make arrangements and leaving from Venice to Tanganyika a few months later. They arrived in August, and Hemingway was thrilled to be deputized as an honorary ranger, writing in a letter, "due to emergency (Mau Mau rebellion) been acting game ranger". Philip Percival, Hemingway's safari guide in 1933, joined the couple for the four-month expedition; they traveled from the banks of the Salengai, where Earl Theisen photographed Hemingway with a herd of elephants, to the Kimana Swamp, the Rift Valley and then on to visit Patrick in central Tanganyika. After visiting Patrick at his farm, they settled for two months on the north slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. During this period Percival left their camp to return to his farm, leaving Hemingway as game warden with local scouts reporting to him. Hemingway was proud to be a game warden and believed a book would come of the experience. On January 21 Hemingway chartered a sightseeing flight of the Congo Basin as a late Christmas present to Mary; two days later, on their way to photograph Murchison Falls from the air, the plane hit an abandoned utility pole and crashed, with the passengers sustaining minor injuries. That night they camped in the bush waiting for a response to their distress call. The crash site was seen by a passing airliner that reported no survivors, and the news of Hemingway's death was telegraphed around the world. The next day they were found and picked up by a bush pilot, but his de Havilland caught fire during take-off, crashed and exploded, which left Hemingway with a concussion, scalp wound, double-vision, intermittent hearing in his left ear, a crushed vertebra, ruptured liver, spleen and kidney, and burns. The explosion burned their passports, "thirty rolls of exposed film, three pairs of Ernest's bifocals, all of their money, and their $15,000 letter of credit." The group traveled to Entebbe by road, where journalists from around the world had gathered to report his death. On January 26 Hemingway briefed and joked with the reporters, and spent the next few weeks in Nairobi recuperating and reading his obituaries. During his recuperation Hemingway immediately prepared the piece for Look. The magazine paid him an additional $20,000 for an exclusive about the plane crashes. Biographer Michael Reynolds writes that the piece, "ran for twenty magazine pages spread out over two issues", with the first issue bearing a publication date of 26