Tribal Transportation

In the tribe, there is really no way to go very far quickly. The only way to get from place to place, village to village, is by walking. This is our tribal friends’ basic mode of transportation. From the time they are old enough, they are walking jungle trails. Then, as they grow up, they continue, walking everywhere they go. This makes them incredible hikers. They don't wear shoes and never have. This helps out with the crossing of slippery logs and wet jungle trails. Since they walk, we walk too. We walk to the river, walk to villages, walk to the garden, but even though we hike quite a bit, we are not even a fraction as good as our tribal buddies.

Hiking can get you pretty far, but in order to get out to the town where we buy our supplies, walking won't do. This is where having an airstrip comes in handy. Now, a number of different small planes can land right in our village and take us where we need to go. The plane ride out takes only two hours, whereas walking would take weeks or months. We use the plane quite a bit to help get us around.

But we haven't had an airstrip forever. So before we finished building our airstrip, we had to take a helicopter. Helicopters are really awesome, and are super fun to fly in. They aren't as fast as planes, but they can land in extremely rough terrain. Riding in the front of the helicopter has always been something that we boys have really enjoyed. We really like it because it's fun to talk to the helicopter pilot and the view is amazing. The front of the helicopter has windows below, on the sides and in front, so you can see all around. It's pretty cool.

Even though planes and helicopters are used occasionally by our tribal friends, walking is still their main way of getting places.