I wouldn't call it sleeping in, but we did not get up as early as the pevious days and we took quite some time in getting organised for the "Wilderness Camping" trip that we were supposed to start on today. It was 8.20 when we finally were at the boat launch and ready to go. Everybody else had left already - Doh! Our personal guide 'Poifu' for the next three days loaded our luggage into the Mokoro (a traditional dugout canoeboat, nowadays made of fibreglass). It took about one hour of poling upstream to reach our camping site. By then, according to Poifu, it was to hot to do more activities that morning - I now kind of disagree, but at the end of the day it was our own fault, as we should have gotten up earlier.

We then found out that there are two activities planned per day. The afternoon activitiy was not due until 15.00. That left us with five really long hours - especially since we, in order to save space and weight, didn't bring anything remotely entertaining like a book for instance. Poifu seemed to do everything possible to stay out of our way, which didn't help really. Linda and I did a little walk in the vicinity of the camp site (and got almost lost) but spent most of the time dozing on our sleeping bag that we had put on the ground - plus about one hour in getting the so-called "sticky grass" off of the sleeping bag again afterwards. Terrible stuff this sticky grass. It actually ripped out some of the filling of the sleeping bag when we removed it. OK, so we are not bushmen, yet!

Shortly before 15.00 our 'neighbours' (they were camping on another island about 1km away) had visited and told us, that they just had seen lions only about 500 meters away from our camp site. Their guide explained Poifu where to find the lions and of we went. It definitely was further then 500 meters from our camp site. Nevertheless it didn't take Poifu long to spot the lioness. She was hiding in the grass and starring right at us - she probably had seen us long before we saw her. "Why is she hiding? They don't have any natural enemies anyway, do they?" I asked. "They sometimes do that when they are hungry." was Poifus calm answer. Great! We were only about 100 meters away. "The only problem is that we are upwind - she can smell us.". I wondered if that really was the only problem. "What do we do if she decides to attack?" "Just stand still, don't move!". I figured I would move a little bit after all - just enough to get behind Poifu - if worse came to worst. Poifu wanted to get downwind and he was the boss, so we quietly agreed and followed. The lioness kept looking at us all times. I slowly pulled out my leatherman and wondered if I maybe could tickle the lion to death with that tiny blade. It actually got more worrying when Poifu lost sight of the cat - especially because we were standing in the tall grass together with her somewhere around us. We left the scene while watching our backs carefully.

The trip that afternoon was the absolute highlight so far. We saw lots of other game that day: eagles, baboons, zebras, various antilopes, and more. Quite an experience!

The bush is loud! You hear frogs and toads and an abundant number of birds. Occasionally an elephant, a hippo or other game. This evening presented us with a new "noise" - not that we really can tell, but this growling sound we figured was a different to what we had heard so far. At first Poifu wasn't sure either. Could it be lions feeding? Then another growl and Poifu was sure - yes, that was indeed a lion calling mates to come and join the feast. From the opposite direction we heard the answer. Lions feeding! Less than a couple of hundred meters away. Interesting! Linda was not so happy about the situation, but hey, if they already are eating - they will not be hungry anymore afterwards. That is in fact good news!