Laura Frye, Co-Pilot

So the other 'big thing to do' in Guyana is Kaiteur Falls which is supposedly the highest single drop fall in the world (which a few other countries also claim to have). It's in the interior and the only way to get there is by plane (unless you hike for a week). The planes to Kaiteur run only when there are enough people to fill them so I've been calling agencies to see who has pulled together a tour and after a lot of rejection I finally found a group that was going and had one seat left...

Everyone kept telling me I was so lucky to get the last seat... they didn't tell me the last seat was the copilot's seat. This seemed sort of cool to me at first until I realized that if I was in the copilot's seat then there was no copilot. So, being me, I dreamt up all the health issues that could suddenly incapacitate the pilot, requiring me to fly the plane. I spent the hour ride carefully observing every dial he touched, trying to figure out which were the essentials if it should come down to it.

So I was totally engrossed in observation as he turned this knob and pulled this lever. This is a small propeller plane and we were going through the rain forest so it got a bit bumpy and at one point we hit a major bump and my instinct was to grab on to something but the only thing in front of me was the steering wheel (or whatever it's called). Bad move :( Thankfully I did not cause our demise but did try to hit on my hands for the rest of the trip.













Our plane













Co-Pilot!













After hours of observation, I can now tell you what three of these dials is for.













Clouds, rare-Guyananese puffy white clouds.