The Okapi Wildlife Reserve is a magical, magical place. It sits in the middle of the world’s second-largest rainforests, which, like the Amazon rainforests, hide weird and wonderful creatures, so crazy many people have a hard time believing they exist.

We arrive on a Saturday afternoon, after a long and miserable bus trip from Bunia. The guard meets us at the registration office and checks us in. We have booked months earlier, via email and fax. A letter from the reserve confirming our booking was necessary to apply for our visas.

Two twin rooms, one single room. He leads us off to the accommodation. We’re staying right on the Epulu River. The river is huge – a wide, rushing world of water, with birds fishing and islands in the middle. We discover later that what we’re looking at is only half the stream; the river here is split into two. Epulu River is a tributary of the Congo River. The seed is planted of dream of travelling on a boat up that mightiest of African waterways.

We’re staying in one main house and one rondavel. It seems no-one else is here. We let the guys stay in the house and the two girls take the rondavel. It’s perfect. Three windows look out towards the river, maybe 10m from our door. Inside, the two single beds sit comfortably under a huge mosquito net, one that doesn’t have holes in it. There is a bookcase and a desk and three chairs with a coffee table. Outside, in the impossibly tall trees, monkey chatter and leap and play.

The main stone house has a covered veranda looking out at the river and a lounge and dining room where we gather for meals and in the evenings. The place has electricity some of the time, so computers and mobile phones can be charged in the lounge. Not that phones are important – there is no mobile phone reception at Epulu.

There is also, to our great joy, a block with toilets and showers and running water. The window of one of the showers looks out at the river. The kind of luxury for which you would pay thousands of rands in most places. We all feel very lucky to be here.

For the first time in days, we spend an evening together, just us, at the place we are staying. We take pictures of the river at sunset. A lady from the village, organised through the reserve, comes in to make us dinner. Bush meat, rice and vegetables, washed down with the inevitable Primus.

After dinner, we sit outside on the veranda and watch the river and chat. We have the music on in the background. At about 10pm, the electricity goes out and we light the lamps instead. Someone gets out the fiery poi. Later, when the stars are out, we walk up to the bridge to take pictures and simply enjoy the beauty of the night-time river. The stars are amazing, the night is beautiful, the river sounds are lovely. It is humid and warm and peaceful. A group of people walk past us on their way home from church and greet us cheerfully.

I wake the next morning just as the sun begins to peak through the early morning mists. Outside I can hear the rushing river. By the riverside, two bright green tropical parrots leap from branch to branch. Monkeys came down from the ancient trees to see what is happening. The air was rich with the sounds of birds. One, I still wish I knew which, sounds like liquid music. It is exquisite. There is a thorn tree, an acacia like those at home, but this tree’s yellow flowers all look like they were wearing pink feathered head-dresses.

Breakfast is omlettes and bread and we open the cheese we have brought from Bunia. Cheese for Christmas. The morning is lazy and peaceful. At about 11am, we go up to the gate and get the guards, with their machine guns, to pose for a Christmas picture with us and the blow-up Santa Clause we’d picked up in Bunia. The guards were wonderfully friendly and more than willing to be in our picture.

Around lunchtime, we wander along, across the bridge where we’d been the night before and across the second bridge, towards the dense rainforests. We are about to venture into the forest, in search of the old broken wooden bridge we could see from the road when the local people stop us. We would learn later that they did this entirely for our own good – we would have been lost in those forests within a few minutes and quite possibly never found again.

Instead, they lead us through an open gate and down to the rocks by the river, near the second bridge, to a spot where the pygmy children like to play. We sit on the rocks and watch the local children. Several of the elders sit with us, although age is so difficult to determine when the people are all smaller. I’ve never seen pygmy people before. It’s odd. It’s a little like walking into a history book to meet a people who are almost gone. But also seeing that they are ordinary people.

Sitting quietly on the rocks, I am so aware of the river. Down here, we are looking across the water at the forests rising from the river’s edge. One tree grows in the middle of the river, white-water rapids visible through a hole in its roots. Near to where I sat, navy blue and red dragon flies hover and flit across the water. Young pygmy men fish in this river. We see them one morning casting their nets in the river outside our rondavel. Another time we watch them barter, negotiating the value of their fish.

It is blisteringly hot and humid when we go back to our house to rest and get ready for an afternoon of adventure.

The days pass slowly here, filled with so much and yet somehow restful. One afternoon one of our group spends hours sitting under the trees near the okapi enclosures, recording the sounds and the light of the forest. I find a million chances to use my new binoculars and see all the birds and the creatures around the river. We rest, sometimes together, sometimes alone. All of us spend time writing, capturing thinking. It is as if we have found a secret safe space, away from the rush and the cellphones and the constant edge of danger that permeates everything in the Congo. Months later the park is attacked by rebels but those days we spent by the river were peaceful and happy, unexpectedly perfect.