Danger or bliss? It depends on your perspective - and what song is playing inside your head I sat next to the pilot of the little Cessna as we howled along the runway at Kariba airport and bumped into the air. It was a warm, windy day and we drifted up over yellow grasslands that begged for rain, then over Kariba dam, green and gleaming like a new coin.Light aircraft can be pretty noisy but this little beast seemed especially loud as we bobbed and weaved like a gym full of boxers in the hot sky.story_article_left1The last few times I'd been in one of these planes I'd jumped out with a parachute. Back then, only the pilot had a seat and we meat-bombs would kneel on the floor and lean forward so it could get off the ground. It had no door and a sticker that read "Air-conditioned. Please come in." Now I joked about this to a fellow passenger as we boarded and was told nervously to cork it.We were being ferried by Air Zimbabwe from Kariba to Victoria Falls in this tiny plane because the usual 12-seater, twin-engine one was undergoing maintenance. Four days earlier, this had meant our being re-routed from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo, then to Harare, from where we drove to Kariba. Air Zimbabwe's staff were unfailingly helpful and empathetic but the delays irked.Today's pilot looked to my middle-aged eyes like a teenager, but seemed to know what he was doing, pushing levers and wheels. I watched dials sway and took pictures of an island that looked like a sloth, complete with trees that resembled the moss on its hide. It was a loud, stuffy, drowsy and wonky couple of hours.The Cessna thumped and bustled down the runway at Victoria Falls Airport and we unfolded limbs and alighted. I then discovered that my fellow passengers had been convinced the plane was about to disintegrate and shower us onto the parched landscape. One, who'd flown as a private pilot for many years, declared emphatically that it wasn't airworthy and that we'd all been in real danger.This became a staple of conversation over the next few days, along with my oblivion to their white-knuckled terror in the Cessna of Doom.I'll never know who was right: the young pilot at the controls, watching the gauges, or the older one seated behind him, watching his life flash before his eyes. story_article_right2For me, flying in light aircraft evokes the Indiana Jones theme tune and a little plane tracing a course on a map. It feels somehow more intrepid, more road-less-travelled than being in a sealed tube largely operated by computers.Maybe it's the essence of travel and adventure, or maybe ignorance really is bliss when travelling, and I was clueless, along the lines of "if you can keep you head amid all this, you don't know how bad things are."It also has to do with what your earworm is at the time: choose the soundtrack to your travels well, especially when reality gets uncomfortable. I don't have the Jaws theme in my head when I go surfing in False Bay, but I definitely hummed the opening bars of The Lion King as the sun lit up Kariba.The shower at the Victoria Falls hotel mimicked the waterfall for volume and velocity, and had me mumbling Ol' Man River. I'm original that way, and the screechy violin theme from Pyscho would have spoilt it.I don't know the theme song from Final Destination, which is a good thing, because you wouldn't want that in your head when swaying around the sky, high above an island that looks like a sloth...