De Wet Steyl passed away

My parents were visiting us at the Dam for a week and on Friday the 17^th of August my father called me early in the morning to inform me that his older brother – my uncle, De Wet Steyl passed away.

De Wet was the second oldest of four brothers and he was 83 years old. Over the Last Eight years he was suffering from a stroke and although he understood everything that was going on around him, he could not communicate with people, except for his immediate family with whom he developed a sort of coded communication.

De Wet was married to Nancy for 59 years and had three children Barbara Cathy and Christopher. Chris has been living in the USA for the last 20 years or more and he flew out to be with his mother for a few days.

On Tuesday afternoon at 14:30 a service was held in the chapel at Rosehaven where Christopher paid a moving tribute to his father.

End of Winter

As can be seen on the image below where I am standing on the snowswept stairs to the aircraft, it has been a hard cold winter in South Africa - this was on the morning of the 27th of June this year and since we are not used to this and geared for snow it took us nearly two hours to clear the wings and tail of the Boeing 727 of ice and snow with the help of the Fire trucks


We then flew down to Cape Town and back and was greeted by a Johannesburg covered in snow, something that only happens every 30 odd years.

Over the last few months we as a family was very busy Louis still flying in Zimbabwe and Johan Jr in Namibia, Juanita has been home for a while but is now on a trip to Rwanda - Tanzania - Germany - Malawi and then America.

My own schedule was rather hectic as I had to go for my annual simulator training early in July and this year it was in Bournemouth in the UK. At the end of July after only 4 days at home I did another trip to West Africa and only returned last week. Both these trips were marked with unusual weather - the well publicized floods in the UK occurred while I was there and disrupted everything especially flights from Heathrow. In the photo me and Flt Eng. Mike Melton and First Officer Steve Brits is standing in front of the simulator - for the non aviation types, this is a instrument that can drain all your energy out of you in a very short period (normal sessions are 2 hours a short break and another 2 hours) also known as a sweatbox and various other nicknames. As you can imagine, not most pilots favourite machine to operate but a very effective training tool, where engine fires, hydraulic failures and malfunctioning control surfaces are "normal"!

The tour to Monrovia had just as much rain but it was less disruptive since they experience an annual rainfall of 6000mm or SIX Meters and the drainage over the years have been shaped to accommodate the amount of water.

I have now been back in SA for a week and thank goodness the winter is at its end. We have put our house on the market and in this area property only really sells in the summer.

This coming week my Brothers and father are going on a hunting trip for Blesbuck Springbuck and Kudu in the Northern Cape near Kimberley, I cant make it, but Louis has flown down specially for this from Harare so in my next post I hope to tell about their experiences to get some biltong for their respective families.

Yammoussoukro and the "Vatican"

Since I have been flying around Africa for the last Thirty years I have become very used to chaotic slums and rusted tin shacks and general squalor of most African cities, and although I have flown into Yamoussoukro in the Ivory Coast on several occasions in the past I have never been there with the visibility being more than about 5000 meters.

Two days ago however the visibility was as good as it gets and I was treated to this fantastic view of the Cathedral and the city center, it took my breath away.

The cathedral at Yamoussoukro, known as the Basilique de Notre Dame de la Paix in english, our Lady of the Peace

I took the above photo from the cockpit as I flew over the Church

The following info I found on the Internet - Fascinating!!

Incongruously situated in the West African bush, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace (French: Basilique de Notre Dame de la Paix de Yamoussoukro) in Yamoussoukro is the largest church in the world.

The Ivory Coast (Cote d'Ivoire) is only 20-30% Christian, with the remainder adhering to indigenous animist religions (25-40%) and Islam (35-40%). The great basilica was the project of the Catholic former president of the Ivory Coast, who wished it to be a monument to himself.

Côte d'Ivoire president Félix Houphouët-Boigny chose his birthplace of Yamoussoukro as the new capital of his country in 1983. As part of the plan for the city, the president wished to memorialize himself with the construction of what would be the "greatest church in the world." The president commissioned a stained glass window of his image to be placed beside a gallery of stained glass of Jesus and the apostles.

View from the basilica. Photo: John Spier.

The basilica was constructed between 1985 and 1989 at a cost of US$300 million. It was intentionally modeled after the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, whose size it intentionally surpassed to become the largest church in the world. The cornerstone was laid on August 10, 1985, and was consecrated on September 10, 1990, by Pope John Paul II. Like its model in Rome, Yamoussoukro's basilica is not a cathedral. The nearby Cathedral of Saint Augustine is the seat of the bishop of the Diocese of Yamoussoukro and the principal place of worship for the city.

The basilica has aroused much international controversy, for the lavish building glittering with Italian marble sits in the middle of an impoverished African city where only a minority of homes have running water and adequate sanitation, and the cost of the basilica doubled the national debt of Côte d'Ivoire. Despite this, many of the country's Catholics are proud of their monument.

I will be back in South Africa in a few days to have the Boeing 727 serviced and should be returning to Monrovia approximately the 6th of next month - June.

Weekend in The Eastern Freestate, Bethlehem, Clarence, Ficksburg and Rosendal

After having just returned from a lovely weekend in Namibia, we accepted an invitation from Crause (My youngest brother who owns an Air Ambulance service and a flight school in Bethlehem) to spend a weekend in the mountains of the Eastern Free state.

We took the bike down in order to really enjoy the scenery and nature and it was really a good time of the year - right at the end of summer to enjoy the rich colours of that part of the world.

The first night was spent in Bethlehem and we were joined by another two friends Francis Smit (Doctor) and Spik, both old recce boys. The next day we cruised through Clarence the little arty village that had its Easter Bazaar on the town square,
On the outskirts of Clarence we buy drinks and biltong.

to have a lovely lunch on the Caledon river (the border between SA and Lesotho) with a majestic view over the Maluti Mountains.

After lunch we rolled further south through Fouriesburg to the village of Ficksburg where we parked the Bike at a new Boutique Hotel "The Morrison"
The Morrisson Hotel in Ficksburg

that belongs to an old friend of ours, Nick van den Bergh from the days when both Juanita and myself were flying for Executive Outcomes in Angola and Sierra Leone.

We were then given a lift in Francis's car to Nick's game farm a few kilometers outside town on a gravel road where we spent the night and most of the next day, enjoying catching up on old days with Executive Outcomes and doing a game drive with a fantastic surprise where Nick took us to a high point on his farm where a small monument is erected for the guys that was killed in Angola and Sierra Leone. We then had a real farm brunch on the neighboring farm where Bonny, Francis's wife, farms with a Jersey Dairy.

After lunch we hoped to take a leisurely drive to the town of Paul Roux where Juanita's Mother's ashes was recently placed at the feet of her parent's graves, this did not work out so well because we had a mishap by losing Juanita's handbag followed by a damaged oil sump from


Between Ficksburg and Rosendal with Visierskerf in the Background

driving on a bit of bad gravel road and we had to call for help to be saved by Crause who had to come and retrieve us from Rosendal.

We spent the night in Bethlehem again and returned home on Easter Monday keeping well away from he busy N3 and routed via Oranjeville in the middle of the sprawling Vaal Dam. Luckily the bike was fixed the next day and is going well again.