Jennifer Armstrong

I had a drink of white wine that night -- my first alcoholic beverage since arriving in the country. It immediately intoxicated me. I had a warm bucket shower behind three-quarter grass walls, temporarily lost my glasses somewhere on the thatched wall and was unable and unwilling to find them. It had begun raining heavily, even as I was taking my shower. I retreated to the tent and report on my loss when the safari guy announce that it was dinner time. He found the glasses for me, whereupon I managed to discard my airline pillow in the mud (due to the fact that I was barely conscious I was wearing it -- a feature of the white wine entering an empty stomach). My South African companion became thoroughly concerned, upon finding this pillow on the way back from her meal, that witches on hyenas might have led to this. This kind of chaos was something I was personally accustomed to.

So, we went deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. We marched and marched and marched and marched up and down a thousand mile high ravines. These got steeper and steeper and more tiring to navigate. We were on our way to our destination: to sleep under an overhanging rock, overnight. We stopped around mid afternoon at a river with boulders around it. There, I lay on a rock in the middle of the stream with my riding hat over my face. I felt that there were river spirits speaking to me. A baboon threw a stick at one of us, but this I couldn't see as I was half asleep.

The safari guide said we had a few more hours riding ahead of us. That was a lie. We went up a hill and then down the other side and the horses locked their legs in brake position. It was the same as when they'd seen zebras. Only this time, it was the pack pony, neighing out a greeting and waiting patiently for us.

So, we stayed under the rock that night and we noted all the speckles in the sky -- so many stars that not one space of sky was not covered with a star. We slept on numnahs and hard rock and all the sand we slept upon got into everything. (When a tour assistant shook out my companion's sleeping bag, they let out a laugh that she had been sleeping with some sizable stones.)

The day of the return back in the direction from whence we'd come was the hardest for me, since I had not slept so well. I drank coffee to keep me alert, but this enervated me. I knew that if I made an error of judgement in this steep and rocky terrain, many miles away from medical assistance, I would not be happy with the consequences. I did actually fall off my horse, all the same. It happened as I was gaining confidence in Bonus's abilities to perform almost supernatural tricks involving the descent and ascent of many river banks. I had aimed her at a rise a little too steep, even though the guide called out to take her around the other way. I'd already committed to taking the steep rise. She pounced onto the rise on the opposite side, but the ground was muddy and she could not get her footing. She immediately tried again, two or three times -- and I, resolving not to make things worse, delicately slipped off her side onto the muddy red earth to the right.

That was the worst situation that happened, but it was minor. We continued on our journey at a knee-breaking speed, which was a sprightly walking pace. It would not be too long before we'd made our way home.