Last Ape Standing Dispatch #2: Flying to Africa
This post was originally published on November 15, 2019 on a previous version of ChipWalter.com.
This is MUCH better. Here, in row 38 F on KLM’s very comfy 777-200 jetliner, I am a happy man. Unlike Delta’s flying sardine can, I can write! I can stretch my frame, recline and sleep, which I have been doing, peacefully, I think (was I snoring?) for the past 4 hours. (Travel tip — take 3 grams of melatonin the day you depart at the time you would be sleeping in your destination time zone — that’s the trick. You’ll sleep like Rip Van Winkle.).
The jet is clean. Are we efficiently seated? Yes. Are we crammed? No. Somehow there seems to be space. Nor are we cranky and neither is the crew, mostly Dutch, blond and smiling, wearing colorful leis, walking smartly from here to there, getting things done! They appear to be genuinely happy and pleased to help all 276 of us. And when they speak English, there is the hint of a British accent which makes one feel a little like one of the Granthams in Downton Abbey. No wonder they built an empire.
The forced Delta patience during my Detroit-Amsterdam journey that you knew could at any moment turn into a nasty snarl is absent. No, here it was all sunshine and grins as we climbed out of the “nether” lands (the runway was actually 8 meters below sea level as we taxied to take-off) into the stainless steel sky, broke through the clouds and twisted east southeast to point our way to the tip of Africa.
A few hours out of Amsterdam we learn that this is the Captain’s final flight. He tells us how happy he is to share it with us, and promises to get us to Cape Town fully in tact. It’s a big day for him, closing a huge chapter in his life and he sounds truly moved. (Upon landing we all gave him a big ovation — not a standing one, given international flight rules) — and then the fire brigade in Cape Town doused the plane with water, a long standing tradition for retiring Captains.
A drawing of the great Colossus of Rhodes.
Right now he asks us to peek out the windows and take in the spectacular view. It IS spectacular — the Alps, snow covered and pristine, its peaks rising into a immaculate China blue sky, hundreds of just whipped tips of perfect meringue. Stunning (and, unfortunately, impossible to photograph properly through the jet windows). To our north, Luxembourg, to the east Vienna, to the west Paris, and below these magnificent, forbidding mountains everywhere. How did Hannibal get through them, you have to wonder? Tough on the elephants. But I suppose if the wealthy skiers of Biarritz, Zurich and Wall St. can survive, the pachyderms could too. (In actual fact, Hannibal lost the war, and most of the 36 elephants he brought with him.) These are the weightiest questions my jet-lagged mind can conjure at the moment.
So I muse, and gaze at the map on the video screen before me and note that we will soon skirt Rome, head over the Mediterranean and to Africa where, in time, we will pass near Rhodes, where long ago the Colossus stood astride the ancient harbor, its great flaming torch held high to welcome all visitors to the immense and mysterious continent.
Eagerly I nudge the jet forward.