National Geographic: Flight Over Africa Page #2

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pilot told Claytor

about an isolated shipwreck

on the Namiban Beach.

One of the many

skeletons along

Africa's infamous

Skeleton Coast.

Claytor is looking for a

South African

freighter called the Otavi

which sank in 1945.

A mere footnote

in history,

the wreck is said to be

extremely well preserved

thanks to the tiny cove

where it went aground.

Just beyond this swept

area and that beach,

there's a rock peninsula

and one beyond it.

You'll see in between

the two is the shipwreck.

Right here the ocean is

just moving back off the Otavi.

There are seals just piled up

around that wreck.

You can see the wreck

jetting up out of the sand.

And part of it's

been split off.

And those are seals

they're just packed all around it.

May 15th.

I am on the edge

of one of the oldest

deserts in the world.

The skeleton coast

where countless

shipwrecked sailors

lost their lives.

It feels like a place

I was never meant to be.

Like a ghost, the Otavi

looms before me

rising three decks

above the sand,

something almost

lost and forgotten.

I try to imagine the men

who wrecked here

half a century ago.

How did it feel to be

marooned in such a place?

The wreck of the Otavi

is so inaccessible that

Claytor is probably the

lonely vessel's

first visitor in decades.

His book promises to be

a guided tour

of the middle of nowhere.

May 16th

Today is the 894th day

since I left home.

Sometimes I worry

that I will become

to comfortable

being alone. Already,

I can't imagine

what it would be like to be

in a room full of people.

I miss the most unbelievably

trivial things.

A bookstore.

A movie.

A long hot shower.

A pillow.

The only sound I hear

is a hyena in the distance.

I wonder where it is.

But I relish the quite...

the solitude.

May 17th. I wake up

at dawn and it's freezing.

I brush my teeth and

break down camp.

And then, almost as though

it were a part of myself

I see to the plane.

What I'm doing.

But of course

I think about it.

I check everything

and the I check it again.

Three pilots I met

in the Faroe Islands

were recently killed

when their helicopter crashed.

That makes 15 pilots...

since I started flying.

There's so much of flying

that's completely

out of your control.

So I try to concentrate

on what I can control.

Despite the dangers

and perhaps also

because of them

Claytor loves to fly

The whole world

goes upside down.

And yet everything inside

the airplane stays the same. Kinda fun.

If you do it wrong

you can really get

into a lot of trouble.

You can really really scare

yourself if you do it too fast

or too slow

or you stall the tail

hour heart drops...

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