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Dear Tony

In my last letter I explained how it came to be that Juan Alonso de Arroyo's thugs were chasing me across the Colombian border into Panama, and how I came to be one of the 'contestants' of Survivor South Africa: Panama.

The preliminaries are thus over, and about time too - when one lives on the edge of madness and reason as I do one attempts to be done with preliminaries as soon as possible.

You know that as well as I do, of course - it's why you too are still alive. Preliminaries can get you killed if you-

.....

Sorry about that - forgive the brief pause in writing. I heard a noise outside our shelter and fearing the worst I drew my inverted-tooth dagger and slashed wildly into the night. A scream of agony repayed my boldness and convinced I had thwarted an assassination attempt by one of Arroyo's men I went outside to see (and dispose of) the damage.

Writhing in agony on the ground, clutching her severed Achilles tendon, was a woman from the production company (a key grip or something, easily identifiable by her khaki shorts, rolled-down woollen socks and stocky, sunburned calves).

Turns out she'd lost her way coming back from the jungle, although what she was doing in the jungle after midnight remains unclear.

None of my tribe mates woke up - they were all exhausted.

I forced her to sign a confidentiality agreement (M-Net insists on confidentiality for everything on pain of barbarous death, and I had a spare confidentiality agreement in my pocket), after which I let her go.

Now where was I? Ah yes - preliminaries. See how dangerous they are?

But enough - I can tell you're as sick of them as I am.

We landed by plane on the crumbling airstrip and were met by someone called Mark when we alighted. He mumbled something about tribes and so forth but I wasn't listening - I was pretending to get sick on the other side of the plane, when in actual fact I was offloading a small case of highly specialised tools.

I threw the case into the fringes of the forest when nobody was watching, and mentally marking where it was I returned to the groups, just in time to be handed an Aguila buff.

Bizarrely nobody noticed that our tribe had one extra contestant - everyone was too nervous, being the start of the game and all.

Aside from the extra contestant we also had a huge physical advantage over Rana - they stacked our tribe with fit alpha people and put the ladyfolk with the old guy and that effeminate doctor.

It hardly came as a surprise when Rana lost the dash to Black Pearl Island and later the immunity challenge - the odds on them winning anything at all are immense.

Once we got to our beach it was time for everyone to start assuming roles and establishing identities.

Sam decided to be leader, one of the first mistakes you can make on a game like this. He'll last a while before everyone decides he's "a threat" and remove him.

Brigitte and Vanessa fussed about camp, pretending to be busy, while Nico and Sanele were put to work by Sam on building a shelter.

Jude disappeared into the jungle for a few hours and came out dragging a wild boar by the eye socket. She sat down at the fire and ripped a hind leg off the animal, and warming it slightly over the flame she set about feasting on it.

Nobody asked any questions. You wouldn't either - she's one scary lady. The less you know the better, as far as she's concerned.

I went fishing with Mzi (he had a bee in his bonnet about proving his worthiness through catching food, despite Jude's obvious bare-knuckled skills).

I left Mzi on a rock and told him I was going a further way down the beach to try a different location.

As soon as I was out of sight I doubled back to the main beach, retrieved our boat and paddled to the island with the airstrip.

I retrieved the case of tools next to the airstrip and headed back to Black Pearl Island before sunset. I stashed my case in the jungle and returned to camp, to find Mzi had caught a hideous-looking, tiny fish which everyone seemed thrilled about, despite the fact that men have been fishing - successfully - for over 10,000 years now.

It's not all that special, but I congratulated Mzi. I wanted him to feel good about his fishing - if he's off on the rocks each day he can't be snooping around me and my business.

The next day we won the immunity challenge, which meant Rana had to vote someone out at Tribal Council. There was no way I was going to miss that, so I snuck out that night and made my way to the Tribal Council area.

Watching that Tribal Council covertly was hysterical - all those people were sitting there desperately trying to win a million bucks, while right beneath them is buried the stolen treasure of Juan Alonso de Arroyo, which I hid there four years ago.

I saw them get rid of the old guy, which was a wise decision - from what I'd seen of him he seemed mildly insane.

Once everyone had left the Tribal Council area I snuck down and went to the sacrificial altar. The stones around the altar were slightly loose around the edges, no doubt from my digging years before.

Satisfied that my plans were on track I made my way back to camp before the others noticed I had gone.

I was about to go to sleep when I heard someone coming straight towards our camp through the jungle. I peered out of our shelter and by the light of the moon saw the pale, maddened face of Jude, with what looked like blood splshed across the side of her face.

Her eyes were mad in the moonlight and she was dragging something heavy. She paused briefly and looked in my direction, and although she couldn't have seen me in the darkness of the shelter it felt as though she was looking right through me.

She stood breathing heavily for a few moments, then turned and headed back into the dark jungle, still dragging the heavy load behind her.

I turned over and closed me eyes. What you don't know can't hurt you, right?

I fell into a restless sleep.

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