My blinking became ever more intense. A bead of perspiration had somehow bypassed the brim of my cap and cunningly navigated a barrier of DEET and sunscreen to reach my left eye. Despite repeated attempts to wipe it away, my similarly sweat-soaked sleeve did little to relieve the stinging.
And if there was one moment when I really, really needed my vision to work perfectly, it was then, deep in the Ndezhi Forest at the edge of Odzala-Kokoua National Park, in the remote north-western reaches of the Republic of the Congo. Gazing briefly skywards through sweatinduced tears, I could make out tessellated treetops slotted tightly together in a secret game of arboreal Tetris, allowing just enough light to reach the jungle floor for me to see where I was putting my feet.
Ahead of me strode Zeferein, my tracker, a quiet man in wellies who for the previous two hours had been hacking a path through dense undergrowth, following a trail of invisible signs that - we hoped would betray the movements of our quarry. Nonchalantly negotiating every fallen tree, twisted vine and snagging branch, he had pushed on relentlessly through the tangling vegetation, occasionally pausing
