From luxury to prison and back to the sweat pit

I'm now kicking back in the sweat pit/Dar es Salaam after a week of sleeping in a different bed each night from five star luxury to a cockroach infestation.
Sunday I was sent out to the Prison/mining town where the company I fly for have a Caravan based 60 nautical miles Southwest of Mwanza. I thankfully was only there for one night. I took this picture of the view from my cell/room,this large man made lake contains Cyanide filled mine tailing's.....view like this must do wonders for property values. I have decided to name it lake Death.
I know i have already gone on about the wildebeest migration enough over the last couple of posts, so I'll make this the last time for a while at least.
On Tuesday I pulled out every little piece of information from memory where other pilots had told me how to get into Arusha in bad weather. Pilots at Seronera who had just come from Arusha passed on info that the airport was completely clogged in with rain. I have a GPS approach that I had obtained from a Arusha based operator. The Arusha based pilots swear by this approach, though I have flown it in marginal weather conditions and know it keeps you clear of the terrain. I wasn't willing to dive into angry turbulent cloud and do a unpublished approach which lets one down through mountainous terrain......well not that day anyway. I took the less popular option of going low level around the south of the mountains from the Serengeti plains via lake Eyassi, then over the escarpment at lake Manyara and then my plan was to follow the highway into Arusha. But the weather was down to the ground on this final stretch so I deviated off track and began to head for Kilimanjaro International which I knew would be clear (the two airports are only several miles apart but there is a 1500 foot difference in elevation). As I was passing abeam Arusha enroute for Killi I saw a hole in the weather which was revealing the factory near Arusha airport, I took my chances and went for it. I landed only five minutes after my scheduled landing time, so all was good.
After a quick lunch of the local cuisine(beef stew and rice) and with the Caravan refuelled I steeled my nerves to go back to the Serengeti. Cruising at 12000 feet (FL120 for the aviation nut) I was well in the pea soup(heavy cloud and rain or as a aviation geek would say 'precipitation') concentrating on my tracking as unseen mountains were passing me by either side of track. After a good 30 minutes flying in IMC(Instrument meteorological conditions) I came clear of the weather into beautiful sunlight over Ngorogoro crater as if the previous 30 minutes were apart of my imagination. Those of you who have never heard of Ngorogoro crater it is one of those rare places in Africa where a self respecting tourist can expect to see the big five within a few hours. It is packed full of wild animals and also hundreds of other self respecting tourists all year round.



It was after this demanding morning that I was rewarded with one of my most memorable sights to date yet whilst flying from Ndutu to Seronera at 500 feet above the ground I literally flew over hundreds of thousands of Zebra and Wildebeest. I tried to photograph it, but the sheer scale of animals from horizon to horizon can't be captured by a small point and shoot camera. I also flew over a lion kill amongst this mass of animals, the circling vultures gave away the location.

On Tuesday night I decided to trade in the absolute luxury of Bilila(Kempinski) for the wildlife lodge which is closer to the airstrip....it turned out to be a mistake. I was innocently watching a DVD on my laptop when cockroaches began crawling around me!! They were coming out of the pillows, needless to say I didn't use my pillows that night. I feel sorry for those poor self respecting tourists forking out a small fortune for their once in a lifetime safari to end up sleeping with cockroaches......definitely not my cup of tea.
I couldn't resist taking a picture of this Antonov, along way from home with its Deutschland registration.

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