I like 12-14 days like these other guys...
JBs story reminded me of a trip I took ti Zim in 2000. No cell phones, no SAT phones, no computer...but there was a FAX machine. Got into a prolonged dust-up with a leopard on day one...and I just KNEW the story would work its way home before I did ( 17 days later) so I FAXed my wife and told her, regardless of what you may hear, no one got hurt.
Sure enough the story got home better than a week before me, and it had lost nothing in the telling!
