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Sat Jun 07 2003 (Sepupa)

Woke up at 5am by hippos making Frank Bruno laughs. Then various birds joined in. Got up at 9, decided to stay here another day to see if someone will share P500 Mokoro transfer cost with me. Cold shower in reed toilet block. English breakfast. George arrives, oldbloke who will be managing this place. Grumpy hippo just up stream, might get licence to shoot him as he is starting to chase boats. Phils son is professional hunter. People pay $50,000 to shoot an elephant. King Carlos of Spain paid for two 21 day hunts. Got both animals in first three days then went home. $100,000 for three days. Interesting visitors will be staying here in July/August. Everyone watching Springboks v Scotland at Absa stadium in Durban. Go on boat ride at 3pm. Beautiful scenery, bit like broads (but with hippos and crocs). See first croc after it cracked some reeds then went into water. Saw another 5 crocs but no hippos. Also saw delta cormorant, water monitor (about 3 feet long), little and chequered bee-eaters, fish eagles, ibis, egret. Chilly on way back as sun going down and loads of insects (needed sunglasses). Irish girls arrive - they might need transfer to Mokoro tomorrow. Roast chicken then talk to Jacques about rest of trip. He was overland driver and spends a good hour giving me advice and contacts. Loads of flies in bar, sweeping them off bar top. Irish girls decide it would be too much of a rush as they have to be in Vic Falls in a few days. Will instead go on boat trip tomorrow with lunch on one of islands. Dervil, Anna, Barbara and something like Insult! Here for 3 weeks, one of them has been teaching in Namibia on VSO style thing. Doing Namibia, Botswana, Zimbawe and I think SA. Namibia continues to sound really good. End up in Mokoro briefly then Colin kicks off and gets thrown out. Jacques tells us story about 4 metre croc and croc research people and staff jumping off and running in wrong direction. Generator goes off fairly early (midnight?), everyone goes to bed soon after. Photos from today