12th
On the bright side, your husband may snore, but at least he doesn’t chew the cud (not regularly anyway). In the early hours of this morning, I woke to a sort of grinding, snorting and stomping and struggled to remember where I was. Through the tent flaps, the moon was reflected off the glassy surface of the Zambezi; a yellow glow from dust and the smoke of dry-season fires. Crawling out of my sleeping bag to gingerly open the zip, I peered outside and found myself at about gut-level with an old male buffalo, about 10 feet away.
I had been dying to spend a penny for about 2 hours, but the whoops of hyena and the sounds of buffalo and hippo grunting just a stone’s throw from my pillow, had counselled a near bed-wetting strategy of staying put and thinking of deserts. Finally, I slithered out of my tent and paused. The buffalo languidly turned to look at me, and in a semi ducked position, I kept my eyes on him as I side-stepped 3 steps right, and then a couple of steps back until I was just on the other side of the tent, though still peering round the corner and geared for flight. We both observed a respectful truce, and I executed an equally undignified return to the opening of the tent and flung myself through the gap, heart racing.
Apparently this is a fairly typical night in Mana Pools on the Lower Zambezi. Helping with a game count of the park, I have spent the last couple days walking through one of Zimbabwe’s best wildlife destinations, and can confirm that it lives up to expectations in every way. Watch this space for more.
18th
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about travelling is the liquorice allsorts of people I find myself rubbing elbows with. As a camp manager, where tourists came to look at the animals, I was often lodge-bound and ever so slightly crazy with cabin fever, so the variety of human life that passed through my patch provided no end of entertainment (I’m conscious that this little revelation is likely to spark mass paranoia amongst the holiday-makers, but really, look around…what d’you expect?). I’ve had high-flying New York types that tripped out of helicopters for a dirty weekend and recoiled from the visitor’s book in case they incriminated themselves (small world that it is). There have been mummy’s little darlings who refused anything to eat but fanta and bread, buried toothpicks in the sofas, and were rather light-fingered in the gift shop. Other camp managers tell stories of a “goth” woman who insisted on seeing her orange juice squeezed in front of her and required mineral water to wash her hair…and this on a remote beach in East Africa. I remember scratching my head over the menu for a diabetic, lactose and gluten-intolerant raw foodist, with an allergy to monosodium glutamate (sigh). You get my point.
The locals can be a strange bunch too. On a trip through Malawi, our 1958 Land Rover ground to an agonising, clunking halt, as only a Land Rover can, in a mosquito-ridden swamp called Kazilizili. From behind a dark bush materialised a man wearing a broad hat fashioned from black bin bags and fishing line, strumming a jaunty tune on a homemade banjo. He was joined by another rural type, clad in a fashionable, though grubby, Burberry trench coat, who brought a Tipex bottle to his nostrils, declaring in the Queen’s own English: “Where’s my snuff? Where’s my snuff?” It’s not something that you easily forget, and inhabitants (or should I say inmates?) of Kazilizili still appear to me in disturbed moments.
And then there are the nomads of the world. While working in Kenya’s Rift Valley, a visit to market day in a Maasai village yielded a pair of handsome sun-burnished French folk, wearing what looked like school uniform, carrying a small backpack each. They were in the process of walking from Cape Town to Jerusalem (as you do), trusting only in the generosity of people along the way, and a film has since been made about them. We spent hours listening to their tales of soaking in the hot-tubs of South African millionaires, and of sharing meals with warlords in countries that you only hear about for all the wrong reasons.
Incidentally, this week I bought an apple pie from a lady dressed as a fairy standing at a Harare traffic light. Apparently the apple pie, in addition to a good thing to have with a cup of tea, was also the secret to eternal life. I’ll let you know how that pans out.
As the saying goes; “there’s nought stranger than folk”.
18th
Amongst other things, social media has sanctioned the voyeuristic tendencies within many of us. Consequently it’s now okay to keep a much beadier eye on the doings of others than previously acceptable, without being considered even a little weird. Therefore, I am unashamed to admit that I get regular feeds on a few individuals through whom I vicariously enjoy adventures when reluctantly tethered to my desk, and therefore incapable of having any of my own.
Within a few weeks, a couple of these souls have embarked/are about to embark on pretty incredible personal journeys and every few days I read with a mixture of awe and envy of their latest exploits, bug-bears and conquests. One of my Facebook friends, Julian Monroe Fisher, will shortly begin walking across the belly of Africa, from the coast of Mozambique to the Atlantic in Angola. The second person is someone I regard with the same curious incomprehension as a fax machine: I have no idea what makes it tick but think it is quite marvellous in any case. Well-known ocean rower, Roz Savage, is a few days into her mammoth 4000 mile solo row across the Indian Ocean.
The blogs relate a repertoire of interesting happenings thrown across their paths (Roz seems to be frequently pelted by flying squid), and describes the very human afflictions which make life on the explorer’s pedestal sometimes less than comfy. From painful blisters to sunburn, annoying insects to homesickness… hurrah, they are mere mortals after all. I find myself searching for what motivates these people to take up the mantle of extraordinary endeavour. Much like my great grandfather, who set off from Scotland in the early 19 hundreds to carve a new life for himself in East Africa, I imagine that much of the reward comes from stepping off the well-trodden path and relishing the unexpected.
Whatever it is that galvanises such people, the interesting thing is that the inspiration they provide can come in many forms and you can take what you will from it. Whether it means choosing a different country to visit next year or throwing in a tedious job to do something on your own, pushing your physical and mental limits in running that marathon, or reading a controversial author…the message for me is that boundaries are there to be pushed and only in doing so do we make room to grow (or, less philosophically, experience the novelty of being hit in the face by air-borne seafood).
11th
Nature is frequently required to remind us diminutive little bipedals who’s boss. For all our technological prowess, at the end of the day we’re still squishy, pink and about as impressive as limp lettuce in the face of our world’s capacity to awe. While sometimes these reminders come in devastating quakes and giant waves, at other times they are beautiful and gently surprising. This year, the rains in Namibia have topped the charts, breaking 100 year old records in terms of quantity and wreaking havoc on roads and previously high-and-dry safari camps. Some places received a year’s worth of rain in a month. This is all relative of course. We’re talking about a country which enjoys over 300 days of sunshine annually (I know, sickening). So when we say it’s been a record rainy season, bear in mind that the creatures of the Namib mainly subsist on sea fog and may only see 100mm of rain in the whole year. But, if you happen to be a tok-tokkie beetle and have to stand on your head every morning to catch drops of fog running down your back for your morning cuppa, you might agree that in the desert, a little rain goes a long way. Ordinarily, the colours of the Namib and wider Skeleton Coast are vivid and captivating. In fact, you run the risk of sounding like a stuck record and exhausting your personal store of enthusiastic adjectives as you exclaim repeatedly how simply astonishing it all is. Add a little water to the equation and you have tumble-weed grass turning from gun-metal grey to psychedelic green and deep-red sand wearing a carpet of yellow flowers. Shallow mirage-like lakes of water appear for the first time in a decade beneath the giant dunes of Sossusvlei . Late afternoon electric storms paint the sky with bruised purple clouds and sheet-lightning. There goes that blue planet, got a new trick and showing off again… If you haven’t planned what to do with all those public holidays at the end of April/beginning of May, think about heading out to Namibia to witness nature’s little party in the desert. 
Have a look at these great pics from the Kulala conservancy near Sossusvlei on our Facebook page. Give us a call on +44 1747 898104 if you’d like to know more about safaris in Namibia. *The above image was taken on Wolwedans in the Namib Rand Reserve. Courtesy of Wolwedans.
02nd
I have a friend to whom the idea of sleeping in a tent is as close to purgatory as one could get without actually shuffling off any mortal coils. Conspicuously sporting an intense dislike of adventure, dust and insects, her preferred accommodation will come complete with wall-to-wall carpeting, air-conditioning and 24-hour satellite TV, preferably including Oprah. If no alternative exists, then camping is undertaken, grudgingly, with a convoy of vehicles loaded with chemical toilets, feather duvets, the latest in portable kitchen-sinks and only barely stopping short of a liveried butler.
Said person once made the point that there was really no need for her to visit the Masai Mara when she could view the migration perfectly well on satellite TV, edited for the action without having to hang around waiting for the wildebeest to eventually summon up the courage to take a dip with the crocodiles. Perhaps she has a point.
Recently I’ve been reading interesting stuff about the role that technology will play in the future of travel and it got me thinking. The gadgets and gizmos that are now part of everyday life have done much to bring us into closer proximity to the world’s wondrous environments, wild animals and diverse people. For someone who still hasn’t figured out how the now-obsolete fax machine works, I find it remarkable that, from the couch, I can watch a leopard hunting baboons in the Okavango Delta, or learn about the colourful tribes of Papua New Guinea. I can spectate as the intrepid presenters of Top Gear try hard to kill a Land Cruiser (and themselves) in the Arctic or watch the often excruciating experiences of the likes of Bruce Parry as he surrenders to the manhood initiations of people in South America (incidentally, how many initiations does one need before one feels secure in one’s manhood?).
So I got to thinking, while sitting warm, comfortable and within easy reach of the salted peanuts and a cold beer, why bother leaving the couch at all?
When getting ready to meet our maker, no one ever says “I wish I’d watched more TV”. TVs, Laptops, Smartphones, iPads etc., are amazing for finding out what’s out there, sharing it with your mates and planning your adventures…there’s an app for that, but this is not the same thing as actually “living it”. And therein lies the rub: casting yourself into the 3-D reality of the migration, actually being there and experiencing it, is incomparable in every way to the unmemorable event of observing it on a flat-screen. Out There is where you hear, taste, feel, smell AND see it happening, leaving sensations and emotions deeply and indelibly branded on your psyche.
While life becomes faster, more complicated, more stressful, increasingly artificial, I yearn more and more for simple pleasures such as the delicious sensation of rinsing the days’ adventures off myskin in the balmy evening air under a bucket suspended from the branch of a tree…and there ain’t no app. for that.
17th
It’s an interesting thing that holidays can be both a wonderfully self-indulgent treat and a vital lifeline for the conservation of our planet. Sound a bit far-fetched and idealistic? Perhaps not…
Last year there was an interesting online debate about the ethics of travelling to Zimbabwe. Amongst the various arguments was one made by a Zimbabwean who pointed out that the future of wildlife in his country relies on the revenue generated by tourism and, by staying away, travellers may actually be helping to expedite the loss of these precious resources.
Zim is not the only place where tourism plays a hefty part in conservation. Pick up any travel mag and there will be stories about the likes of lodge owners in Zambia who recently saved a lioness injured critically by a poacher’s snare. Beyond the emergency response; many small camps are involved in training rangers, supporting long-term research and educating adjacent communities about the value of wildlife. Plenty more companies opt to take local communities as business partners, providing them with a stake in the future of their environment.
Of course, it is absolutely in the best interest of these companies to invest in conservation – after all, their businesses depend upon it. But more often than not, this is a secondary concern and the extraordinary lengths that people go to come from a deep sense that this is just the right thing to do. Sadly there are others with a much shorter-term view and less integrity where tourism does leave large and grubby footprints on our natural heritage. Tourism undoubtedly has the power to support livelihoods, bestow economic viability on wilderness that might otherwise be used for mining or agriculture, and conserve and regenerate habitats.
Therefore, the important question should not be “should I travel?” but rather “how can I support the people who are themselves busting a gut trying to save the world all on their tod?” (or words to that effect). Just as you would want accountability from Oxfam as to how they use your donation, choose carefully who you entrust your hard-earned safari dollars to. That way, while you are enjoying your holiday, you know that you’ve invested in the conservation of those fabulous places that you are privileged to visit: killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.
07th
Quite a long time ago (keeping specifics out of it), my parents made the mistake of trying to surprise me with a holiday at the beach. Their benign conspiracy was met with 6 year old histrionics as I mistakenly assumed that the suitcases being hauled out of the boot at the airport meant that I was being packed off to some far off place for having relentlessly hunted down my still-to-be-wrapped Christmas presents hidden in the cupboard. I’ve never been one to take surprises well.
Of course, now I’m a grown-up (sort of), I take enormous pleasure in planning my next adventure and relishing the anticipation for months before it happens. There’s the thinking about how soon after my last holiday I can tactfully abscond from my responsibilities on the next one. Then there’s the endless studying of maps, enjoying the strange-sounding names and beautiful pictures of places I might visit. Once an approximate plan has been hatched, the reality begins to dawn as I start scheming about how to make it all fit together. Then I get to bore my friends for weeks about where I’m off to next (with the promise of making them jealous with the photos on my return). In fact, I get almost as much pleasure in looking forward to the thing as actually doing it.
Now that Christmas is behind us, the shops are spending a small fortune on endlessly repetitive adverts with irritating jingles and fake-smiley people trying to get us excited about spending our own small fortune on a sofa at 70% off. Now forgive me for bursting the bubble here but just how excited can you get about a sofa? And even if you do manage to summon up the energy to wade through the throngs between the freezing grey streets and the overheated fug of department stores to blow some cash on discounted goods that you quite possibly don’t need, just how long is that feel-good factor going to last?
My poorly disguised point here (if you’ve not walked in with the bowling), is that instead of opting for the all too easy instant gratification of a new sofa, why not start planning your next great escape? It’ll give you hours of pleasure in anticipation, butterflies in your tummy, and make the next few long winter months pass more quickly…and it will leave you with memories that will be more beautiful and last so much longer than a new sofa, guaranteed.
(The above image is of an innovative road-side curio shop…everything’s on sales if you barter hard enough).
29th
This festive season I’ve been knocking the smooth edges off my social repertoire and trying to be less of a round peg in a square hole. For those that are familiar with the southern African tradition of The Braai, you will hopefully sympathise with me.
People-watching has always been a favourite hobby and I am capable of spending hours at a cafe regarding the variety in our species as one would observe the behaviour of elephants and baboons in the Masai Mara. Since I moved to Harare a year ago, The Braai has become one of my favourite anthropological field sites. It has revealed a fascinating ritual played out in two-tone khaki and “veldskoens” in dozens of leafy gardens every weekend.
A characteristic of the southern African male is his inability to comprehend a meal unless it comprises about 80% meat. As he stands proprietarily next to his Weber, a range of tongs, forks and other implements laid out beside him as though preparing for surgery, he flips the various cuts over the coals with one hand while keeping a cold Castle constantly grasped in the other. It’s a sort of balance that has been perfected over time and if the hand is empty, he will probably topple over.
As a general observation, I have found that upon arriving at a typical Zimbabwean braai, couples part ways upon disembarkation from the standard white “bakkie” (pick-up truck). The men congregate beer-in-hand around the fire while the women sit on the verandah. To enter into the sacrosanct circle of the braai as a woman, you need to have an exceptional grasp of the finer points of cricket and rugby at the very least. You will never, regrettably, be able to participate in the other topic of conversation which revolves around which boarding school you attended and the tireless, good-natured abuse related to your house’s sporting conquests or lack thereof. Please believe me when I say that this topic is still alive-and -kicking when the gentlemen are in their 70s, and decidedly less so. If you sit with the girls, you will probably spend quite a lot of time talking about children.
Now, I have a series of problems identifying and subsequently playing a satisfactory part in this performance. The first is that I would choose a veggie salad over a bloody rump steak on any day of the week and many people behave as though I am a carrier of a rare and faintly amusing disease when I skirt the boerwors in favour of the lentils. The second problem is that, my dog being no substitute for sprogs, I have little to contribute to the re-hashing of Little Johnny’s latest sporting achievements. Lastly, while I can still climb trees and wax lyrical on the pleasures of mountain biking, I have never succeeded in retaining a single useful detail of either cricket or rugby. I’m now contemplating that arriving at the next braai dressed as a clown might make me stand out less as a creature from a different eco-system…I’ll try that next time.
23rd
If only I could blow on the soles of my feet! Pain, pain, ouch, ah, ah…hot, hot! Sporting my preferred attire of shorts and bare feet, I took off at a pace that could leave Usain Bolt in the dust, determined not to return to my tent like any sensible person and don appropriate footwear. Sadly, my fleet-footedness wasn’t in the least bit athletic or dignified; in fact I fear that I looked much like a frog doing Riverdance. Not cool.
Unjustly cursing the deep red sand of the Namib that had left my feet somewhat tender, I went to soak them in the pool. I swam up and down with torpor appropriate to a mid-thirties afternoon in the Namib (the desert was mid-thirties, not me…let’s be clear). It occurred to me that I was swimming lengths on top of a sand-dune. There can’t be many places in the world where you can say that.
Having cooled my heels, I joined my fellow travellers for the obligatory sundowner. The open landrover wound its way along the “road” (two tracks in the red sand), between dry-blue grass that looked rather like clumps of tumble-weed, ready to scatter in the wind at any moment. Suddenly, the ridge of dunes gave on to a 180° view of such depth and emptiness that I could do nothing but just stare and stare. It was vast yet the silence and emptiness made it almost two-dimensional – like a film set all prepped and ready for something dramatic to happen.
Huge gnarled mountains provided a back-drop which changed from grey to red to purple in the setting sun. Fairy circles (more about these later) dotted the wide straw-coloured valley floor as though some divine interior designer had opted frivolously for polka-dots for a bit of a laugh. Sitting with cold green glass bottle in hand and feet wiggling deeper into the sand, warm wind stroking my bare arms….I wished for time to stand still. Later that evening, I seriously considered sleeping on the lounger on my verandah because it seemed such a waste to cover up the gzillions of stars with canvas.
It’s hard to do this place justice with mere words so may I suggest you saunter over to our Facebook page and lose yourself in some stunning imagery from Wolwedans.
21st
Two days ago I was holding my breath whilst an overgrown cub of a desert lion stood within 3m of our open vehicle. Today I sit with champagne and fresh Namibian oysters in hand as a cape fur seal leaps from the cold Atlantic Ocean onto the deck of the boat. I do a reality check…perhaps this champagne and the strong sun is having unexpected effects. Nope…there is indeed a seal on the boat, currently being scratched under the chin by Nick, our jolly, bearded and sizeable skipper.
This surreal contrast is typical of a journey through Namibia. Every other day the scenery changes so dramatically that it is hard to believe you are in the same country. This morning, for instance, I awoke to the chill of a dense sea fog draped over the very German coastal town of Swakopmund and now I sit beneath a warm African sun surrounded by the azure sea.
Nick pilots our little vessel expertly from Namibia’s only deep-water harbour past oil rigs in for a service, container ships and even an abandoned diamond-mining boat, registered to Panama. This one has been running up IOUs in many different ports and skipping town without paying the bill. Interpol finally caught up with it in Walvis Bay and it is now the centre of a court battle. We learn about how gravel and sand is vacuumed from the seabed and sifted for the precious stones.
As we skip across the glittering waves, we are joined by the “Namibian Airforce” – a fleet of pelicans that fly alongside the boat, hopeful for a fresh snack. At such close quarters, their fabulous anatomy can be appreciated fully and Nick gives us the benefit of his knowledge about these and the accompanying seagulls as we go. Everyone on board turns National Geographic photographer as we are treated to clear glimpses of both bottle-nose and heavy-sided dolphins breaching alongside the hull.
At Pelican Point, the seal colony proves a good fit for our trip theme…more mating animals. The males weigh in at upto 350kg and at almost half their weight, no wonder many of the females end up practically buried in the sand during “the act”. Youngsters lollop along the sand in search of their mothers.
Turning for the harbour, we see where the meaty oysters that we are drenching in lemon and Tabasco are grown. Seed oysters come from Chile to thrive in the chill Benguela current. They are huge and truly delicious. Windswept and freckled by the sun, we step back onto dry land and head back through the dunes of the Namib for coffee and cake in a German bakery. Quite surreal really.
Click here to see more images.
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