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circular country located entirely within South Africa. It has no fe n ces and few phones or paved roads; the nomadic shepherds who live there are so used to communicating from one mountainside to anoth�r that even when standing before you they yell in an atonal voice. Lesotho is a country I will forever associate with the smell of mint, for it grows wild and common like dandelions in Nebraska. But I will remember it mostly as a land of the elements: raw Both the 1991 Raid in Costa Rica (through jungle so snake-infested that com petitors carried syringes of antivenom) and the 1993 Raid in Madagascar includ ed skydiving. The 1992 Raid in Oman includ ed 60 miles of camel riding. The 1994 Raid in Borneo, where orangutans often blocked the jungle course in shows of territorialism, won't be remembered for strange events, but for the leeches which habitually worked their way under clothing then attached to backs, necks, legs and genitals. no 7". So I joined the tail end of Lestra's single-fi le shuffle up the steep, six-inch-wide trails. The sub sequent invitation was offhand ("Would you like to come with us to Port Edward?"),' but in the next ten days, th ese stra ngers Francois, Leo, Bruno, Juliette whose professions ranged from pharmacist to blackjack dealer, would reveal the depths of their personalities bit by bit, and I would reveal mine. Our bond was sh ared food, shared sweat, sl ivers of panic and triumph . When the ending fi nally came-the one no team ever wishes for-we grieved as a family. The Raid slowly unveiled The 1995 Raid in Patagonia was extreme for its countless sheer mountain ascents-one competitor's crushed by falling rock. The 1998 Raid will be held in the Philippines during April. Events have yet to be announced, but competitors can expect to encounter poi sonous snakes-both on land and at sea-and jungle so thick as to be almost impenetrable. hand was its complexities. The smugglers' trails, for instance, meandered along the edges of thousand-foot cl iffs. It became an act of faith not to look down, trusting the next footfa ll would be sure. The trails wound ever upward through a wind-whipped notch known as Champagne Castle. The former Zulu battlefield with the unlikely name marked the entrance to Lesotho. Alternately known as "the roof of Africa " and "Kingdom in the Sky" for the mile-high plateau on which it's perched, Lesotho is a wind, wild fluctuations in temperature, unchecked rivers. And ra in. Unceasing, inescapable, loathsome ra in. It began as we descended from Champagne Castle on the second day, and took to the powerful and muddy Senqu River for forty miles of canoeing rapids. It chilled us and raised the Senqu at once, making the paddle noth ing short of har rowing. We overturned four times mid-rapid. Water flung our bodies against half-submerged boulders with bruising force, like rag dolls in a rinse cycle gone haywire. Gear was soaked through, which was fine except that even our special waterproof "dry bags" containing fresh socks somehow filled with water. Wet socks cause blisters, and bl isters, during a race where you must walk almost two hundred miles, are an affl iction to be avoided at all costs. "Dry" socks, " Jul iette, a fi nely mus cled mother of two and blackjack dealer from Cannes, reminded me as she discovered an undrenched pair in the deepest recesses of a dry bag, "are like gold." Though just 37, Jul iette functioned as den mother, motivating herself by motivating us. "We must finish for our children," she earnest ly informed me at the start of the third' day, then every day thereafter. She force-fed ibu profen to Bruno, a petroleum broker with a talent for navigating whitewater, when painful sciatica bent him double. When Francois squabbled with Leo, our volatile Air France fl ight attendant descended from royalty, it was Jul iette who quietly calmed him with a few discreet words of French. She was our sou l, given to fantasizing aloud about the wonderful swell of emotions that would accompany crossing the fi nish line. She always concluded the discourse with a wist ful smile and that reminder to make our chi ldren proud. Four days in, we began horseback riding. To protect the ani mals and give the stage the feel of an expedition, Fusil had mandated that the horses travel no faster than a walk and no more than twelve hours a day. Feeling like cowboys, we made our way across the green hills and prairies. We wore bandannas to protect us from wind, hats