Whilst we still can’t get up into the skies due to the prevailing crisis, he has been up to the top of his bucket list. The next flying adventure is in the making.
It’s an epic trip, through 6 countries of Southern and East Africa. And in the true spirit of N3 Aviation, to some very remote corners of the continent. This is how it looks like on the map:
Route up north through the interior
We will depart from Johannesburg in South Africa and fly up north to Zimbabwe. From Zimbabwe our route will take us to Mwanya, in Northern Zambia, between the North and South Luangwa National Parks. From Zambia we will head further north to central and western Tanzania. The target destination is the Mahale Mountain National Park on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. A very remote place, he has been longing to visit for a long time.
From Mahale we intend to fly over Burundi and Lake Kivu to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We will visit Virunga, Africa’s oldest National Park and famous for its population of endangered mountain gorillas and the volcano craters. This destination is from the very top of his bucket list, and been there since before he ended up living in Africa.
On our next leg, we route over Rwanda and along the southern shores of Lake Victoria, back into Tanzania. We are headed for the famous Serengeti and the Ngorongoro crater. Spectacular destinations to fly into.
Hopping the coastal islands back south
From Ngorongoro we will fly a circle around Mount Kilimanjaro and then route in a south easterly direction to Zanzibar. It’s the first island stop on our island hopping back down to the south. Next will be Mafia Island still in Tanzania, and then Isla de Mozambique, or Mozambique Island. Also two very remote destinations from high up on the bucket list.
From Isla de Mozambique, we will fly along the coastline to Vilanculo, and back to South Africa.
This awesome tour is being planned for the second half of June into early July 2021.
The timing for the middle of the year, is not just a personal preference. It is rather part of conscious planning and risk considerations.
Weather and climate considerations
As one can see from the map above, this tour will take us from the South all the way up to just below the geographic equator. With that, the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) has to be considered in planning.
The ITCZ is the climatic zone where the moisture laden northeasterly and southeasterly trade winds from the northern and southern hemisphere meet. It is a belt of low pressure which circles the earth, and is characterised by large convective clouds and heavy rainfall. There are cumulonimbus formations of huge vertical extent, which represent hazardous conditions for flight. Icing, turbulence, lightning, windshear to name a few.
In fact, cumulonimbus clouds in the ITCZ can extend up to and break through the tropopause. That is at about 55 000 feet altitude. So even for large aircraft traversing the ITCZ can be hazardous, and has been. Air France flight AF447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on Monday 1 June 2009 got into heavy thunderstorms and icing when crossing the ITCZ. It ultimately triggered a series of human errors and sadly, ended fatally for all on board.
The ITCZ is not stationary, but it tends to move towards the poles with the thermal equator. This north south movement of the ITCZ is more pronounced over a landmass such as Africa than over the oceans, due to the oceans’ relatively higher heat capacity.
As the earth orbits around the sun with an orbital inclination of 23.5 degrees, the thermal equator, where the heat received is highest, propagates between the Tropic of Cancer in June at 23.5 degrees north and the Tropic of Capricorn in December at 23.5 degrees south.
Trip timing based on climatic patterns
Over the eastern part of the African continent, which is where we intend to fly, the ITCZ, and with it, fairly hazardous flight conditions, moves from as far south as Zimbabwe in December up to South Sudan and Ethiopia in June. It then returns back south during the second half of the year. In the case of Africa, the region of maximum rainfall is slightly decoupled from the ITCZ and has a narrower amplitude.
For interest sake, the propagation of the ITCZ and associated rainfall along the western coast of Africa is significantly narrower. This is mainly due to the higher heat capacity of the Atlantic ocean and the Congo Air Barrier, south of which you find very little rain. That’s why Namibia and Botswana are as dry as they are.
It should now be fairly obvious why the planning for this tour is set for around mid of the year. That is when the ITCZ is up north, and largely outside of our route. Anytime between September and April, one would have to cross this belt of hazardous weather. And that is precisely what he prefers to avoid.
It is not a coincidence that this time of the year also offers good chances to see some of the great wildebeest migration in the Serengeti. Wildebeest follow green grass, and grass is greenest after it has rained. The rains have come from the south and move up north, and behind migrate the wildebeest as the grass turns greener.
The migration in the western plains of the Serengeti not seldom gets slowed or halted by the high water levels of the Grumeti River. Large herds then assemble to wait for an opportunity to cross the river.
It is therefore also not a coincidence, that crossing the Grumeti River is part of our planned route. And we hope for high water levels in the Grumeti.
There are of course a couple more challenges to put such a flying adventure into action. He will share those and highlights about some of the destinations in separate blog posts. So keep following.