That night at the Ilala, I ordered ostrich and baked potato. A conservative choice, but here I am to write about it.

The second time I encountered crocodile on the menu was at Tiger Camp, near Lukulu, on the Barotse flood plain, middle upper Zambezi, where, 150 years ago, people used to eat each other. The Lozi could be bold diners. Shaka Zulu for breakfast.

The tigers of Tiger Camp were fish, of course. There are no terrestrial tigers in Africa. The tiger fish is regarded as the most ferocious freshwater game species in the world. Its great-white teeth are strangely housed outside its jaws, like curved sailing needles; it can accelerate to 100 kilometers in five seconds; and, given the chance, it will eat a crocodile one-third its size. When you hook a tiger, you have to reel fast since other tigers will attack their fellow as he is pulled to shore. I preferred to fly-fish for my tigers -- light tackle and careful where you wade. The most effective tiger streamer on this part of the Zambezi was the LSD -- so named for its vibrant colors -- but that, perhaps, is a story better filed with "Sports Afield."

The culinary point is that each night at dinner we were served local fare, delicious bream, tiger (tastes a bit like Brazilian grouper but with more of a tang, chewy and white, like halibut, though with a bony personality), and crocodile. This time the tail was poached.

Tiger Camp was isolated. There were no roads to speak of. Throughout the 1980s, the place had been a working village, but in 1989 a single crocodile had managed to kill and eat six women, so the village pulled up stakes and moved a few kilometers inland, abandoning the bank to rich eco-tourists with graphite rods and bush planes.

The arch-white Zambians of Tiger Camp were always trying to jerk my gherkin before dinner, take advantage of my American innocence, I suppose -- pulling the badger on the dude, we used to call this back in Montana -- by scaring me with tales of car hijackings in Lusaka pulled off by Zairian gangs armed with Chinese weapons. But the story of the remarkably adroit crocodile that lived, or that had lived, in the Zambezi in front of our tents was a true one (so, for that matter, were the stories of car hijackings). I declined the poached tail, as I had the casserole at the Ilala lodge. My fellow guests had only to take the parked bush plane back to Lusaka, and civilization. I had 4000 more kilometers to paddle, among creatures who might misinterpret my sweat should I fall overboard.

I finally tasted crocodile at the Sheraton Hotel in Harare, on my slide off the continent, and I didn't even have to pay. Sheratons in places like Africa remind me of brackish waters. They are a cultural mix. There's an attempt to bring in local foods and art (in the case of the Sheraton Harare, some of the most famous stone sculpture in the world, by local Shona carvers) so that Texas seed salesmen and visiting evangelists can sample native culture, and there is also an attempt, usually successful, to make phones and faxes work better than at non-American hotels, so traveling African dignitaries often prefer to stay Sheraton side.

The man who ordered my crocodile tail -- this time grilled -- was a Ghanaian lawyer who worked for the World Bank, which was renegotiating some loans with Zimbabwe that week. My new friend pointed to crocodile on the menu and wanted to know: "Is it good? Will I get sick?"

With her eyes only, the Shona waitress smiled back. She said, "It's good."

When the tail arrived, sliced out plain like meaty fillets of cucumber, and the Ghanaian had chewed his way through about half of it, he cut me a hunk because he knew I was interested and asked, "What do you think? They wouldn't serve alligator like that in Louisiana. It's too dry."

It was dry, I agreed. But piquant. Somewhere between lobster and iguana. A ruffled texture. An emotional glissade of spooky river flavor. Chewy with a smoky bottom, and a lot of body, you might say. In fact, you could imagine your body being part of its body. Becoming one with the river.

Sawing croc, I decided, is not the same as spooning acorn souffle. Something spooky about forbidden tail (though made better by butter and lime). As a diner, you are a carnivore eating a carnivore, a bobcat with a lucky slice of mountain lion, a raptor with a cut of allosaurus between its teeth. Definitely not a limp-tongued culinary experience. But then this was Africa and not the Cafe Beaujolais. Besides, I could afford to take the risk. I expected to encounter few crocodiles back home in Montana waters.