Conakry International Airport, Guinea

...The story continues...

Tuesday morning we collected from the hotel at 7:30 and taken to the airport. Sarah left me to preflight the plane while she went to file the flight plan. Once i had finished and was waiting for Sarah to come back my eye spotted an Islander on the far side of the apron. I asked one of the guys hanging around if I was allowed to take photos. He said yes. So i trekked across the apron to take a picture. Before i could blink a blood diamond type looking military guy came out of nowhere and grabbed my camera. He said 'there are big problems'. He said i must get authorization to take photos. I told him that its digital and can delete the photo but he didn't want to know. He marched me back to my plane. On the way back we passed a guy preflighting an antonov. I asked him if he could speak English but he just shook his head. Then I saw the captain of the antonov and called him. Man he looked scary... he had silver lined teeth but fortunately he could speak English. I explained to him that the guy has my camera and wont give it back. This captain said that its rubbish and you are allowed to take pictures. He told the guy in French to give me my camera back. Then he started pushing the guy and running after him in 36 degrees of African heat. Eventually I got my camera back. The military man wanted me to bring him some kind of miniature bananas back from Nzerekore in return for giving me my camera. I told him I dont have any money on me to buy bananas but I had a packet of revolting sour jelly tots on me which I was more than happy to give him. Fortunately on our return to Conakry later that day he wasnt around or he probably would have locked me up for giving him those painfully sour sweets.

I flew the 1st leg that day from Conakry to Kissidougou which is a dirt strip in the middle of nowhere (once again equipped with a full on air traffic controller). I also flew the 2nd leg from Kissidougou to Nzerekore. My landings in the Caravan are pretty good :-) Even the captain commented on them. Thats probably thanks to having flown the Islander. Sarah flew the 3rd leg from Nzerekore to Conakry which suited me fine. Our auto pilot is not working and the visibility is so bad that you may as well be in a cloud. Its amazing how tiring instrument flying is.
I got to do the radio work which is a challenge to say the least. These controllers have strong accents and we also have to radio UN air ops our position every 30min on our HF radio which is poor quality.
Sarah flew the 4th leg from Conakry to Hastings (Sierra Leone). Hastings runway runs east-west. You can only land from east to west as there are mountains on the other side. I guess you have only one shot at landing because you cant really do a go around. Flying here really teaches you a lot and is tons of fun.

I flew the 5th leg from Hastings back to Monrovia. We had 11 passengers and I had to fly a DME arc approach. It was very challenging and at one stage i couldnt maintain my altitude and Sarah was saying ALTITUDE ALTITUDE! I hadnt notice that i was descending at 1000ft/min. Shame our poor passengers... but i can tell you that flying an approach in bad weather after 7.4 hours of flying is tough. At least I made up for the moments of scariness with a superb landing.
Needless to say after a long day and a delicious meal made by our chef. I slept like a baby.

Yes we have a chef... Here's my theory about the chef. If you had to cook in our crew house kitchen you wouldn't eat!
What you don't know cant hurt you hey?

This kitchen is worse than the kitchen of the padfield park commune. Last night when the guys dished up they found a mouse in the pan. This morning when Sean walked into the kitchen he said he saw mice and cockroaches scatter. One of the mice went into the toaster. Good thing we don't have electricity in the mornings or I fear the guys may have been tempted to toast the sucker.

You also don't want to see the dishes being washed. We have very little water so 6 peoples dinner dishes get washed in 2cm of water. Its really a miracle none of us are sick. We not meant to eat fruit or salad or drink the water or anything like that but our chef washes the lettuce and that in the water weren't not supposed to drink :-)

All in all I like Monrovia better than Abidjan although Liberia is a country with no electricity, running water or telephones. The people in the crew house are fun and the country side is really beautiful.

Ten points for anyone who guesses what's wrong with the above picture....