts tourists with the only evocation of its enigmatic name. But still it had its charm and I felt Mike should see it.
 The major mutation in the decaying town was the establishment of Internet. The new computers were nicely aligned in a freezing-cold classroom, but reassuringly enough, connection was impossible.
 

We passed smoothly through Mali, Burkina Faso and Benin, the very pleasant countries in West Africa.
All went well until we entered the Nigerian embassy in Cotonou. We wasted five days battling for visas. Day after day we sat for hours waiting for someone willing to take our money and stamp our passport. The long expedition started to take a strain on us and the bureaucratic hassles were the most painful at this stage.
Finally we managed to get the visas and took off for Port Harcourt our unique stopover in Nigeria. We carefully circumvented Lagos like a snake pit. If we could have avoided Nigeria altogether we would have done it without any hesitation. But the damned country was too big, the weather uncertain, and our long-range tanks had been left in Scotland. Too bad!
It was my third visit to that depressing country and each and every time, I swore to myself that it would be my very last time. But here I was again.

The flight across the vast swamps of the Niger Delta was exhausting, storms were threatening all over, and the marsh underneath offered very few landing places.
Near Port Harcourt, I had to make a blitz landing on an old road, as my fuel gauge went dangerously low. Mike stayed airborne, scouting the immediate surroundings for police patrols or in-coming trouble while I emptied my last can into the tank.
Mike was busy diving and chasing a bunch of youngsters approaching on my track as I got ready to take off.

Officials at Port Harcourt were not aware of my landing but found plenty other good reasons to bitter our visit. By chance, we had all our documents in perfect order and there was nothing the badgering vultures could grab on. We had to bargain everything from taxes to fuel. Although petrol is the cheap thing in Nigeria where for a few bucks one can fill up the tank and several cans, we had to pay a dollar for each litre. The whole afternoon went on with new deals, monkey bargains and interesting battles with interchanging enemies. We held the fort until late and finally got some breathing space when darkness knocked down the airport's activity. We had a last fight with the sentinels, and won the right to stay with our machines. We sheltered under the wing of an old mutilated Boeing, which I assumed to be a 707. But this specific unit has been altered beyond recognition. Africa was a place that defeated the large machines of the West with untroubled ease.
Around midnight, a violent Cumulonimbus stormed the airport and most of our things drenched badly. We took refuge in the Boeing's wheels compartment, the only dry place, and realised that we were on the twenty fifth of October, and that was Mike's oddest birthday ever. 

In the early morning I prepared the ritual coffee. Mike came to me holding his hand together. He brought a snail he had found inside his wing. The little mollusc was one of the many that had climbed into our wings in Morocco while departing Rabat three weeks earlier. This animal was an incredible survivor, having overcome the dry and heat of the Sahara, and the lack of food altogether. Last night deluge must have pulled him out from his temporary hibernation state. We could not abandon him in the bad place. I emptied a Tupperware can from its content, made holes in the lid, and collected some fresh grass on the fields. 
We called him "R'bati"(inhabitant of Rabat) and declared him official mascot of the expedition.

For some obscure reasons, which we tried to explain by the fact that we did not play the game of bribing the whole bunch of scavengers at Port Harcourt, Nigeria ATC did not send our flight plan to Douala which consequently created a shambles in Cameroon. Before arriving in Douala we flew past a prohibited zone well defined on our maps and stayed clear of it. But after landing, the army arrested us pretending that we had flown into it, naturally. Cameroon did not seem to have found a cure for their paranoia yet, which was already well cultivated in 1978 when I got jailed in Yaounde for spying activities.

After the army interrogatory, came the gendarmerie questioning, followed by the airport official's inquiries and last but not least, the police investigation. The latter was the most frustrating of all because the guy handling our case was a typical fanatic bureaucrat of the worst kind.  Mike who couldn't understand much French was allowed to go to the airport and stay with our aircraft. I was having cold shivers, and felt strange with joint and muscles pain and ultimately dizziness. Perhaps the deadly mosquitoes of the Niger had got me. I waited hours in a depleted office, facing a wicked police officer sitting behind a messy desk and waiting for his superior to finish some kind of dog funeral. 
He kept saying:
"You make big mistake, you are in trouble, you must wait!"
 Neither my most diplomatic French nor my experience in dealing with toughest donkeys seemed to work that day and I felt useless. Bargaining with stupid bureaucrats is something I had done many times. I had developed a kind of mastering on that issue and I knew how to handle it the best possible way. Well, I thought I knew. But Africa has a way of rearranging the known and the unknown.

After three days, we left Douala, relieved, liberated. Until the last minute, our departure was on the edge because some official signatures were missing. The bureaucracy in that particular country was a fact of life: Cruel, capricious, ultimately devastating. But, we survived again and every time we defeated a new obstacle - especially administrative - our friendship strengthened.
When eventually they let us go the weather was really awful. For the entire leg, we had to dodge around rain showers and storms, inevitably getting wet, and on a few occasions flirting closely with lightning. But even deeply soaked the faithful engines never failed or stuttered.


Libreville was the right place to reshape our cracked spirits before affronting the last challenge: Angola at War. The local ultralight pilots gave us the most incredible welcome.
At the Angolan Embassy, we had to fight for the ultimate visa for our expedition. The Angolans were not so happy to let us in. UNITA had intensified its diamond harvesting and again got plenty new hi-tech toys supplied by the moneygrubbers of the wise nations, strengthening its positions in the field. The killing of the innocent resumed, war raged madly again, and business flourished.
We passed the Equator for the second time while recapturing the World record of distance Milton has held since 1998. We outmatched his 37'000 kilometres when flying over the great Wonga-Wongue National Park, south of Libreville.

Days later, we arrived in Congo Brazzaville and were again treated like princes by the guys at the Aero-club of Pointe Noire. This was our last island of peace before we reached the Cunene River in the North of the war-free Namibia. Fever suddenly broke out. Malaria finally got one of us and it was naturally for me. Mike keeps on saying that I am the tough half of the team but paradoxically he never gets any disorders while I take them all. As every time, I mutated into a broken jumping jack, buried deep in my wet sheets, and dealing solo with pains and shivers.  It was the seventh time I got hit by the ravaging disease and I thought that one day it would eventually kill me. But at this stage, the concept of loosing one's life doesn't bother. Malaria takes your brain into anaesthetic cloudiness where nothing really matters anymore, not even death. We were lucky it did not happen in Nigeria or Cameroon.


Concerned about our safety and comfort, our friends in Pointe Noire had organised a contact in Luanda. Anything could happen in Angola, especially now that the perpetual conflict was on its fully blown cycle again.
Patrick, a young French businessman and his right-hand man Raul were waiting at the bustling airport when we touched down. Luanda International was the busiest airport we had landed at during the past seven months. At least, wars seem to boost anthills and motivate the ants to practice commerce.

There was so much activity on the radio that it was hard to talk for more than a minute. The intense traffic was essentially made up by heavily polluting Soviet-made cargo planes.
Backtracking to the apron, I watched anxiously a four-engined turboprop - obviously overloaded - darting down the runway. After rolling forever, the deafening metal dove, lifted up, slowly, leaving behind its struggling ascend, tremendous vortexes of unburned fuel.

All these devoted flying warehouses were long ago out of business in the strict-ruled skies of the West, dismissed by the new environmental regulations. But these cheap carriers from the bankrupted Russia gave the UN accountants' headaches a formidable relief. Pollution wasn't such a topic in Africa anyway. We taxied our mini-planes between lines of Antonov and Ilyushin monsters, almost unnoticed, which was a very good thing.
Patrick and Raul had the right connections in Luanda. They guided us through the wings and around the airport offices. Raul, a well connected man and very efficient was doing most of it, talking Portuguese with Ray-Ban sunglassed people in ties and walky-talkies. When the Shell employee asked us four US dollars for the hundred litres he had poured into our tanks, we thought he had missed a zero. But we were wrong, Angola sold us the cheapest fuel of the entire expedition.  

The days of flying through Angola were long, but easy. We sailed along the deserted coast all the way to the mouth of the Cunene River, the natural border between the two countries.
It was the eleventh of November, my birthday. All the bureaucratic nightmares and miseries were over, and that was the most beautiful thing I could have wished for that day. The two remaining countries, Namibia and South Africa were our homes, and we followed the majestic river all the way to the Epupa Falls.

The remaining part of the expedition was a piece of cake over aviation-friendly countries. We felt incredibly free and light-hearted. We went to Grootfontein and picked up Manuela who had just arrived from Italy, then flew to Bushmanland to meet Martine, Melitta and Andre, our old friends, and later, Mike's brother, Graham who joined the bunch in Windhoek.
Namibia was mainly desert and savannah with plenty open land available for an emergency landing, should this still happen. For the two and a half thousand last kilometres to the Cape, the rough-tough adventure mutated into a five-star journey. We were six, sharing three microlights and a Land Rover loaded with fancy things and goodies.
We reached Cape Town on the 27th of November 1999, exactly eight months after our first take-off at the friendly airfield outside Buenos Aires. Shortly before the last touch down, I turned on the GPS, selected "General Rodriguez" airfield in Argentina, pressed the "Go to" button, and after a few seconds the magic screen displayed the figures. Buenos Aires was straight across the ocean at almost the same latitude of 34 degrees, 6900 kilometres to the West. And, at our average speed, that would take us 70 hours to arrive. To link these two great cities, our expedition had covered 43'000 kilometres, and we spent 460 hours in the air. What a long detour! 
I just wished that we go on and on and never stop. This trip has been an incredible accomplishment. But far more of an amazing achievement was the fantastic friendship and harmony Mike and myself developed during that expedition. We ended up as best of friends and that made 1999 one of the nicest year of my life. Thank you my dear friend! Like in 1995, I doubt I would have made it on my own, and sharing all these beauties and experiences with you gave it a much greater dimension.
As we were kissing everybody and downing considerable quantities of Cape Champagne, I was expecting Mike to ask:
"What next?" 
But this time we were much more tired than in Norway in August 1995. We would need some recovering time before daring The Question once more. 

End

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