"There are still a few places left that you can't get to from here." "Places without phones or faxesor even roads." "There are still a few corners of the globe so remote they remain aloof from what we call the modern world." "This is the realm of the bush pilot." "Tom Clayton is leaving behind his family and friends for a two-year adventure around the world." "The 28-year-old Radnor resident checks out his single engine plane for the last time before taking a solo flight from wings Airport in Norristown." "The purpose is to try and go to seven continents in different parts of the world and live and work with bush pilots." "As a bush pilot" "Claytor will fly daredevil routes while delivering vital supplies to remote areas." "So before taking to the skies" "Claytor got his hugs and kisses while cameras recorded all the action." "And there was even a special goodbye." "Then as the crowd looked on the pilot closed the cockpit door and took off." "The day he left, he made the local TV news." "If he makes it back, he'll make history." "Tom Claytor hopes to be the first to fly around the world" "Stopping on all seven continents before returning home" "I had this tremendous desire inside to look at other places to look in places like" "Greenland and the Sahara Desert." "Things that I'd only seen on the map in high school." "So I think it's a desire to look at different parts of the world and to live with people on other parts of the world but maybe also it's a little challenge or test for myself as well." "Claytor is 31 years old." "When he was 12 he set foot in an airplane for the first time." "It was to be the start of an obsession" "When he was just 18 he earned a pilot's license." "By his early 20s he had begun working as a bush pilot in Africa." "Today, Claytor owns his own airplane named "Timmissartok"" "after one of Lindbergh's planes." "Outrigged with a special reserve tank the Cessna 180 Taildragger can fly about 14 hours without refueling." "The struggle to keep his gas tank full has shaped" "Claytor's journey from the very start." "I left home with $20,000." "And when I got to Greenland it cost me $1,000 to fill up my gas tank once." "So it became very obvious that I was going to have to find ways of getting money." "And my idea which was only an idea when I left was that I'd work the plane on the way." "And when I got to Niger" "I found a job doing a survey of a park which paid me $8,000." "So I've been able to find jobs for the plane on the way." "Besides working the plane as he goes," "Claytor's writing a book about his experience in the far corners of the world." "So far, he's logged 46,000miles three continents and 28 countries." "On December 2, 1990 he left Pennsylvania heading north through" "Canada to Greenland and then Iceland." "In the summer of '91, he arrived in Europe." "And early in '92 he began travelling through Africa." "The longest leg of Claytor's journey so far has been on the Africa continent." "His video journal is testimony to a rare and spontaneous adventure." "We're now in market which is the largest market in West Africa" "We're now in... and Mr. has with him scorpions" "And now he's going to show me that he can use his so that the scorpions don't bite you" "we just did this once before" "I hope it's successful again." "Okay..." "It's starting to rain now." "Now in southwest Africa" "Claytor has spent the last few weeks exploring the country of Namibia." "Today, he plans to visit an area rich in African history a group of abandoned towns near the Namibian coast." "There's a town southwest of the Namib Desert called Kolmanskop and this town was founded because a railway worker working on the rail line found a very pretty stone." "And this lead to a diamond rush which caused this town to spring out of the desert" "and then as quickly as it started it disappeared." "Kolmanskop was followed by other boomtowns a sudden cluster of Diamond settlements that sprang up in the lifeless desert." "At the turn of the century," "Diamonds were so plentiful here, they say you could collect a jarful a night by just picking up whatever glistened in the moonlight." "In the saloons you could buy your whiskey and your woman with raw diamonds." "May 10th." "It's a ghost town, almost like the American west." "Casinos." "Hotels." "Houses." "There's something haunting and magical about this place." "I keep looking in the sand half expecting to find a diamond." "But there are none." "When the sand was picked clean, the people disappeared." "What they left behind is am eerie memento." "An empty museum." "A movie set." "I can almost imagine the sounds of music and laughter here." "Claytor's itinerary is deliberately unpredictable." "If he has enough money for gas he can simply scout around off the beaten path for material for his book." "What I'm trying to do is visit remote parts of the world places like this desert jungles ice caps and places which are basically the frontiers of civilization." "And the venue by which I do that is I look for bush pilots because bush pilots work in these areas andvery often they're not just pilots but they're scientists they're businessman, they're researches they're missionaries and conservationists." "These pilots also teach me the particulars of these various areas and how to go through them safely." "Recently, another bush 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... 15 friends who have died 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... so that's when I do it by myself to practice it." "Because you don't want to do it wrong when you're trying to show someone." "But the life of a bush pilot is not all barrel rolls and stunt flying." "With funds running low" "Claytor needs to start looking for his next paying job." "He decides to leave Namibia flying northeast to Botswana." "Here, he'll visit an old friend and fellow bush pilot..." "Perhaps, with a little luck he'll also get a line on some work." "Bush pilots everywhere seem to have an informal network for news and information." "In Africa, many are involved in wildlife management and conservation, like Lloyd Wilmot." "Just keep a nook out for breeding herds and any sign of vultures and hyenas." "Wilmot runs a safari camp in Chobe National Park." "In addition he uses his plane to help combat poaching in the immense refuge where he is an honorary game warden." "Today, Claytor has become along with Wilmot to track a herd of elephants just outside the park." "You've a huge herd underneath you right now." "Roger." "I'm turning to the right." "I want to have another look at that herd." "Okay, I'm in on your left." "Now that they've spotted the elephants from the air they'll continue the search on foot tomorrow." "Lloyd Wilmot is one of the few wildlife experts who routinely approaches elephant without the protection of a vehicle." "He and Clayton will wait at a watering hole for a close up view of the animals." "What do you do if you're surprised by an elephant?" "Is there a trick to not getting eaten?" "There's no real trick." "The thing is to try and keep the wind in your favor." "If you if you can see him before he sees you you can figure out which way the wind's going and then go down wind of him and keep clear of him but in the ultimate analysis if you are confronted" "you get to something like a big tree, like that." "If you can't climb it you just get behind it and you have a clot of earth like a lump over there or a piece of wood, and throwing that at them often turns them and distracts them." "In their sort of terms of reference nothing has ever thrown anything at them so they get a bit disconnected when you actually throw something at them." "Wow...!" "There is" "Notice how they skim the top of the water because that's where it's cleanest and clearest." "The sediment sinks down and you have about half half an inch to an inch of clean water on top." "So they suck just on the top, much like you see them doing now... you have to look carefully, the ears are cocked." "Claytor approaches a bull shoot some video of him but the large make has no interest in posing for the camera." "What did you just do there?" "It's a bluff charge." "It's to get you to go." "Just call his bluff." "Stay put." "May 22nd." "I have just been charged by a wild elephant." "Lloyd laughs lightly, like he's seen it a thousand times." "Neither one of us says much." "There's really not much to say after an elephant charge." "After a while a large group emerges from the bush." "Its an extraordinary thing to be so close to these magnificent creatures." "It's so easy to feel small in the face of such splendid power." "Thanks to bush pilot grapevine," "Claytor has secured a job in an international park in Zimbabwe." "The two pilots part company in the Botswana sky" "Claytor's headed for Hwange National Park in Western Zimbabwe," "but first he'll make a slight detour to one of Africa's most spectacular natural wonders:" "Victoria Falls." "I'm now flying low over the Zambezi River approaching Victoria Falls and as you look ahead at the trees you just see this mist this towering mist rising" "our of the trees that are above the water." "And the Africans call it" ""Mosi-oa-Tunya."" "Which means the smoke that thunders." "The Zambezi River drops up to a million gallons of water a second over the 350-foot falls." "Even before it comes into sight, the roar of the plummeting water is deafening." "The rainbow everywhere." "You see the mist sailing the screen." "Look at that chasm, and there's a rainbow coming across it." "Wow, look at that" "right below the falls you can see there're gorges that just zig back and forth about five times." "And in these gorges it also drops down to this boiling black water below." "It's spectacular." "May 26th." "I can't resist flying down into the gorge even though it's risky." "Not only could I be killed" "I could probably get arrested." "As I corner the water explodes into a torrent if frothing white waves." "Sometimes flying is just a fast way to travel." "And sometimes it's the greatest thing in the world." "Leaving the falls behind" "Claytor reaches Hwange National Park." "Before he can land in a remote area" "Claytor has to clear the runway." "Collisions with animals are one of the greatest dangers bush pilots face in Africa." "Okay, are you feeling strong this morning." "On the ground," "Claytor gets some help refueling and prepares for his next assignment in the air." "Conservationist and researcher Janet Rachlow has hired Claytor to help track an injured rhinoceros in the park." "Rachlow is part of a controversial program designed to protect severely endangered rhinos." "Park officials in Zimbabwe have been removing the horns from dozens of rhinos in a desperate attempt to deter poachers." "Claytor was there during one of the dehorning operations and videotaped it." "The first time" "I saw rhinos getting their horns cut off it was in the southeast section of Zimbabwe." "This huge rhino was lying there sedated and this man pulled the started ripping the horn off its face." "And you start to ask yourself," ""why made clear tome was that there's nothing else that can do here." "The rhino Claytor and Rachlow are searching for is an adult female named Zola." "Even though she was dehorned, she was shot and badly wounded by poachers." "In the vast 5000 square mile park, the only way to locate individual animals is from the air." "Even then, it's no easy matter." "We're starting to get a signal." "Okay" "Once we get a little bit closer, we can listen out of both wings... and we wanna balance the volume that comes in on the two wings and that'll keep us going right towards it..." "Okey" "Geez, it's hard to see through this bush, isn't it?" "Okay, straight..." "Real close real close directly under us." "Nothing under us on the left." "It's quite possible that her collar has come off." "It's come off several of the other animals." "So what we'll need to do is just come in on foot and find the collar or find the animal." "But, you know, now we know the area." "With the help of expert trackers, the search for Zola continues on foot." "Dr. Michael Kock is the veterinarian for Zimbabwe's national park." "Once they find the rhino," "Dr. Kock will shoot her with a tranquilizer dart so he can treat her gunshot wounds." "I need..." "The hole is swollen here." "That's from a gunshot there?" "What I need is, I need an eye cover" "My shirt?" "She looks good." "You can see she's done some wearing here around the edges." "If Zola had died, the poachers would probably have cut off what was left of her horn to sell." "Still, dehorning does appear to reduce poaching overall." "It's easy to want to take an emotional stance to conserving these animals." "And if you take that stance, dehorning is hard to justify." "But I think we have to be realistic, and we have to look at what's happening." "And, I mean, I'd be really sad to tell my children or my grandchildren that, sorry, there used to be something as magnificent as a dinosaur, but we killed them all" "Strafed with machine gun fire the huge creature's legs are swollen with infection." "Once her wounds are treated" "Zola will be given an antidote to the tranquilizer and freed." "May 27th." "The immense animal awakes and rises to her feet but does not move." "Then, slowly she lowers her massive head to the ground and uses her chin as a crutch to limp off into the bush." "The doctor sounds optimistic but I am not." "She might survive these wounds but to a poacher, her life is worth far less than the sad stump at he end of her nose." "Four days later," "Claytor receives a wire from Janet Rachlow." "Despite all their efforts Zola has died." "Back on his way," "Claytor returns to the explorer's life." "He has decided to pay a visit to an orphanage for chimpanzees in burundi." "Claytor heads north toward Burundi." "But first he'll cross Zambia, and an area called the Kafue Flats." "I'm now somewhere over the Kafue swamps, and as far as you can see in every direction, it's absolutely flat." "And it's this green patina over dark blue water." "If you didn't see the sun reflecting, you know that it's just a green patina of growth on top of this vast swamp." "I think if you lost your engine here" "I'm not sure how deep it is but you'd probably just mush into this green gunk and just sit on top of the wing and then try to call someone." "You just can't crash here." "If he did crash here," "Claytor's tiny plane would be almost impossible to spot from the air." "The orange stripes on the tail and wings are a safety measure." "If he goes down, the right color might make it easier to find him in the empty terrain he frequents" "Claytor hopes he'll never have to find out if it works." "And crashing isn't the only thing a pilot has to worry about." "I've had a couple of close calls." "When I got to Algeria, it was right after the military took over." "And they thought that a bush pilot was a pilot for George Bush." "And right after the gulf war," "George Bush was not a very popular person." "I tried to quickly explain that a bush pilot had nothing at all to do with George Bush." "Claytor decides to make a brief stop in Zambia to refuel and chart his course to Burundi." "Bueno Bungee." "How's everything here?" "I am from Ndola, but I needed to refuel." "Hello." "How are you?" "Nice to meet you." "I'm Claytor..." "We are just from around here." "The lanky American is an unusual sight wherever he lands and his grasp of African languages is often a crowd pleaser." "This is my first time ever to come here." "It's nice to meet you." "Oh, it's very nice to meet you." "When landing, you're suppose to pay something - a landing fee." "How much should I pay you?" "I want to pay." "How much?" "How many kilograms?" "It's one ton." "5-60 5-60." "How many U.S. Dollars is that?" "It's about one U.S. Dollar." "I understand that" "Can I pay you two U.S. Dollars?" "So is that okay?" "This is more than okay." "Okay no but please the change is for you guys" "You can have it." "Because landing fees here are very reasonable... so it's one cent." "These are for you to do as you wish to improve your airport." "I think that's the cheapest airport" "I've ever landed at in my whole life." "When you fly in the day it's very bumpy, because the sun heats the surface of the African earth and it just gets these currents of air straight up." "At night, it's completely different." "The air is calm and still." "You can see the stars." "You can see fires on the ground." "You can see the moonlight reflecting off of lakes." "And it's very calm and peaceful and kind of reflective time." "You're suspended in space over this large black think that you can't see." "It's mysterious." "The chimpanzee orphanage in northern Burundi was founded by the Jane Goodall Institute in 1989." "Chimps confiscated from smugglers are brought here to be cared for by conservationists and volunteers." "Dean Anderson is the director of the refuge." "At the moment, it is home to 17 chimpanzees, and one baby gorilla." "How old is she?" "She's about three" "She was confiscated at the airport." "She was taken from her forest home as all the other chimps here..." "In Zaire... eastern Zaire, because she's an eastern lowland gorilla, by poachers and then she was brought to ;" "she was in transport... now what they were going to do with her there" "I don't know." "Probably a zoo or..." "Is that where they were mostly going to zoos at one point?" "Zoos probably." "A gorilla would probably go to a zoo." "'Cuz a private person would just..." "No..." "Not be so interested, right, because they get too big and too violent?" "Yes, well too big." "I mean, how do you keep a 300-pound gorilla or something." "June 4th." "There are baby chimpanzees everywhere." "They are affectionate and smart." "Each one has a distinct personality." "One has mastered the art of threading a shoelace." "If they were returned to the forest, they would be killed by wild chimps." "They can never go home." "My mind drifts back to a day" "I spent in Equatorial Guinea and that little chimp I found." "We just had something to eat at a restaurant and I came out." "And sitting here tied to this chair is this little baby chimpanzee." "I don't know how old it is." "He seems very cold." "He was hugging himself when I found him." "And it's, I'm shocked by it." "I don't know what to think." "He's just sitting here." "Oh my god." "I've got to go." "Most of the chimps in the orphanage were captured by poachers to be sold as pets." "Though they are extremely appealing as babies, growing chimpanzees are too smart and too destructive to make good pets." "Once the chimps become powerful adults, they must be confined in cages, a lonely place for these social primates, who quickly become bored and desperate for attention." "Soon," "Dean hopes the orphanage may be able to give some chimps a little more freedom." "This is a temporary situation." "We're hoping to get money together to out them into the sanctuary that we're talking about." "And there they'll be, they'll all be together." "They won't have cages, they won't have ropes." "They'll be on an open space where they can have a semi-natural social life." "Which is so important for chimpanzees." "Wildlife in Africa seems to be in direct conflict with people here because they need space and the animals need space and the animals end up losing..." "I was impressed that someone was trying to take these chimps that had already basically list so much, they were trying to in a way give them back to themselves and nature." "May be its not perfect." "Nut it was something." "Soon Claytor must leave Africa, and make the rest of his way around the globe." "But first, he wants to make one more stop." "For some time, he has wanted to visit Zaire." "But so far, he hasn't been granted clearance to land there." "Okay, this is Mike Oscar in southern Zaire." "Over." "Mike Oscar... is there any way for me to confirm a clearance from Ndola?" "Over" "That's very difficult because of the fact that there's no telephone communication between the two places." "Over" "Okay, roger." "If I arrive with my copy of my AFTN request, how easy is it to negotiate once on the ground?" "Over." "How much money do you have?" "Over" "I've got a fair amount." "How much do you think it would cost?" "Over." "At least $250 each." "Over" "Roger, I understand." "The turbulent political situation in Zaire makes it extremely difficult to get permission to enter the country." "Claytor decides to go in any way, without an official clearance." "He'll touch down at a small airstrip where he can refuel form his own supply." "If he's lucky, no one will ask him for his papers." "In Africa there's a rule an unwritten rule, and that is that it's easier to get pardoned than to get permission." "Because of communications and how difficult it is to get clearance and things, its sometimes easier just tot do them and afterwards, of course, you get in trouble." "But the Africans are very forgiving." "Good people, and very often they'll forgive you." "For Claytor, everyday is part of a grand-if solitary-adventure." "He's been away form home for nearly three years and it could be three more before he returns." "From Africa, he will head east to the four remaining continents between him a home." "Claytor has grown accustomed to being a stranger everywhere he goes" "but he is also changed by every place he visits and every person he meets." "I think there's a part of me that's become a little bit African, because the Africans have a saying which is when you ask them when they'll come back or what time something will be ready they'll smile and look at you" "and say anytime from now." "So when people ask me when I' going to get home sometimes I just can only say anytime from now."