First, a primer on air transit in the bush. In the bush there are no airports. There are airstrips. “Airstrip” is a very loose term that generally indicates a cleared, rectangular area of comparatively level ground on which there may or may not have ever been asphalt/cement/other hard substance.
There are a number of airstrips around and in the Selous Game Reserve, but as luck would have it, the one closest to our lodge was undergoing renovations (a good thing, apparently, as we were told that the previous year there had been an accident and a woman had died. Just what you want to hear before taking a trip in an 8-seater Cessna.). We drove past the airstrip on the way and said renovations seemed to be limited thus far to about 12 pickup-truckloads of red clay dumped at regular intervals along the ground.
The managers at the lodge had forewarned us that the trip to the next closest airstrip was 2-2.5 hours, but the perk was that the route was straight through the game reserve, in effect a 2.5-hour goodbye safari. Though the sun was high when we set out on our odyssey, meaning many of the animals had gone off in pursuit of shade, we still saw a good number of giraffes, impala, and zebras along the way, which was a lot of fun.
As we got deeper into the park we noticed smoke rising along the horizon in the direction we were heading and joked morbidly that perhaps that was our plane. But as we got closer we drove directly into the smoke a few times and realized the bush was literally on fire. Encountering another Land Rover from a ritzy game lodge along the road, we learned that the fires were set intentionally to clear out some of the undergrowth so new growth in its place would keep the animals in the park from migrating elsewhere. But conditions were so dry and windy that the fire was getting more difficult to control, and had jumped across the road in several places during the night. Matt astutely observed that there were no park game wardens out monitoring the fire, but this lodge, because of its proximity to the blaze and vested interest in preventing the lodge from burning down, had at least 3 Land Rovers riding around, radioing, and calling in backup.
A few minutes later we arrived at the airstrip, which turned out to be no more than a small thatch-roofed banda with a bench underneath, and a long cleared section of bush. Upon closer inspection we noticed that the banda was cheerfully, and hyperbolically, labeled “Beho Beho Camp Departure Terminal” on one side and “Beho Beho Camp Arrival Terminal” on the other.
Having arrived the responsible 30 minutes before our flight, we sat down to a picnic lunch and waited for the plane. Departure time came and went. We waited. And waited. A couple of times the Land Rover we had come in took off down the runway to chase away any encroaching game, which apparently pose a danger to landing planes, and we got our hopes up that the driver knew something we didn’t. Forty-five minutes later panic started to set in so we asked the driver who had brought us if this wait was normal. He said yes, but because we had changed the date of our ticket, we weren’t so sure the pilot hadn’t just forgotten about us. So we sat down to wait some more, but after another half-hour we were both clawing the (nonexistent) walls of the banda. Matt was entertaining nightmare scenarios of not making his international flight. Recovering from distended kidneys and with a growing belly, I personally was dreading having to go back and spend the night at the lodge again, which meant 5 more hours of bumping through the bush, and was querying the Lonely Planet guidebook about how much it would cost to stay at Beho Beho Camp nearby for one night. Short answer: the price would make your jaw drop. It was out of the question.
Right about the time I reached my wit’s end and started pacing, I heard the hum of a single-engine plane in the distance and saw the glorious sight of a Cessna coming in for a landing. Without ceremony it plopped down, taxied toward us, and turned around with propellers running. Matt observed that the plane didn’t say “Coastal Aviation,” the company our ticket was booked with, on the side, which confused me a little. We stood there dumbly, waiting for instruction, when we noticed the pilot in the cockpit was waving us to come around. We walked around the other side of the plane and the pilot opened his hatch and hopped out. He casually said, “Hey there! Are you going to Dar? Wanna come along?” I looked at Matt and whispered, “Are you sure this is our plane? It seems like a charter!” Matt looked at me and calmly answered, “Don’t ask any questions. We’re going to Dar.” Matt then grabbed our bags, opened the cargo hold himself and tossed them in, and we got onboard.
The overhead views were incredible – vast swathes of untouched land, blue-green mountains and bright puffy clouds, undulating patches of green and brown on the ground, studded with palms, baobabs, and acacia trees. Forty minutes later we were on the ground in Dar, having landed on the taxiway rather than a legitimate runway. We hopped out, grabbed our bags, and waved to the pilot, who waved back and then taxied off to some other informal destination. We still aren’t 100% sure that that was our plane, and we still have our unused tickets. But no one asked any questions, so it was just as well.
And we were just in time to grab a cappuccino and an hour or so together before sending Matt on his way, our last-ever goodbye in this Tanzanian chapter of our lives.
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