Airstrips in Botswana are little more than a strip of dirt or gravel a few hundred meters long, with a windsock somewhere at the top of a pole. Sometimes there is a little ladder or stairway that can be pushed up to a plane to aid in getting on or off, but not always.
As we waited for our plane to take us from Kanana to our next camp, Okuti, I was filled with anxiety that the next camp would not be as good. The staff would not be as good, our guide would not be as good as Shakapira, the lodging and food would not be as good, the activities would not be as good, etc. Of course this was just my malarone making me crazy, but I was kind of right because the staff at Kanana gave us a unique experience that other camps did not match.
The plane soon landed and it was a 6-seater. The smallest plane I had ever been on. We had been warned before we left on our trip to stock up on motion sickness pills (by people who had been on the same trip to Botswana), which we had dutifully done but neither of us had taken any because we'd never gotten sick on planes before. However when this plane landed, all 6 passengers very very slowly exited the plane. One of the men had his pants off and was rebuckling them. All of them were carrying paper bags filled with ... something. Something that was quickly soaking through them. And they were looking for a trash at the airstrip to put them in (this is funny because there was no trash)! I was like, why did they bring food on such a short plane ride? Until I realized that they were air sickness bags ... FULL. And the 6 passengers were not doing well at all. Actually, one of them was fine. Several of them were at their final destination so they were taken off in jeeps to their camps, including the guy with his pants down who was the most violently ill of all of them. One woman was very unhappy. She had to get back onto the plane to fly to Camp Pompom, which was literally a 2-minute flight away from Kanana. But she couldn't do it. She said she'd never been so sick in her life and she wanted to walk to the next camp. Lions? Buffalo? Whatever ... better than being on a plane! Ha.
The pilot, who was the same guy who flew us to Kanana in the first place (only so many pilots out there!), got out of the plane and came over to us and told the woman coming with us from Kanana, Benike, who worked at our next camp, that there was no seat for her on the plane because someone had gotten sick all over it. She ended up covering it with a thick blanket and still sitting in it because she had to get back to work. The angry irrational woman from above was forced back onto the plane and boy did she COMPLAIN for the next 5 minutes until we reached her stop. The seat Martin sat in was fine. The seat I sat in had vomit all over the back of the seat in front of it. Somebody had thrown up into the seat pocket and it was leaking through ... and dripping onto my sneakers. You can't even imagine my panic mode for that flight. And the plane was hot. And it was a very traumatizing experience to have so many sick and upset people around us, with vomit literally all over the tiny, full 6-seater plane we were in. It makes you wonder what kind of turbulence they had experienced ... had it really been that bad? Or had one person just had a weak stomach and vomited, causing a chain reaction in all the other passengers? The pilot said they had had a good amount of turbulence, but he compared it to the flight we had already been on, which didn't seem all that bad to us. We will never know. But, I took motion sickness pills for the remainder of the flights after that one, just in case.
As we waited for our plane to take us from Kanana to our next camp, Okuti, I was filled with anxiety that the next camp would not be as good. The staff would not be as good, our guide would not be as good as Shakapira, the lodging and food would not be as good, the activities would not be as good, etc. Of course this was just my malarone making me crazy, but I was kind of right because the staff at Kanana gave us a unique experience that other camps did not match.
The plane soon landed and it was a 6-seater. The smallest plane I had ever been on. We had been warned before we left on our trip to stock up on motion sickness pills (by people who had been on the same trip to Botswana), which we had dutifully done but neither of us had taken any because we'd never gotten sick on planes before. However when this plane landed, all 6 passengers very very slowly exited the plane. One of the men had his pants off and was rebuckling them. All of them were carrying paper bags filled with ... something. Something that was quickly soaking through them. And they were looking for a trash at the airstrip to put them in (this is funny because there was no trash)! I was like, why did they bring food on such a short plane ride? Until I realized that they were air sickness bags ... FULL. And the 6 passengers were not doing well at all. Actually, one of them was fine. Several of them were at their final destination so they were taken off in jeeps to their camps, including the guy with his pants down who was the most violently ill of all of them. One woman was very unhappy. She had to get back onto the plane to fly to Camp Pompom, which was literally a 2-minute flight away from Kanana. But she couldn't do it. She said she'd never been so sick in her life and she wanted to walk to the next camp. Lions? Buffalo? Whatever ... better than being on a plane! Ha.
The pilot, who was the same guy who flew us to Kanana in the first place (only so many pilots out there!), got out of the plane and came over to us and told the woman coming with us from Kanana, Benike, who worked at our next camp, that there was no seat for her on the plane because someone had gotten sick all over it. She ended up covering it with a thick blanket and still sitting in it because she had to get back to work. The angry irrational woman from above was forced back onto the plane and boy did she COMPLAIN for the next 5 minutes until we reached her stop. The seat Martin sat in was fine. The seat I sat in had vomit all over the back of the seat in front of it. Somebody had thrown up into the seat pocket and it was leaking through ... and dripping onto my sneakers. You can't even imagine my panic mode for that flight. And the plane was hot. And it was a very traumatizing experience to have so many sick and upset people around us, with vomit literally all over the tiny, full 6-seater plane we were in. It makes you wonder what kind of turbulence they had experienced ... had it really been that bad? Or had one person just had a weak stomach and vomited, causing a chain reaction in all the other passengers? The pilot said they had had a good amount of turbulence, but he compared it to the flight we had already been on, which didn't seem all that bad to us. We will never know. But, I took motion sickness pills for the remainder of the flights after that one, just in case.
No comments:
Post a Comment