The elephants I’ll never forget
"No lions?” “No lions. It’s fast-flowing water, so there shouldn’t be any leeches. We do have slender-snouted crocodiles, but they’re quite shy.” “Hippos?” “One we see every now and again.” Swamp-walking hadn’t been on the year’s bingo card, but I’d found myself wading through clusters of floating dung and algae in the largest tropical rainforest on the African continent. Rubber slip-ons heavy with silt, sulfurous foam collecting in my shirt pockets, I felt strangely calm. As a day, this was turning out to be exceptional. It had been the invitation of a lifetime: to add my name to the list of a few hundred outsiders who have stamped a boot in the Congo Basin, one of the wildest and most remote places on Earth.
