9th May - Niokolo-Koba Nature Reserve

We left a very warm Bassé first thing yesterday morning, having spent our remaining Dalasi on petrol. The drive to the border was fine, although the dust road wasn't great. The border must rank as among the friendliest I've ever been through; our paperwork was stamped by friendly and cheerful Gambian officials, although I had to show one of them what to do with the carnet de passage, and when we got to the Senegalese side, they were only slightly less enthusiastic, and even overlooked an issue with our carnet.

From Velingara, the border town, the road back north to Tambacounda was tarmaced and pretty good, although it lulled me into a false sense of security before launching surprise potholes at us. Some of the time I could veer around them, but sometimes they were too extensive, so it kept me on my toes. Tambacounda is a fairly unremarkable town, probably the largest in the south east of the country. We posted our blogs at the web café, pleased to find we were back on a fast connection, rather than the slow modem links we had in Gambia. We went to change some money, but the bank was closed, so we headed for a hotel Nicki had spotted in the guide book which allegedly had a swimming pool. Alas, the pool was closed, presumably due to the green hue of the water. But we had a few drinks in their cool bar to avoid the mid-day sun.

We changed our money when the bank re-opened, and turned south again towards Guinea. On the way, we wanted to detour into a nature reserve which covers a large part of the south east of the country. Before we arrived, however, we saw a group of children by the road, which seemed the perfect opportunity for us to get rid of our large stockpile of plastic water bottles, which was getting a little out of hand. I pulled over, and before I'd even opened up the back of the truck, the first boys were running towards me. When I waved a bottle in front of them, they sprinted, and I only just had time to get into the truck before I was torn apart by the baying pack with their cries of "Toubab! Toubab!" ("white man!"). They were quickly joined by other children, and I was concerned that in their enthusiasm to grab bottles, they'd tear down our mosquito nets, or indeed anything else within reach. So I threw the bottles out of the door over their heads, which distracted them from the truck. We made our getaway without harm to me or the truck, apart from a scratch to my hand from the melee.

Driving south again we occasionally saw monkeys and baboons around the side of the road. The housing here is fairly traditional, usually circular huts made of mud or breeze blocks, with thatched roofs. We arrived at the entrance to the Niokolo-Koba National Park, where you have to pay to get in: for the two of us plus the truck it was £9 per day, which is quite a lot for Senegal. At the entrance we were told we would have to take a guide in with us, which has apparently been the case for three years, so of course the Lonely Planet stated the opposite. On the bright side, they told us that the main hotel in the reserve had a swimming pool, and also air conditioning! (19:00-24:00 and 06:00-07:00 daily.) Our guide, Sitifa, joined us, for the princely sum of £6 per day, which included his food and accommodation as long as we stayed at the hotel. With hindsight, of course, it is well worth having the guide, because he pointed out myriad things we'd have missed, took us to all the best places, and if we were to break down, he'd have been very handy to have around, as there are lots of things here which would cheerfully eat you, like hyenas, lions, leopards, crocodiles, and hippos. We heard some local women came into the park a few years back to collect flowers, got lost, and not all of them were seen again. The park is about 300km across and partly spans the border between Senegal and Guinea.

We set off for the hour or so drive through the reserve to the camp. The reserve is mostly forest, of a variety of trees including palm trees and cheese plants. But the cheese plants here are the size of oaks and have thick wooden spiny trunks. When we arrived, the only guests in the whole reserve at this point, we were quickly invited out the back to look down at the river, where for the first time this year, a hippo was grazing on the bank. Normally the hippos only come out at night, so we were quite honoured, and this just about made up for the fact that the pool was closed for cleaning. (The algae run rampant in the sun, regardless of how many chemicals are added.)

An Englishman, Colvin, who part-owns the hotel, joined us, and when he went off down the river bank to get closer to the hippo, I went with him. We managed to get some good photos of the animal on the opposite bank of the river. Hippos, if you meet one in the bush, will cheerfully stamp you into little pieces, but like all animals here including crocodiles and lions, they will generally try to avoid you. This one didn't spot us for a while, but gradually became aware we were there, and slowly immersed himself back into the river where he disappeared underwater. I went back to the hotel with 73 photos of him. We could also see crocodiles, and many birds.

Colvin used to work for an organisation generating employment opportunities for the mentally handicapped, but he became disillusioned when he saw that Social Services seemed more interested in refurbishing their offices and updating their computers than spending money keeping programmes for the disabled running. So when he visited the run-down hotel about 18 months ago, he recognised an opportunity to develop it, and moved here and invested in the hotel, which is owned by a local family. He seems to be getting on very well here, and the hotel is rather nice now, so we hope it all works out for him.

He's divorced, so arrived here on his own, and settled well into the community. After a year or so, the local elders decided he needed a wife, so the heads of the village chose him one in the traditional way, by committee. The woman in question, the daughter of a village head, had the choice of whether she wanted to go ahead with it or not, and she did, and he reports that although it's an unorthodox marriage by our standards, it's working well so far!

The hotel generator started up at 7pm, so we sat under the lights in the large covered restaurant area and had dinner: salad, followed by roast duck with beans, and papaya for desert. The food was really excellent, and given we are the only two people staying here, and they have 40 rooms, the service was attentive. I gave Colvin a CD of all my hippo photos, as he's collecting photos to use on the hotel's website. Sitifa tipped us off for a 7am departure to go and look at wildlife.

I decided this would be a good time to work on the truck, partly because they have a ramp here you can drive on to so you can get to it all without grubbing around in the dirt, and also because I noticed some clunking noises coming from the front transmission which weren't there before. So I got up at 6am to don my overalls, then went back to bed for 15 minutes because it was still dark. When it got light, I checked the front diff oil level (which was fine), greased the front prop shaft (which has a bit of give along the splines; ideally it could probably do with replacing, but hopefully it'll make it back to the UK) and replaced the EP90 in the swivels with the one-shot grease we bought in Gambia. Due to the heat, EP90 has about the consistency of water, so runs out of the truck with gay abandon, and even the grease is rather like engine oil! (Nicki opened a pot of Vaseline yesterday and it all ran out.) I'd hoped to be finished by 7, but of course, it took longer than that, so it was 7:30 by the time we were on the road and in the bush.

Sitifa took us to various places in the park, including sections of the river, open savannah areas, and parts of the forest, where we saw lots of warthogs (they run along with their tails in the air like Pumbaa out of the Lion King); plenty of deer and antelope; all manner of birds; and crocodiles. No lion, sadly – there are some here, but it's very rare to see one. For me it was interesting to be walking around in countryside where you're not the top predator, and there are plenty of things which could cheerfully munch you up if they felt like it. At one location we saw a river bed which was rapidly drying into thick grey mud, and there were some reasonable sized fish thrashing around in it, presumably praying for rain, although I think it was really all over for the fish.

At one place we parked up and walked across a river on a cable bridge, heavily reminiscent of the one across the volcano in Shrek. Nicki's not keen on heights, so took it very gingerly. The bridge had a definite cant to one side, which livened things up a little.

Sitifa then told us about a leopard here, which was orphaned when it was three months old, and was taken into care by the park staff and now lives in a cage. He offered us to go and see him, so we did, and got within a couple of feet of him, through the mesh of the cage. We were pleased to see that the cage is actually a pretty large enclosure, the size of several tennis courts, and is full of trees and plants, so at least he must feel a bit at home. He's never going to be released into the wild, which is a shame, but as orphaned leopards go, we hope he has a reasonable existence. The bones in his enclosure testify he's still got his appetite at least.

At the end of the morning we returned to the camp, and enjoyed a pleasant three course lunch. And with that, over to Nicki.

Hi all, yes it is Nicki taking over for a bit. Lunch consisted of a salad followed by beef in a lovely sauce and rice, and ended with mango (the really juicy sweet kind, the kind you CAN'T buy in Sainsbury's!). We then crashed out for a few hours, reading and sleeping, and had a lovely surprise when the air con came on at about 3pm for an hour.

At 5pm we met Colvin, 2 Italians, our guides and a local state chap who took us for a boat trip down the river. It was a bearable temperature as we floated along the River Gambia, which stretches from Gambia to Guinea. We saw hundreds of types of birds including brightly coloured blue kingfishers and huge pelicans. Baboons, antelope, crocodiles, deer and warthogs were also spotted, but the main reason we went out was to see the family of hippos. This we did, they were spotted having a swim in the river. There was a mother and a baby, and a third hippo, and further along there were more sightings. Interestingly we learnt that they don't swim, they walk along the bottom. We decided that would be fascinating to watch!

At one point we came across two packs of baboons who were screaming at each other, it was the biggest racket I have ever heard!! I now know where babies' screams evolved from. The last thing we saw was a huge monitor lizard lying in a tree, David managed to get good photos of it as well as everything else we saw. It is going to be one huge slideshow when we get back!

We had a quick drink in the bar on our return and we have planned to have dinner with Colvin and his African wife tonight which will be nice.