WINGS OVER AFRICA

IN MEMORY OF A GREAT BUSH PILOT

Chris Marais

2003, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. ʻHappy days,ʼ says Colin Bristow as he passes me the airsick bag and flies into a cloud somewhere over Zim. I am temporarily insane. Who else chugs heavy anti-malaria tablets with a half-bottle of home-grown tequila, scarfs a serious breakfast and goes flying in a little Cessna 210 at noon, when thereʼs nothing up there but tatty modern-day pterodactyls, bad-news thermals and a bush pilot with evil intentions? This hell in my head begins the day before at home in Joburg. We have just returned from the Karoo with a couple of bottles of Agava Spirit, a sharp liquor distilled outside Graaff-Reinet in a huge white hangar. The stuff is so popular that theyʼre exporting barrels of it to Australians, who are mixing it into their Outback…

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Getaway (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 2022

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