Okay. Where to start? I cannot describe the experience in words or pictures.
We started out on Wednesday. We were dropped on the southern bank of the Letaba river, about 8km from the nearest tar and public access road. From there we hiked southwards.
Pretty soon we were shown where elephants dug for water in a riverbed, and were then shown how to do it ourselves. Much to my surprise, this hole in the ground was suddenly our life-line. Our only source of water, as sulphuric as it smells, and as yellow as it looks, and as organic (not in a good way) as it tasted, this was all we had.
We made camp about 200m from there in a nice bend in the river, with a rock face as backdrop. The night gave us sounds of scops and pearl spotted owl(et)s, hyenas and lion.
The next morning we kept south, following some fresh lion spoor for a possible sighting. Unfortunately they eluded us. We had a close encounter with a dagha boy (the name given to a lone buffalo bull that has been driven from the herd, that spends its time in mud (dagha) holes and have terrible tempers) when one of the ladies startled it during a toilet break, which made for a few tense moments. Luckily the sound of a .458 cartridge getting chambered made it think twice about a charge.
From there we walked to find water, to find it occupied by a big elephant bull. We sat on the banks watching him, with the wind blowing our scent directly toward him. He was not bothered, and after about 20 minutes he calmly walked past us, not 10m from where we were sitting. Unbelievable experience.
We had dug a fresh water hole and made lunch and had a siesta, from where we had a pretty hard walk to where we wanted to camp again.
Impossible as it seemed, this campsite was even more picturesque than the first, again in a dry riverbed. The guides let us decide where to set up camp, but after we chose, they pointed out that it's right next to a well-used elephant path, and that our presence may prevent them from drinking. We moved about 300m onwards.
We found a place to dig for water again, about 100m from the tents. This night the lions roared quite a bit, and we could audibly track the pride. I woke up early to take a leak, with the sky still very grey. As I finished I saw three big grey animals moving towards our water hole, and without my glasses I assumed them to be hippo. I made a tactical retreat to my tent, from where I got the bins, only to realise that it was 3 rhinos coming for a drink. They were very skittish, and when another hiker unzipped his tent, they vanished. Going to collect water for the day showed very clear evidence that a male leopard visited the water hole during the night as well.
We broke up camp, for another close encounter with a buff, and finally reached the Letaba river again. Our guides found us a shallow pool with no crocs, and we were able to cool down a bit. The feeling of running water is immense, after two days of having practically only survival water with us.
Our drinking water from then on came from the Letaba, which is quite polluted. Our water drops were used religiously from then on.
Our last camp was on the sand, on the bank of the Letaba. Absolutely breathtaking. Crocs and hippo around us all night.
The final day saw a short walk to the pickup point, where we were greeted with cold beers. After 4 days of suspect, luke-warm water, this went down very well!
I'll add pics as soon as photobucket and I see eye to eye again.