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Piper Malibu Jetprop from Kansas to Kruger  

 

Ready for Africa the next stop still in Europe was Dubrovik in Croatia.

and followed by a short fuel stop in Iraklion on Crete.

100 000L fuel in two trucks all for our little Jetprop. We sipped 240L what a business.

After Crossing the Med we headed for the Egyptian Desert. Not a lot out there.  

This changes dramatically when approaching the Nile. The river is giving live since thousands of years. The Temple proof this. 

Luxor is the tourist destination and we stopped here too. Most of the 5Star hotels are build directly along the river. Here the Sheraton that offers good pilot rates. 

Being where the tourist are, we too enjoyed some attractions, only we had to rent the ship after-hours, the ordinary customers went to their rooms already.

Our captain handled the sail and ship alone, very impressive. He offered us a 5 day sail cruise to Aswan 200km upstream on his boat the Nile Smile.

normally Agate Christy followers are using one of the hotel ships.

We prefer air travel and from Luxor to Djibouti we had the longest leg of the whole ferry trip. 1100NM; in FL290 with 23Gal/h flow landing with 35Gal reserve, very comfortable.

Quick turn around in this French Colony. Nothing special or worth a photo. Jack went to the airport (tower) toilets. He decided never to stop there again.

the day was already long and the second leg with 900NM added to it. The destination Mombassa, Kenya.

Landing at night and tank-off very early. No time to enjoy the White Sands beach resort. Luckily we had a CD player and even better a DVD for the passengers. Instead of them one of us went to the clubseating and stretched out watching a movie. The other watched the progress on the Garmin 530.

The next fuel stop was Lilongwe. Never heard about it before? It is the capital of Malawi ! We only found it with the help of our GPS Navigator. Doing 251kts speed over ground with a 20kts cross wind (see the little white arrow in the lower right corner)

What a tower and airport building, all for us alone. A very friendly place only the overflight/landing clearance was a problem, the published Fax and SITA contacts are wrong. But after our office called everybody from the tower controller (who is not responsible but had some more new phone number) to the Minister of transport (who felt responsible but did not know who might issue the clearance) we finally got the needed number by phone from ....?  somebody. That's Africa 

After refueling, the fees paid (around 50$ Nav/landing) and a visite to the toilet (very clean, probably because never used) we headed for Livingston, the town named after the fames explorer.

We were happy to see the fuel truck that pulled up just after we shut down our turbine. There was a Jet-fuel and Diesel shortage in Zambia but we had confirmed our fuel before. During flight we were studying the pilot handbook what has to be done if tanking Avgas.

We arrived early and we continued our river touring habit. After the Nile now on the Zambezi River. The ship called the African Queen runs for a two hours sunset cruise.

included in the fair are drinks and a light snack. 45$ for a great time watching elephants, a rhino and plenty of hippos

and as the name of the cruise said, the perfect sun set.

The morning sun rise was beautiful too, but the large breakfast buffet presented next to the hotel pool was waiting for us.

Why we went to Livingston? It's an adventure tourist place. Safari, Quads Rafting, Ultralights, etc.  

But what comes next after flying Jetprop?

 

a helicopter ride in the Zambezi canyon.  

 

and visiting the Victoria Falls.

traveling in style, the helicopter landed next to our aircraft.

In the rotor-wing we were passengers now it was our turn flying the Malibu over the waterfall.

(It's the dry season and the water level is very low)    

 

From Livingston we flew over Botswana south and to our final destination Kruger National airport South Africa.

Ones arrived home, we wanted to see how the aircraft will do it's new job.

 

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