02 May In the land of elephants

We have friends who always ask for war. They have crossed the dunes of the Sahara with us, sailed down the Gambia River to the mythical Janjanbureh and crossed Burkina Faso through the Lobi country. We have also visited together such mysterious and hidden places as the voodoo magic of Ouidah, the territory of the Somba, or even attended a celebration of the Celestial Christianity sect in a stilt house on Lake Nokoué.

All they need is a carafe of South African Namaqua wine and some fuet to venture like Tarzan into the legendary kingdom of Opar or find the lost city of Kor and defy the power of "She who must be obeyed...". What a great

And of course, this year they wanted to cross the Kalahari, the land of the Great Thirst. A desert full of wonder and mystery in equal measure, relentless with the unwary and the unsuspecting, as seductive as it is demanding, a lonely world.

A harsh land to which only the Bushmen have been able to adapt. Almost the only hunter-gatherer people left in Africa, persecuted and almost exterminated in the last century, a vanishing world.I found them further south, in the desert and also in Lake Eyasi, in Tanzania. I had just read Van der Post's book, so I admit that at that time I tried to identify that deformation of the buttocks that women have to accumulate water and fat. It also said that Bushmen have a dance for every act, they love dancing and have a state of permanent semi-erection throughout their lives. I have a friend in Madrid who doesn't know that but he must be a Bushman...

We start our journey in Maun, with a few days of relaxation, wandering the maze of Okavango waterways, enjoying chance encounters with elephants, sipping gin and tonics at sunset over the Boteti River, and entertaining chats after dark.

After Maun, the adventure, and the joy of starting it by leaving the road and following the tracks of a faint trail that led us into the wilderness, entering a region where until recently no one had dared to venture. The first were Livingstone and Oswell, then Baines, Chapman, the Green brothers and so many others... Even a tightrope walker, the Great Farini, dared to brave the great wilderness and cross it on foot with only a revolver, a camera and a book of notes. I read them and I got caught by his story, that's why I'm ready to overcome it by going into the desert accompanied only by four friends, that's me, totally unconscious.

Together we walked through Makgadigadi and the lands of Nxai Pans, turned into a mudflat, a lonely place sometimes visited by thousands of zebras and giraffes and sometimes by no one at all. There we accompanied the gallop of a group of Oryx on the immense salt flat, saw the elephant bathing and had lunch in the shade of one of those sleeping baobabs immortalised by Baines.

After the adventure, calm, enjoying an incredible sunset among the baobabs of Kubu, the sacred island of the Bushmen, one of the most solitary and mystical places I know. Nothing could be easier than at nightfall, under a huge moon, to be caught by the aroma of South African wine mixed with that of the acacia wood fire and the smell of the promise of rain. The initial laughter turned into muffled conversations and finally into snoring... A great night.

And after the calm, the final ecstasy, travelling through the Chobe River National Park, the most elephant-populated place in the world, and crossing Zambia and Zimbabwe to reach Victoria Falls, the seventh wonder of nature.

Along the way and to remember are those boat safaris on the Chobe, dinner a few metres from a waterhole with elephants, a sunset in the Elephant Sands Reserve, a small paradise in Pandamatenga... and above all the view from Zimbabwe of the Victoria Falls.

That night, on the banks of the Zambezi, having dinner among impalas and zebras, we decided the destination of our next adventure, the Mountains of the Moon...

I can't wait to get back to the adventure, with the sun on my head, the wind in my face and the road at my feet...