The nights here are cool enough to sleep. But the forest outside my tent is anything but quiet. Weird squeaks and howls, hooting owls, cracking sticks, something munching. It sounds big enough to be an elephant, although I’m told it’s probably an anteater or a small deer. “If it were an elephant, you wouldn’t hear it,” points out one of the guides here at camp.

At 4am, the sky starts to lighten and the cacophony gets louder. The cicadas rev up, sounding like tiny electric generators, picking up steam and volume. They’re almost deafening – a steady, high-pitched thrum. And apparently when the cicadas are up and going this early, it’s going to be a hot day.

Dawn is misty, making everything feel like it’s covered in a thick, wet blanket. That doesn’t last long – at 7am, as we get ready to go out into the bush again, the sun emerges and the temperature ratchets up a few more notches. When we reach our destination, after a jaw-snapping, bone-rattling ride over another one-lane, dirt road, it’s hotter still. And as we get out of the truck, the wind picks up, making the air feel like a hair dryer. Still, it’s welcome relief, as it evaporates sweat from my already soggy shirt.

In the meantime, the men I’m with are wearing long sleeves, long pants, in dark olive green. No one appears to be breaking a sweat. But for me, the heat is oppressive, engulfing. It’s all you can think about. I'm longing for the inches of snow they got in Denver, ice cold showers, popsicles. I drink water like it’s, well, water and I sweat it out just as quickly.

No matter. We’re still going out for a walk and we’ll stay out there till we find what we’re looking for…

Wildlife sightings:

Samango monkeys
Red daikur
Reedbuck
Fish eagle

Arrived yesterday afternoon after what felt like a brutally long journey – original flights cancelled due to a strike on Lufthansa, a mad dash the airport, a rebooked trip, a red-eye to JFK on Sunday night followed by a 15 hour flight to Johannesburg followed by a two hour flight to Beira, Mozambique followed by a very bumpy 50 minute flight in a eight-seater GA8 Airvan.

Whew!

But I’m here and I’m relatively awake. I still haven’t quite grasped that I’m on the other side of the world, although it feels about as far away from Colorado as I can get. For those of you who don’t know, I’m somewhere in the Zambezi River Delta in central Mozambique for a story on anti-poaching operations. I’m staying in a hunting camp with a collection of fancy tents, a dining hall, a giant concrete fire pit and slow, but operating, wi-fi.

Set on concrete pads, the tents are constructed from heavy-duty canvas with thick screens for windows and doors. The door out the back of the tent leads into a private, stucco walled, open-air bathroom, complete with flushing toilets and running water. There’s even hot water, although with temps approaching 100 degrees, hot water doesn’t hold much appeal.

At sunset, there are drinks and appetizers by the (thankfully unlit) fire pit and then a big group dinner in the dining hall. At 6am, the staff brings a French press of fresh coffee to your door. There’s laundry done every day. In other words, I’ve stayed worse places.

But it’s not all sitting around in camp, popping bonbons and drinking beer. While I can’t really get too detailed (have to save something for the actual story), this morning’s outing was definitely an adventure. We were up and out by 7am, following some potential leads, bouncing over one-lane dirt/sand roads in a beat up Toyota LandCruiser with a spider-webbed windshield and holes in the floorboards.

The landscape here is sparser than I’d expected (was thinking more tropical forest) – scrubby looking palms rising out of mounds of sand, stubbly grasses. In places, taller trees provide something of a canopy, although in the middle of the day, shade is hard to come by. And it’s the dry season here and there’s a serious drought, so everything looks dry and brown. Flammable. Which it is. People here set fire to the grasses to burn them away for farming purposes. As we were flying in yesterday, you could see dozens of fires, sending up enough smoke that, at times, you couldn’t see the horizon. It’s hazy here and the air constantly smells of smoke.

No elephants or leopards or water buffalo yet. But here’s a list of what I have seen:

Baboon
Warthog
Reedbuck
Hooded vulture
Guinea hens
8-inch grasshopper
Hummingbird-sized black wasp with orange butt
Wood owl

Feeling hot hot hot

Into Africa