SIXTEEN students and eight staff at Stokesley school are back from a three-week adventure full of the sights and sounds of southern Africa.

The Africa 2000 expedition, which had been planned for more than a year, took in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe and introduced the party to native food, flora and fauna as well as the legacies of a bitter war.

Expedition members experienced beautiful sunsets but freezing nights, two were bitten by scorpions, accommodation was mainly in tents and it was a week before anyone had a chance to sleep in a bed.

The adventurers sailed down the Orange river in Namibia, where they saw the effects of the war including a deserted mining town with mounds of sand covering what had been hospitals, houses and schools.

As the expedition progressed through each country, they saw ancient rock engravings, flamingo and seal colonies and undertook a bush walk to spot elephants, giraffes, babooons and crocodiles.

There was a chance to practise bartering, haggling a £100 carving down to £20, and Stokesley boys played a soccer match against a team from a shanty town around a camp site. Landmark places visited included the Etosha national park, the Okavango Delta and Victoria Falls.

Mr Martin Trent, deputy head at Stokesley, said: "Africa 2000 was the culmination of years of planning and dreaming, mostly by a small number of staff who had African experience of their own and knew how it exciting it would be for the sixth formers.

"With three years of teaching in a Kenyan bush school in my own past, I was so envious of them that I almost stowed away among the luggage."

The party, some of whom celebrated their birthdays in Africa, consisted of Tom Baldwin, James Harris, Steven Jessop, Denise Lipecki, Katy Moon, Graham Mottram, Matthew Nevens, Emma Simpson, Gillian Smith, Isaac Smith, Jayne Talintyre, Tim Taylor, Benedict Van Loo, Adam Wilding, Ruby Wills, Helen Woods, Andrea Fazakerley, Paul Fazakerley, Dave Jeal, Jane Lewis, Kirsti Randall, Keith Turland, Liesl White and Steve White. Ruby Wills kept the expedition diary and Steve White led the expedition and took pictures