Message from Pieter: “Today was a day of mostly having to wait. In the morning, waiting for the helicopter, for good weather, and on that we were out of luck. We did some looking around in Beni. After that, we went to meet Paul for a distraction. We had a nice hike, experienced what it is like to hike in this area.
Fortunately, we met up with Paul and we drank a glass of coke together. And after that, we went on in two cars, back to the hotel. At the hotel, we joined SARdogs, the army and Paul to look at the map together. We got feedback from SARdogs. There were unfortunately unable to find anything. We can never exclude the possibility that the confused man was Christiaan. But we have not found any real evidence to go on with a further search. SARdogs really went all the way, into the bush, by foot, where cars cannot go, looking for clues on whether or not Christiaan was walking around there. But they could not find anything, and as far as we can tell, they were thorough. Tomorrow will be a very exciting day, as the army helicopter has been standing at the ready for a couple of days now. But the army’s kindness is coming to an end. If the weather does not clear up tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon, the major will unfortunately be unable to fly a helicopter with his troops. We hope and pray that the weather will be good tomorrow. If it is during the morning, Paul can fly along for a while to point things out.”