The rooms in the Mole Motel share something in common with socialist dormitories, austere and functional with traces of previous tenants, like a name engraved in a bed post and a little hole in a curtain. Last night Richard the driver navigated the most treacherous roads to get us here, to Mole national park. The hazards included giant potholes and a truck named "golden boy" that lay angled in the ditch, abandoned and cargo-less. We got up for safari so early and met a big man who told us the history of the park- apparently the area was cursed with sleeping sickness and the tsetse fly was a terror and so they made the whole area a quarantine zone and the animals florished and thrived there and eventually the tsetse was managed.
We walked in the cool morning through brushland savannah and heard the song of many a wild bird. We saw some animals. Warthogs and their babies, kob and bush Bok and hornbills and crocodiles and glorious fast flitting red and green birds that emerged like arrows from tiny holes in a dry mud embankment. Monkeys were curious and Nico tried to entice one with a carrot, but to no avail. The fellow had no idea what he was missing. Saw just the back of a really big elephant as it tramped through the bush. We tried to follow it but even our intrepid guide, Andrew, lost it's trail. It started to get stinking hot so we headed for the pool and listened to the last part of The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber read aloud again (started in the car last night, but most of the audience fell asleep before the conclusion). Saw our elephant from the ridge on which the motel was as it emerged from the watering hole all black and glossy and watched it feed from a distance. Took another safari in the afternoon and though the tree trunks were plentiful the other kind of trunk eluded us yet again. The sun set in classic African fashion, as a huge yellow disk in the west. We sat by the pool, drinking until bed beckoned.
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