My second first.....if you see what I mean.
We as MAF have been flying regularly into the eastern part of the DRC for about a year now carrying people and freight over to Bunia which is one of the larger towns on the eastern border with Uganda. The town itself lies on the other side of lake Albert, one of the great lakes along the edge of the rift valley in east Africa. It sits on top of a plateau at about 4,000' above sea level, just behind a ridge of mountains that reach from the lake level at 2100' to the tops which are around 8,500'. It is very spectacular! However on Monday as I was flying towards the ridge I could see that there was a lot of cloud and rain on top of the ridge and also behind it. We were in contact with the MAF base in Bunia and they told us that the ceiling was very low and the visibility was down to less than 600m due to rain and haze. Not what you really want to hear when you are trying to get there.
On the Uganda shores of lake albert there are a few airstrips which serve some businesses and tourist lodges so I elected to land there and wait for the weather to improve. Unfortunately the weather didn't improve at all for the rest of the day! Fortunately there was a lodge that the airstrip serviced who had room for us that night (all 10 of us!). We were extremely well looked after and the next day around lunchtime we were able to get to our destination without any trouble from the weather!
