Flying a Cub into Leopards

Our virtual adventure is made globally mobile by Dovetail Games licensed version of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X. It's the world in which this adventure lives.

It’s amazing to us how we can find almost any place on this planet we’d like to visit by viewing old fashion paper almanacs coupled to modern high tech devices, images from space, internet advertising or from the "word-of-mouth" of someone who has been there.

First we locate on a map using satellite images and aeronautical charts the places we want to visit.
We put this research into the FSX: SE program to plan and execute our flights.

We fly in real time, in real weather and extensively plan ahead. We wouldn’t want to end up landing a Learjet on a short dirt runway at an airfield in the middle of Australia while looking for a boat race ...with no jet fuel available  …oh wait, that did happen.

We are off to Yala National Park. It’s about 300 kilometers SE of VCBI in Colombo. They have the largest concentration of leopards in the world.

The Eco Team Mahoora Safari Camp in Yala is our destination. This is Linda’s preferred way to camp …camping with style ...catered lunch and BBQ dinner, hammock on the river side with flame torches and roaring camp fires, luxury tents with furniture. It has Linda written all over it.

We're here for their Leopard Safari

Our 120 minute flight in a Piper Cub was slow and bumpy. We fought head winds and low clouds all along our flight path from VCBI to VCCW. It may have been 20 degrees C at 4K feet during our afternoon flight but Linda was still “burr cold”.

Needless to say our slow flight in a Piper Cub, popping in and out of clouds to find our way through a valley between Sinharaja & Belihuloya while fighting a wind determined to keep us off course, was far more adventurous than our flights in Little Bird …and we’re good with that.

Our adventure continues ...