I'd had lots of bear encounters in my past, and I didn't worry about large mammals too much. I was more worried about severe dehydration, since I couldn't keep food and water in me for more than a few minutes. Exhausted, we decided to turn in for the night. The mosquitoes were already starting to come out. We pulled the tent out of the pack, but the tent poles weren't with it. Exhausted and frustrated, we searched through everything until I realized that I had left the tent poles 18 kilometres back, at our beach site on the dune. With the mosquitoes out in full force in a renowned malaria zone, we couldn't risk sleeping out. (The mosquito that carries malaria comes out to feed at night.) We improvised, and strung the fly up from some trees, then suspended the tent body from the fly. We would need sticks to use as makeshift tent pegs. I walked off, searching the jungle's edge with my headlamp for some sticks, when something caught my eye. Hundreds of fireflies were moving about like a pulsing galaxy in the blackness of the underbrush. Two of these flies were very large and still, lighting up only when I shone my headlamp at them. As I continued to look at them, I slowly realized they weren't fireflies at all, but the eyes of the leopard. I could make out the outline of his large head as he crouched perfectly still, gazing intently at me, only four metres away. In my tired, sickly state, it was more than I could deal with. I just shrugged, went back to the site, and told Dave, "Your leopard friend is back." He mumbled something like "Great...just great," and we both went to bed. What else was there to do? I spent the night popping Imodiums like candy, and jumping up to relieve my bowels outside the tent.