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Suddenly we bumped into a large group of potamochères - wild pigs. The Bakas tried to get one with their machetes, but failed. A tender piglet on the barbecue would have been nice. But hunting is illegal as we reminded the Bakas later. The excitement over, we again walked a fair distance until Balfou, the pisteur (lead man), suddenly threw off his backpack and ran past me looking startled. His fear was clear from his expression. I had no idea what was happening, but hid in the bushes. It turned out that Balfou had stumbled across and elephant. Because of the noise we made and the locals slashing at the trees, the elephants soon realised that something was wrong and fled to the other side of the forest.
"Insel 4" was our code name for a target that was a bay or a calibration peak. The GPS indicated that it was only 300 m high! We certainly can't expect a mountain. We crossed a swamp and reached a small hill - target reached! There was absolutely nothing there! We decided to look in every direction. Perhaps the location differed from the map. An hour later we came to the conclusion that we were on an island surrounded by swamp! According to the map key a circle surrounded by dots should be something else. Great! We were really disappointed. I promised the crew a beer as soon as we got to Konossoville in three weeks time.
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Bathing on the edge of the ring swamp
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