Hollie Manuel

Where Crocodiles Roam Hollie Manuel

What would you do if elephants tore breakfast branches from above your swinging hammock? If a pride of lions invaded your camp? Or you were knocked into the water by a charging hippo?

Zimbabwe is crumbling economically. Poaching is on the increase. As farms are being taken over wildlife is fast disappearing. Only one game ranch is hanging in strongly - Imire Safari Ranch. In 2007 Imire hit international headlines when three of its five strong black rhino breeding herd were slaughtered, along with an unborn calf. Armed poachers took the half inch of horn the rhinos still carried, after being de-horned only a few months earlier. One calf survived and was catapulted to stardom in the documentary 'There's a rhino in my house' Tatenda. This story is for Tatenda and his brethren.

'Where Crocodiles Roam, ' an action packed adventure travelogue, tells the story of a trio of twenty-three year old boys who have grown up in Africa and who are searching for adventure in their own backyard. The plan: To kayak the Zambezi river from source to sea. The problems: None of them has ever kayaked before. The adventure is the journey inbetween, not the completion of a goal. The boys encounter crocodiles and hippos, rapids and whirlpools, malaria and snakebites, sunstroke and dysentery. Distance bears no relation to the time they take and mid trip the back weary paddlers take a fortuitous river break, in which they deal with a ruptured appendix, the ear notching and chip tagging of a wild population of rhino and the escape of two of these prehistoric beasts.

The chase is epic and the boys cannot afford to fail.

The rhino must come home.