I love flying low. Getting down in the weeds and really seeing the landscape you’re crossing is one of the greatest joys in aviation a pilot can have. Unfortunately most pilots are either not skilled enough, mis-informed or just plain too scared to leave the nose bleed section and take a seat on the fifty yard line. Ferry flying provides some great opportunities to drop down to treetop level, if there are trees, and enjoy the sense of speed and exhilaration you get when the ground becomes a blur beneath your wings. I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to play in the fjords and glaciers of Greenland, skim the ocean of sand dunes over the Sahara, cut a wake through the mist coming off the jungle of the Amazon and African rainforest and snake my way along dozens of rivers like the Amazon pictured above. Buzzing the Amazon after leaving Macapa Brazil is one of my favorite things to do. Seeing the natives paddling their long dugout canoes along the smooth brown water miles from anywhere brought to mind scenes from old National Geographic magazines. Along the river are scattered fishing huts where families somehow eek out a living and children come running down their long docks to wave as we zoom by. It’s tricky to get good pictures while concentrating on not tying the low altitude flying record but I did manage to get a few good ones. If you click on the photo above and zoom in you can see a young boy on the dock with two people in a canoe below in the water.
