For the first thirty miles the red earth road wound its way through the lowland forest, the giant trees standing in solid ranks alongside and their branches entwined in an archway of leaves above us. Slowly and almost imperceptiably the road started to climb upwards, looping its way in languid curves round the forested hills. In the back of the lorry the boys lifted up their voices in song:
Home again, home again,
When shall I see ma home?

The driver hummed the refrain softly to himself glancing at me to see if I would object. To his surprise I joined in and so while the lorry rolled onwards, the boys in the back maintained the chorus while the driver and I harmonized and sang complicated bits.

Breaks in the forest became more frequent the higer we climbed, and presently a new type of undergrowth began to appear: Massive tree-ferns standing at the roadside on their thick, squat, hairy trunks. There ferns were the guardians of a new world, for suddenly, as though the hills had shrugged themselves free of a cloak, the forest disappered. It lay behind us in the valley, while above us the hillside rose majestically, covered in a coat of waist-high grass. The lorry crept higher and higher, the engine gasping and shuddering with this unaccustomed activity. I began to think that we should have to push the wretched thing up the last two or hundred feet, but to everyone's surprise we made it, and the lorry crept on to the brow of the hill, trembling with fatigue, spouting steam from its radiator like a dying whale. We crawled to a standstill and the driver switched off the engine.

"We must wait small-time, engine get hot," he explained, pointing to the forequarters of the lorry, which were by now completely invisible under a cloud of steam. Thankfully I descended from the red-hot inside of the cab and strolled down to where the road dipped into the next valley. From this vantage point I could see the country we had travelled through and the country we were to enter......