They duly landed and we transferred to our first night's camping spot at the base of a huge inselberg near the park headquarters. That evening we pored over maps, having spoken to the resident pilot and warden, we decided that we should try and get to some hot springs located far to the east of where we were.

The next day after a quick breakfast of cereal and toast (half burned on the fire!!) we set off, who knows where to. We had been allocated a scout and a tracker. The park was very recently formed, so there were still some villages and about 5 000 people lived in the park. It was a pleasure to pass through these villages and see people living peacefully, unspoiled by tourists, and no demands for pens, sweets or other handouts. In fact if we had stopped, many of the kids would take off having never seen a white person before!!!

Four hours later found us lunching in a small riverbed, a bubbling stream at our feet and hundreds of wonderfully coloured butterflies, it was great. Then we soldiered on, dropping downwards until we were on the banks of a wide sandy riverbed. Well, this was the end of the road and the start of the adventure! We let our tyres down, engaged four wheel drive and drove into the riverbed. About two kilometres later we came across some holes in the river where elephant had been digging for water. Nearby was a huge mango tree. What better place to spend a couple of days. They went by fast, we did a few walks exploring the area, game was sparse, but sign was plenty, I guess being so remote the smells and sounds of people were all the more horrifying.

We then decided to carry onwards towards these hot springs and so, looking for a suitable elephant path out of the river, we continued. The remoteness of the area was verified when we came across a guy on his bike, on the same path! It turned out he had been travelling for three days so far and was going to Tanzania to sell the five chickens that he had with him. It certainly gave us an idea of just how far we were from the first world.

Five hours later, we found ourselves dropping into another sandy riverbed, our maps told us that about a day's travel should see us at the hot springs, so without further ado we set up a camp in the river and by lunchtime the next day having seen a few elephant bulls on the way, we were at the holy grail. The springs were great and we immediately decided that we should spend a few days here, which we did, just walking and exploring. We asked our old tracker when last he thought white people had ben here and his reply was that his father used to bring elephant hunters there but that was before the Portuguese!

Three days later found us retracing our steps to try and climb a huge inselberg we had seen on the way in, it actually turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip and we even found a pool of water deep enough to swim in!!

Then sadly it was time to start making our way back, all uneventfull until the light aircraft didn't arrive and we all had an extra day on the airstrip, such is the way of Africa.

All in all one of the best trips I have ever done, quite hard from a roughness point of view but how often have you found yourself five days travel from the nearest store or telephone!!!