My goodness! How are you young boys still alive?Because success is by co-ordination, good luck, respect and karma and ‘sometimes good fortune has been you, and sometimes not, however the important thing is to consider the dare.’ David BrowerWhere Kingsley Holgate explores Africa beneath an outrageous beard using a keg of rum by his part – 40 years his junior I made a decision to explore my Africa with naiveté, invincibility and the testosterone fueled charisma of boyhood.Unprepared, untested, unperturbed – who said that an about Where Crocodiles Roam: A Zambezi paddling story and other wilderness tales explorer needs to be proven?Taking six months from our boyhood lives to find experience? That’s easy. Starting a Zambezi source-to-sea paddling expedition with no previous kayaking knowledge? That’s harder. And ridiculous.Staying alive amongst crocodiles and hippos, rapids and whirlpools, sunstroke and dysentery – now that’s almost impossible … or commendable if you can survive to the finish of your own story.Now throw in two marauding rhino and appendicitis and see if you would still predict survival and start packing for your own adventure. Do I worry that all day could be my last? Of course I did but in the finish ‘the principal difference between an adventurer and a suicide is that the adventurer leaves himself a margin of escape (the narrower the margin the higher the experience), a margin whose width and duration may be determined by unknown elements but whose effective navigation is determined by the way of measuring the adventurers nerve and wits. It will always be exhilarating to live by one’s nerves and toward the summit of one’s wits.’ Tom Robbins. Another Roadside Attraction