Tim in a Boabab Tree (happysnap taken by Terry Babich)

He's local he's been there before "bring the welding machine"

Lets get fishing.

Ok Ok!!

The third days travel was a short stretch of 460km, no problem. We left at 6.30a.m enough time to still do some fishing today. I could not have been more wrong, 17 hours later, one broken boat trailer, one accident, a tow hitch broken, one over heating vehicle, 142km of hell, sand roads we eventually reached our destination. pheeeeeeew

On arrival Tim and I decided to put our tents up while many of the others kindly lay down and went to sleep, it must be the fresh air I thought hmmmmmmmmm ……While putting up my tent I heard a noise in the bushes behind the tent, but I did not have my torch unpacked yet so I forgot about it. Anyway about 20 min later I found the torch and pointed in the direction from where the noise came and to my surprise I saw an elephant 25/30m away merrily minding his own business. This event become a very quick learning curve for me.  The elephant is not threatened by me, the elephant is not threatened by - aaagh bugger it, I was the scared one not him.

The encounters with elephants were to be commonplace for the trip. They visited our camp every night. At first there was only one who happily walked around the camp in-between the guys sleeping out in the open, until early one night when between our guys  and a person from another camp moving around. With a torch they frightened the poor elephant, which resulted in the elephant trumpeting at us, which resulted in Charles having to jump off the banks edge into the river, while brushing his teeth to get away from a decidedly distressed elephant.

After this episode three elephants moved into the camp at night. The guys sleeping in the clearing in the middle of the camp had no fear, but clever old me had to pitch tent under a tree that was full of the elephants favourite midnight snack. All I can say is-its- so big and boy are they noisy when you are three foot away in a tent lying on your back and all you can see is a silhouette large enough to fill the entire window of the tent. Wow , those first two nights were hot!