28 Mar The penultimate Eden

I read that the great explorer Richard Burton remarked, when he set off in search of the sources of the Nile, that one of the happiest moments in life is the moment of departure to a distant place, to unknown lands. How right he was! Some time ago I said that for me, that state of excitement and happiness prior to a journey is usually associated with the smell of paraffin in aeroplanes, a smell that I have engraved in the depths of my soul, a smell that always accompanied the adventure and preceded the unknown?

It is to smell the smell and to return in seconds to those years of skydiving when we believed that sex was safe and jumping out of planes was dangerous, to those flights in a rickety Mi-8 over immense herds of elephants in the Chadian park of Zakouma, to the flight with the pirate Omar over the Akakus mountains of the Libyan desert...it is to return to so many adventures...

This comes to mind because yesterday, at St Lucia airport (I leave a long pause for you to look it up on the map), that smell, my astral travel capsule, shook my heart again, taking me far away, to a flight over the world's greatest wildlife sanctuary not so long ago. And then I remembered that I had stored some unclassified photos worthy of the praise my ego always needs.

My mind went back to last summer, to the Old Bridge backpackers in Maun, just as we had just dusted ourselves off from a long day of trekking across the Makgadikgadi salt flats. That night on the banks of the Okavango, swilling beers under the shelter of a dying fan, we were four friends united by the same desire, to escape into the unknown and have a good adventure (let's make a mess of it).

We had ended up in that remote place following in Livingstone's footsteps (without so many demands) along that mythical route that took him to Victoria Falls. We were attracted by the mystery of a river that, fleeing from the sea, disappears into the interior of Africa, crossing Angola, Namibia and Botswana to die in the sands of the Kalahari.

Proust said that there are no paradises but those that are lost, and we, who could not have been more lost, found ourselves that night at the very gates of Eden,

During the following days we searched for our dream paradise. We did it from the air, flying over that labyrinth of islands, canals, dunes, forests and palm groves, arousing the curiosity of a group of elephants or the indifference of huge herds of buffalo, a spectacle. Unforgettable.

We also look for him on board a silent mokoro, in the labyrinth of canals, among water lilies and papyrus. We look for him where the crocodile and the hippopotamus impose their law, where herds of elephants come to drink and refresh themselves or where lions and irascible buffaloes fight to the death, where only the unexpected splashing of fearful groups of zebras or shy sitatungas breaks the silence.

Accompanied by a group of ba-yeis, the true connoisseurs of the Delta, we walked along the hippo trails, through mopane forests, saw groups of elegant giraffes with feminine gait, nervous impalas, imposing kudu and shameless chacma baboons.

We camped on one of those tiny islands, under a starry sky, laughed by the fire, sealed our friendship with Namaqua wine, and fell asleep to the lullaby of snoring hippos, singing frogs and the distant bark of a lone jackal.

And there, on that nameless island, we found paradise. And we were happy (until the fuet ran out).

Besides, as both hellish dens and earthly paradises have to be administered in small doses and in equal parts, we immediately felt the need to set off in search of a place that would welcome us. And we did like the Okavango itself, we got lost in the sands of the Kalahari, on our way to the Nxai Pans, a tough place, another place to write down...