Day 33, part 2, holy ****, bush plane

"I booked you a flight from Zanzi to Dar," says Greg. He gives me a time and an airline, and tells me to be prepared to throw an elbow, or step on small children, or whatever else it takes to secure the co-pilot seat. "Trust me," he says.

I get to the airport and am not exactly sure of the procedure- my boarding pass says CA DAR 14:00. My boarding pass is handwritten, on the back of a napkin. In the waiting area, nobody is calling flights, no information is posted- 10 minutes before takeoff I give in and ask. Late flight- but not very. I needn't have worried. A guy with a clipboard walks up to one of the gates and mumbles, "Dar passengers." There are two of us. We approach the plane, packed with six other people. Empty co-pilot seat. "May I sit up front?" I ask. The guy loading us raises an eyebrow and says sure, throw your bags in the back, and climb up the ladder.

I do this- and am sitting, as promised, in the co-pilot seat, controls literally between my knees. It is an antique bush plane, I swear, an actual prop plane, with old-fashioned details and a scotch-taped-on label that says, "GPS not suitable for navigation."

The teenaged Dutch pilot says, "Twenty minutes to Dar, please do not unfasten your seat belts."

As if.

We take off, shoulder first: I have never seen this manoeuver in an airplane. But then, this is no ordinary airplane. It is the approximate age, size, and condition of my parents' 1968 Volkswagon Beetle, on which I learned to drive.

It is light enough that you feel, no kidding, every puff of wind. The payoff, of course, is looking down into that spectacular blue water. Zanzibar is surrounded by shifting sandbars, and the changing depths create every shade of blue, from bright turquoise on up through cobalt. You can even see the directon of the currents, little rivers of water skimming across the Indian Ocean in fingers, since they're more reflective and shimmery than the rest.

Twice during the flight, there is a series of piercing warning beeps. I stopped breathing, particularly as there were controls between my knees. I had the worst, I mean the worst vision of a scene from "Airplane," in which the pilot keeled over and I, because I was sitting in the front, would have to land the plane, while translating radio-tower instructions in Swahili. I questioned, seriously, every single decision that had led me to this point. Turned out not to be a big deal; out of my peripheral vision (I was pretending to be a statue) I could see that the beeps didn't make my pilot flinch, so I relaxed.

To round out my day of adventuresome transport, I also got to take a tuk-tuk and a dala-dala. The tuk-tuk was on the way to a beachfront restaurant. Greg was leading the way, and Greg is tall, and fast. I'm tall, sort of, but I had to trot to keep up. Before I know it has has flagged down a tuk-tuk on the street and the three of us wedge in. It is slightly smaller than my bush plane- kind of like a moped with a shell and a bucket seat in back. "Did you see my bargaining skills?" Greg asks. "No, how'd it go?" I said. "He wanted 3 thousand," said Greg, but I got him all the way down to 3 thousand." I was in the middle so I had the safety seat- Greg and Kate were hanging on to the rails to keep from getting bounced out from either side. The turn we took across 3 lanes of onrushing traffic, in what is essentially a glorified Big Wheel, was exhilarating.

Coming home, two beachfront beers and a large dinner later, I am again trotting behind Greg when he swerves and jumps, without hesitation, onto a half-stopped minibus, or dala-dala. Kate, used to these sorts of transitions, steps in gracefully, fitting herself neatly into the closely nested crowd. As I step in the people-packer, actually serving as a safety net because the door won't close, yells up to the driver, not unkindly, "Mzungi!" It's one of the 4 Swahili words I know, and it means something like (I hope I'm not offending anyone here,) "Whitey." I am half on one step, half on another, and it gets to be even more fun at the next stop when a few more people pile in. I know a lot, I mean a lot, about my fellow passengers now. We hop off and make it the rest of the way home on foot. I feel like I have done some things today.

Tomorrow: I am booked on the Dar Reality Bike Tour- 6 hours, a bike, the streets of Dar. Have mercy.