My Moments / Stories and Memories

These are my stories and experiences during my so many trips.

This is me
My tour guiding start
My moments / Stories, my experiences
My panties or my life
An electrifying experience
To baboon or not to baboon
Listen carefully or pay the consequences
If you dont listen, you will be punished
Time to take a nap
Rhino mound is the only choice
Giving happiness is the most rewarding thing
My first official tour
Tanzania, my first encounter
A safari too close for comfort
Another wildlife experience to cherish
Elephants elephants everywhere, not a sky to see
Calamity can also strike a tour
Too close to my Baby
Beautiful people, Beautiful land
Bias ideas into one's head
Water is the only currency
A special Kitty cat
Leave them all up there
Crazy is an understatement
Our kitchen is runing away from us
I am not staying here
Water animals in a sea of sand
Death everywhere but not a dead one found
Wet hole of Death
I am First. Are you kidding me?
Not without my Yogurt
You are early, or going nowhere
I have done something terrible
Going Blind, Going Blind
You are not Invited!
No Seat belt, no GO
Moody Elephant, not good company
A broken table is a broken trip
How I met the love of my life
Gentle giants with a mean purpose
Kodak moment, you like this pose or that one?
Kodak moment too close for comfort
Keep your cool , or you will be cold forever
Can't you make a Plan?
Parcels of Death
River rafting or River wrestling
Leave me Alone!
Kitty cat wants Warmth!
Heart broken
Tired of your nonsense
I envy them
Stop leaning on me!
First white rubish collector
A whitey gardening
 

 

This is me

Where should I start?

Probably by telling you a bit about me. I am a totally nature lover person, who enjoys the fresh air on a chill winter morning, the birds flying by and nesting beautifully on a hanging branch, Africa's amazing landscapes and in general, everything that nature has to offer.

I love seeing details in it, such as a beautiful drop of water resting on a leave and acting as a magnifying glass, seeing an elephant play with branches, a young wildebeest jumping up and down for no reason.

Yeah, that is me.

I am also an ultra-marathon runner and I do all the craziest runs of 56km, 89km, 100km. Yes, that is right, not a mistake; 100km. I love getting away from everything while I run.

I am also a ballroom and Latin-American dancer and instructor. I am not joking, check out my website for this: http://www.polepoleman.com

I also enjoy meeting people, learning new cultures and enjoying what they have to offer. And here in Africa, this is most rewarding.

I love painting and sketching, and like getting animal parts and expressions on paper. Yes, I also have a website for this, check it out: http://www.polepoleman.com and click on Marcos art, and while you are at it, you can also click on my photography which I enjoy doing, especially during my trips.

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My tour guiding start 

You want to know how I got to be a tour guide?, well that is quite a simple story.

You see, my dream was to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and I made this dream come true in 2001.

I just bought a ticket to Dar Es Salaam and arrived there with my back pack. No plans, no booking, "nada, piña colada".

So I decided to eat something after leaving the airport and I bought myself a coke and chips, and I sat on the sidewalk, real island style to eat it all.

To my amazement many African people started sitting next to me, and tried to establish conversation which I loved. They wanted to know what is this white crazy man doing sitting here, eating African type food like the Africans do. And we all had a laugh about it when I told them: "I might be white, but my heart is black".

Anyway, I told them about my climb, and to my big surprise, I found that I was in the wrong city.

Kilimanjaro is 700km to the north of where I was, so I had to catch that same day another flight to my real destination. Talk about improvising eh?.

Kilimanjaro, I had to find accommodation, and to do this I got a communal taxi. This is a kombi with 10 seats that gets filled up with about 16 people, so you are really a travelling sardine in a can.

My surprise was not with the amount of people in it, but with the smell which was a rancid stench that made you dizzy. I must admit at that point I was very bias towards people in Tanzania, and I thought, "They can't be that dirty over here". Anyway, to me an experience is an experience, and I took it for what it was: beautiful Africa. Reaching the centre of town I got off the taxi, and to my big surprise (and my shame for having thought so), I saw that at the back of the taxi, standing just behind the last rows of seats and the window, was a GOAT. And of course, this was the source of the smell. I had such a good laugh about it.

At another eating session in Kilimanjaro, I met "Emanuel", who I told him about my wanted adventure, and he happened to be an ex Kilimanjaro guide. So I asked him what about it.

I told him that I wanted to climb without porters, just the two of us. He agreed to it, and the next day we went shopping and got all the goods we needed.

I have to tell you that I am one of the few persons who have climbed Kilimanjaro carrying his own goods. It is TOUGH, very TOUGH, but the view from the top is something that will stay with you forever.

I had a good laugh at my guide's idea of light equipment. Will you believe that as a mean of cooking stove, he was carrying a 3.5 kg gas bottle with him all the way to the top of Kilimanjaro. This should go down in history!!

So, after 6 days of climbing and getting back to ground level, I rented a 4x4 and went traveling on my own through Tanzania.

This was the most incredible experience. With No plans, No itinerary and No commitment.

I went to Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti. This experience made me understand that although I was born in South America, I was an "African Born in the wrong continent". Africa spoke to my heart, Africa captured my soul and I became an African.

These experiences were so revealing, that I decided on my return, to share them with other people. So, I started PolePole Adventures and I offered to take people to Kilimanjaro and Tanzania.

I conducted many tours for 2 years after which I found that you needed a license for it. So I did the course and became a registered Tour Guide.

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My Moments / Stories, my experiences

Anyone telling you that being a Tour guide is just a permanent holiday, does not know a thing about it.
Tour guiding is really hard work, but at the same time a very rewarding one. You get to see amazing places, meet incredible people and stay at some unusual and sometimes fantastic lodges.

But not all is great. You get up at 4 in the morning, to make sure the driver of the bus is up, that the bus is ready, and that the arrangements are all made for the day's activities.

Yes, you are in charge of EVERYTHING. Your guests will see you as their daddy or mommy.
As a matter of fact, carrying Tourists is the same as caring for 4 year olds. They certainly behave as such.
Tell them not to step there, and they will do it, tell them not to pick that flower, and they will do it, tell them not to be late and they will definitely be.

But all in all, the rewards that you get from the stories you will be able to tell, more than make up for it.
I have been guiding for over 25 years now, and have done just about every kind of groups and gone all over Africa, and let me tell you, do I have stories to tell.

I was told to write a book with them, but you know in today's times, books are almost obsolete, so I am going to tell My Moments / Stories via this blog.
Hope you have lots of coffee and that you are comfortable with your feet up. The movie Out of Africa has NOTHING on me.
So, I invite you to My Moments / Stories, to Africa.
 

Marcos Solis-Peralta

Tour Guide, Nature Lover, Life lover.

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My panties or my life!!!   

Once again being a tour guide takes you into situations of all sorts. Some of them are hectic, some of them are full of danger and some of them are a test of your reactions and coolness.
One of these tests came to me in a very strange form. We were doing a Boat Safari in Chobe national park, enjoying amazing wildlife and landscape. Nature was throwing us with all its splendour and majesty and we were all so into the moment.

Now, the boat had a balcony upstairs that one could go and stand to have a better view.
It just so happen, that a lady in her early twenties, decided that it would be a good idea to go upstairs for a smoke, so she then climbed the ladder to the top and went to have her puff. A while later, her mother called her to come downstairs and this was the beginning of the fastest ever moment in my life.

Now let me explain first that I was standing at the bottom, right next to the stairs going up. Also I must mention that the lady that went up was wearing high heel shoes (I have no idea why would anyone on a Safari want to wear shoes like that), and she was wearing the shortest mini skirt I have ever seen. Needless to mention that she was at all times the star of all the men in the boat. She did look lovely after all and she was very beautiful.

As I was explaining then, when her mother called her , she decided to come down rather quickly, and in doing so, she lost her footing at the top of the stairs and fell head first down it. As she was falling, I ran to help her and almost at the bottom of the stairs, her body did not go straight down, but rather over the side of the boat.

By this time I managed to get hold of her, or rather her legs, with 75% of her body hanging overboard. All I could then do is hold her and scream for help, so that someone would help me pulling her up. I also shouted to her to hold on to the side of the boat, but to my surprise, all she attempted to do was to hold her mini skirt up (or rather down) so that her panties were not exposed. Never mind the fact that she was about to fall into the water infested with crocodiles and hippos. Her priority was not to show her panties while I struggled to hold on to her legs.
After what seemed an eternity, someone reacted and helped me pulling her back into the boat. Once back in, she then realized what had happened and she got a bit of a hysteria attack, which we had to help her calm.

In the process of falling, she scratched her back very badly against the metal stairs and also lost her phone to the water.
It was a very tense `moment that could have ended very badly if I had not been there to grab her. When it was over, the moment was diffused by a lady who commented aloud: "well he certainly got the chance to have a good look, didn't he?”. Everyone packed up laughing (including the fallen lady) and we all had a good laugh after all.

She thanked me dearly for having helped her and so did her mother. I tell you that the whole moment seemed to have taken forever, but in reality it only took about 10 seconds, and it takes less than that for something really bad to happen to someone. I am just glad it did not!

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An Electricying experience.   

In one of my many hikes with guests in the Natal Drakensberg in South Africa, we decided to get to the top of the highest point in the range of mountains. This is Cleff peak in the Drakensberg.
Now, to get to this peak, you have to hike for 4 days and then climb the peak for a full day until you reach the summit.
The walk is very beautiful and the landscape is awesome. But one of the things that one cannot control is the weather. Nature decides what to bring and when. During the first 2 days, we had real nice weather, clear sky and sunshine.

On the 3rd day however, the sky turned grey and it got covered with a thick layer of rain clouds. We are used to this kind of weather changes while hiking, and we normally carry all types of gear to be able to carry on with the hikes no matter what the weather turns out to be. As we approached the summit day, the clouds got thicker and started raining. We decided to wait a day for the summit, and we did, but the weather did not cleared completely. Eventually, we decided that it was all good to carry on for the summit and off we went. We started at about 8am and reached the long tiring summit just after 5 pm. We were tired and it was getting cold.

This peak is at 3600mt and it is the highest in the range of mountains. As we were setting up camp right on top of it, a group of about 20 boy scouts reached it and it was starting to rain, so they had to set up camp really fast. As the evening progressed, the storm turned into a major lightning storm and we all retreated into our tents.

The storm got worse and thunder was pounding from all angles on a regular basis. Lighting got closer and closer and every time there was one, we heard a very loud explosion, which put all of us into high alert. I instructed everyone, to take all batteries or anything electronic, to put it into a bag and give it to me. I went outside in the middle of the storm and took the whole pile away far from the tents. I got a few real frights as I saw lightning strike the peak really close to us. We could smell the burning ground.

In the end, there was nothing else to do but to ride the storm. We all got into our tents and went into our sleeping bags hoping for the best.
The lightning got worse and the hits closer. The explosions of the hits were so loud that it was almost deafening. Children in the other tents started to cry and the teachers had to get them grouped into the tents. We then all started to sing to get everyone relaxed, and for the next 3 hours, we sang to the storm and the storm kept hitting us with lightning very close by.
I remember looking out the tent for a second and seeing one hitting the ground about 100 Mt from us.
We eventually fell asleep and next day, we woke up in total silence and the sun shining on our tents. As we got out, we had the most awesome view from the top of the mountain with the valley under us, covered in cotton like clouds. You felt like jumping on it. So, after a night of total stormy terror, we were greeted by beautiful weather.

Guests were a bit shaken but loved the experience. To our great amazement, our bag of batteries were ok and not hit by lightning. This is probably one of the scariest moments I have had in my trips.
I respect Nature and its power, and I also realize how vulnerable we are to it.
Lucky for us, Nature spared us that night!!!

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To baboon or not to baboon!!!   

In one of my many hiking trips, I was doing a 12 days hike in the Drakensberg. Every day we would walk about 10 km and setup camp somewhere in the mountains. One of the afternoons, we were due to arrive at Leopards cave, where we were supposed to spend the night.
Leopards cave is situated in a very steep slope and to get to it, you have to scramble up hill and enter it from one of the sides. One of the things about this cave is that it is only 1.2 Mt high, it is about 30 Mt wide and 4 Mt deep.

In the afternoon, while we were approaching the cave from the other side of the hill, we heard a large group of baboons. As we got closer to the cave, I realized that the baboons were actually in the cave where we were supposed to spend the night.

There were about 40 of them, with a few quite large individuals. At this point, we had no other place to go as we were in the valley up in the mountain, so we had to get to the cave before dark. I knew that the baboons would not just move from the cave, so I had to device a way to get them out of it. I decided to make some fire torches using dry grass at the end of sticks. I had to improvise to get the guests to the night base. So, we lighted the grass, and we proceeded very carefully to enter the cave.

The baboons were very upset with us, because they had to leave their night shelter. Lots of screaming and showing off went on here, and after a few very scary moments we managed to get the animals out. As we settled into the cave, we kept hearing the baboons in the distance, screaming and threatening, so we decided that it would be wise to make a fire and keep it going for the night.

The night went on and we eventually got into our sleeping bags and we all went to sleep, with the fire still on. In the middle of the night, we got a bight fright as one of the baboons entered the cave and stole a plastic bag that we had left with some leftover food. We lit the fire again and carried on sleeping. Next morning, we woke up, and normally you would look out of the cave into the landscape and see the mountains and the valley, but all we got was a curtain of baboons standing in the entrance, ready to move in.
We saw in their faces and body language that they meant business. The alpha male was showing a lot of aggression and was enticing the other ones. We quickly realized that it was our time to leave in a hurry, so we packed up and left the cave. Baboons screaming all around us and claiming their sleeping spot which they were not willing to let us keep.

As soon as we left, they entered the cave and started screaming their lungs off as if saying, stay off!!. This is one of those moments when Nature tolerates human intervention for just one time and then it decides no more. We got lucky getting away from such a number of baboons without getting into trouble. So I thank NATURE for that moment of tolerance towards us.

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Listen carefully or pay the consequences   

It is so important to get the guests to LISTEN to your instructions. And this is by no means an understatement.
Guests do not know how much trouble can come their way for not doing so.
In one of my many garden route tours, I took a family of 7 to do a Canopy Tour. This is done by Hanging on a harness from a steel cable that connects very high tree's canopies together. It is lots of fun and generally very safe.

One of the main instructions that I always give to the people doing it, is to LIFT their legs when reaching the platform on the other side. This is to avoid the impact of your leg with it coming at high speed on the pulley.
On this particular occasion one of the dads was having a ball. And i noticed that with all the excitement he was landing very hard and with legs down onto the platforms. 

I reminded him in 3 occasions to lift his legs but he ignored the instruction. On the 4th pulley i decided to go ahead and wait on the other side to remind him again. But no amount of screaming the instruction to him got any results. I got a bit worried and gave him a bit of a pep talk just to let him know what could happen. To this he thanked me and told me he was fine. So i decided to get off his case. On the next pulley, the adventure assistant warned us that it was a long and very fast one, so we were to make sure to land with legs up. Two got going and all was fine.

The Dad then decided it was his turn and he took off, clowning around with his legs up in the air. Unfortunately he did not watch the journey through the pulley and as he got to the end, he decided he was going too fast and tried to use his legs as brake. Bad mistake! All we heard was a loud crack and a big shout. And all i saw was raw bone and blood squirting from his knee.
His right leg took the full impact, and his tibia broke right through his knee, and the bone was exposed about 10 cm through.

I knew immediately that this was a serious injury. 
I got the assistant to help me getting him off the pulley and i went straight into action. Took my vest, and wrapped it around the exposed bone and made a bandage to immobilize the leg. Took my water bottle and wet the bandage to make sure the injury remained damp.

Now, remember that this happened at 25 Mt above ground and we were on a platform on top of the tree. So i had to improvise an effective harness to lower him down.
We managed to get him to the forest floor and the rest of the family too, who were all in panic mode, so i had to do some calming down and some reassurance control.

The next challenge was to get him back to reception, and i instructed the assistant to radio back and get a quad bike with a wooden board to come and get us. The ground was very steep and there was no way of getting a car to the site.
After 20 mins. The quad bike arrived and i tied the patient to the wooden board and then the board to the back of the quad bike. At this stage, the slightest movement caused excruciating pain to him and we had to do everything really slow.

I treated him for shock and got going really slow. 35 min. later we arrived at reception just to find out that they did not have a first aid kit (which i thought it was crazy). 
I called emergency and they dispatched a helicopter immediately.
While we waited, i change the dressing and kept an eye on the patient and the rest of the family who were in total shock.

When the helicopter arrived, we loaded him and after getting the activity centre to provide me with a driver, i instructed him to take the guests to our next destination and leave them at the hotel.
I then flew with the patient to the hospital (which was in the same city as their next hotel). On arrival they admitted him and had to have an immediate operation to rectify his leg.
All went ok and after 1.5 hrs. he came out with a plastered leg with pins sticking out everywhere. Doctor said he could continue the trip as long as he was on a wheel chair. So i organized to rent one from the hospital.

He was discharged at 7:45 next morning and the driver picked us up and took us to the hotel where the anxious family had been waiting.
It was so nice to see them reunite with husband, dad and uncle and hugs and kisses flew everywhere. They thanked me so much for having taken care of the situation and for having kept my cool at all times. Doctors at the hospital also told the patient that he had been lucky to have had me to take charge of the situation, because it was due to my quick actions that the injury did not become a more serious one.
I got so many compliments from everyone and the family treated me for the next remaining 3 days to scrumptious meals etc.

I finally had to say good bye to them in Port Elizabeth, and everyone cried their heart out saying good bye to me. It was such a nice intense moment as it always is.
The patient thanked me from his heart and told me next time he will make sure to listen to the tour guide. You know, while you are with the guests, your whole body and you just keep going. You have no time for weakness, especially under such circumstances. But let me tell you as soon as you say good bye and they are gone. Your body just says "enough" and you feel all the weakness and emotions coming to you all of a sudden.

This is what normally happens, and i had to go and chill out for about 2 hrs. before embarking on my trip back to Cape Town. The realization of what happened, what you have done and the what ifs, suddenly come down on you like a hammer.

I am so glad that i could come through with it though, and also that i could handle the situation in a calm and rational manner. 

NO AMMOUNT OF TRAINING can prepare you for the real thing.

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If you don’t listen you will be punished!!!   

I told you all that being a Tour Guide has its positive and its negative things. And I also told you all that Tourists are very interesting people, but they can be at the same time difficult, and this might get you into trouble.

On one of my tours to Botswana, I was taking a small family (Mother, Daughter and child) around to all the beautiful places to see over there. The mother was a divorcee that was trying desperately to bond with her children after a very troublesome divorce. The Girl was ok, but the boy was not handling it very well, and he was going around with a totally negative and bad attitude and with no interest in anything.

We eventually went to do the Mokoro Trips in the swamps of Botswana. Mokoros are canoes made out of a tree trunk that has been hollowed. They are very low and you sit very close to the water level on them.
We boarded the canoe and got on our way. Silence and stillness is part of the experience as there are no engines powering them; just a pole bearer standing at the back of the canoe and pushing it through the water. I noticed that the boy was playing with his hands splashing the water, and I warned him NOT to do this, as it was very dangerous because of the crocodiles.

He did not listen to me and carried on playing with the water, so I repeated the order and gave him a good explanation of what could happen. He was not interested and very rudely told me to leave him alone. I then spoke to the mother, asking her to please talk to him to stop playing with the water, because a crocodile could grab his hand. She then told me to leave him alone as he was in a very bad mood. So I told her that I wanted to be recorded that I had warned him.

3 minutes later, a 1.5 Mt crocodile jumped out of the water and grabbed his hand. We all got such a fright and luckily the canoe did not tip. I grabbed him from behind to help him balance and we tried to get the animal to let go of his hand, but as you all know, once a crocodile bites, it does not let go.
Mother, sister and boy screaming frantically, and then the guide who was operating the canoe, started to hit the animal with his pole.

It took many hard blows before the animal eventually let go of the child's hand. As I held him, I also saw a few larger crocodiles jump in the water because of the commotion. We eventually got back into our seats and I bandaged his hand which was bleeding badly. We had to go back then and look for a clinic as I knew he would need stitches. We tool 1 day to reach a clinic (because of the remoteness of the place).
He was given 20 stitches and his hand was put in a special harness.

The mother was then very apologetic because of not listening to my instruction, and so was he. It is so common for the guests to ignore the guide's recommendations and in this case, it almost turned into a tragedy. If we had lost our balance, the canoe would have tipped and we would have all ended in the water infested with crocodiles.

There is a reason why Tour Guides are there, to Guide and advice for every situation, and ignoring their advice can cost.

The only good thing that came out of this adventure, is that the mother got to bond very well with her children in view of the almost tragedy, and for this I was happy.

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Time to take a nap!!!   

Let me tell you that one of the scariest moments I have had, was when I was asked to guide for a family which consisted of Mother, Dad, Granny, Daughter (8 years) and Son (9 years) and a Nanny.
Now, everyone would think that this is a normal every day family, but it came with a BIG surprise for me as Tour Guide.

At their arrival at the airport, I greeted them and welcomed them as I usually do. I noticed that the boy did not greet me or even acknowledged my being there. I thought: he must be really tired and needs time to adjust, so I let him be. The next day I picked them up to get going on our Garden Route tour.
The boy still totally ignoring me and I noticed that he ignored everything around him.

I decided to ask the mother what was wrong, and to my surprise she told me that he is an Autistic Child. I have dealt with children like these before and although I got a bit worried, I did not make much of it at the time. The nanny was brought exclusively to look after the child and watch out for him.

We got going and we reached Oudtshoorn and decided to go and visit the majestic Cango Caves. We entered the caves and I was very aware that the child must be well looked after, just in case of any funny reaction from him.
I saw the Nanny hold him and I stayed behind them while we went down into the caves. I asked her to make sure not to let go of him while we were in the cave.

In the main Hall, the guide gave us his usual talk about the formations and the history of the caves. As per normal routine, the guide then switches all the lights off and leaves only one small candle like light on, so that everyone can experience the way the first explorers saw the cave under such small lighting. After just 5 seconds, the lights are turned back on and to my surprise, as I looked down back to the Nanny and boy, he was gone.

I quickly asked her where he was and she replied that he was here just now. I immediately looked for him amongst the rest of the visitors but could not find him.
I asked the mother if she had seen him and then of course all hell broke loose as she discovered that her child had disappeared.

I spoke to the guide and told him the situation and the fact that the child was autistic.
We all scrambled through the Cave looking for the boy, to no avail. No amount of calling for him could find him. Extra guides were called in to search and we all went frantic looking for him in every crevasse in the caves. After 2,5 frantic hours running up and down and checking everywhere, I finally found the boy cuddled up inside a hole in the cave.

You have no idea the relief I felt when I saw him, but at the same time the anger I felt for the family not informing the operator of the child's condition and also for the Nanny losing sight of him for that second.
People do not understand how important it is to inform a tour operator of any existing condition if you are travelling, because in the end, it is left to the Tour Guide to handle.

During the Ordeal, the parents informed us that the child suffers from severe autism and he disconnects himself sometimes completely from his surrounds, to such an extent that he ignores any calls and anything happening around him. This little detail was NOT mentioned anywhere during their dealings with the Tour Operator from whom they bought the trip.

Needless to say that from that moment on, I glued myself to the boy for the rest of the trip, and the poor Nanny did not enjoy any of it as her job had apparently been put on the line.
In the end, I was so glad that nothing had happened to the boy, who was oblivious to what had happened and did not understand what had all the fuss been about. He was in his own world and enjoying it, but I got the biggest fright of my life!

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Rhino mound is the only choice!!!   

While we were doing a walking safari in a private game reserve, we were enjoying the landscape and some beautiful giraffes that did not mind us being there. They looked at us as if saying: are you not out of place here?.

After about 2 hrs. walking, we stopped for a bite to eat on top of a hill where we could see far into the distance. Our tracker told us that he could smell rhinos and we would be going to see them but that we would need to be very careful because he could smell a calf.

He instructed the group (made of 12 guests plus me) to walk in a single line and not to make a noise. He also told us that should we encounter the rhinos, we should be VERY still as they have very sensitive ears. If they charge, we should run towards a tree and stand still next to the trunk or find a large termite hill and climb on top of it. We all laughed at the idea and dismissed the pep talk as a very funny thing.

We then headed towards the Rhinos. Our guide suddenly stopped and told us to be still. He instructed us to move against the bush that was behind him and to wait there while he goes ahead and checks.
He then left us and I then being the next one behind him, instructed the guests to be still and quiet.
3 Minutes passed and suddenly I saw the guide running towards us and signalling to run. We told the guests to run for a tree and as I looked back, there was a rhino following the guide at high speed.
We all scrambled for the trees and hid behind it as instructed. 30mt from us we saw the guide jump on top of a 1.5 Mt. Ant hill and stand completely still. The rhino hit the mound with the nose once and then stood there just watching. I think he could hear the breathing of the guide, because he kept blowing his nose.
After what seemed an eternity, the rhino turned around and headed into the bush. To our surprise, we saw that a baby rhino had come out following the mom. They both looked towards us and headed into the wilderness again.

The guide got off the ant hill and we decided it was time to come out and very quickly get out of that area. It was a very tense moment and when we asked the guide, he told us that as he came out of the bush, he came face to face with the baby and when the mother saw him, it charged instantly, so he had to run for it.
The guide was a tracker with over 20 years’ experience in the field and even this did not help him see what was waiting ahead.

Wildlife is and will always be wild, and they will do anything to protect their young.
We must never forget this!

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Giving Happiness is the most rewarding thing  

One of the greatest rewards to being a tour guide is that you get the chance to be part of something very special. You get to help people do, and achieve something unique.

One of those moments for me, was when I was asked to carry a group of 28 British Hindus to the Garden Route.
Now, what is special about this group, is that the youngest was 85 years old and the eldest was 102.Although they sound to be pretty old, let me tell you these people were full of life and enjoyment in everything they did.
And they came to South Africa with a single purpose; to visit Cango Caves and be able to do their ritual Earth dance. They all dreamed of being able to go down into the cave (which is huge), and be able to dance to earth.

So we left on our garden route trip on our way to Cango Caves.
We got there at around 2 in the afternoon, and the excitement in their face was very obvious and made them be full of life and wanting to do things. Now, remember that these people were not able to walk very fast or able to climb any form of steps.

When we got to the Caves, I spoke to management and asked them if they had a wheel chair I could borrow so that I could take them down into the main chamber of the cave.
Unfortunately they did not have any. The look in their face after I told them it was going to be impossible for them to walk down, was really something indescribable. I decided then, that I will have to make a plan, and I had it.

So, I spoke to my driver and asked him if he would be willing to put it into action, to which he agreed. The plan: I asked a few of the ladies who were wearing a sari (Indian dress), if we could borrow the long scarves they were wearing (which were of a very strong material). I explained the plan to them and they agreed. So we made a long hammock type seat with them, and we hang them on our shoulders between driver and me. We then sat the guests one by one and walk them like that down to the chamber.

Getting down is really steep and it has lost of stairs which they would not have been able to tackle.
So, one by one we took them down. It took us about 1.5 hrs. to do this, but we got them all down. The staff of the cave were so impressed with what we were doing that they also helped us.

When we had them all down, they then started humming and got into a circle and did the most beautiful dance I have seen. Simple, soft and gentle movements, with so much grace that you forgot that these were elders dancing. The dance lasted about 30 minutes and the people at the end were all crying. It was at this stage that I realised how important this had been for them. They all came to me and the driver and thanked us from their heart for having taken the big trouble and for having helped them making their dream come true.

Of course, we had to take them back up again, and this took another 1.5 hours. By the end we were drenched in sweat and we were so tired that our bodies ached from top to bottom. We got on the bus on our way to the hotel, and the gests sang a beautiful song for us as a mean of thanks.
During dinner, they all gave us a standing ovation for the trouble, and we were told that we would live forever in their hearts.

This ladies and gentleman, is what makes it all worth it. The smile in those people’s faces and the happiness we were able to give them. No amount of money can compare to it.

I feel honoured to have had the chance to help these people achieve their dream.

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My first official tour   

I must tell you that there is nothing more stressful than when you are given your first tour. Although you know what to do, now you must DO it. And although I had done it many times with my own clients, now I had to do it for someone else, and everything must go according to plan.

My first tour was a garden route with 32 guests. I was sent to Oudtshoorn, Knysna and Port Elizabeth, so I felt very confident because I knew the area (or so I thought). We get going in the bus on our way via route 62. The trip was a bit long because the bus can only travel at 100 km per hour.

Guests enjoyed the trip very much. We did Cango caves and then we had to go to SAFARI ranch.
I had never been there but as we got to the farm, I got off the bus in a hurry with the excuse that I urgently needed the toilet. Told the guests to wait for me at the curio shop of the farm and then I run through the whole farm and place to familiarise myself with the place.

This took me about 3 minutes and on my return, I shuffled the guests to the start of the tour of the ostriches. They were very impressed with my talk of the place and the explanation I gave them about the Ostriches, and I had such a good laugh about it, because this was my first time here, and the guests were convinced that I had been there so many times.

So the tour went on and we eventually reached another place I had never been: Storms River National park.

Now, let me tell you, that when a guest asks you if you know the place, you say "yes of course" because they expect you to. They asked me about the hanging bridge over the river mouth and all asked me to take them there. I, of course told them that this would be no problem, that we would take a nice walk to it.
On arrival I told them that before the walk, they would have lunch first. This would give me time to do my reconnaissance.

As soon as the guests got settled into their lunch, I then took my run all the way to the famous hanging bridge. To my advantage, I am an ultra-marathon runner. The distance to the bridge is about 1km, which means that I had to run 2km in total to go and see the bridge. Any normal person would have been out of steam by now, but luckily I was OK. As I got back to my guests I had to then take them back to the bridge, which meant another 2km walk in total. By the end of this visit, I was actually tired, but my guests were so impressed with my knowledge of the place.

If there is something that I have learnt during my guiding, is that the most important thing is to make the guests feel at ease with the knowledge that you know What you are doing, Where you are going and How to handle anything!. These are the most important things that make a tour guide a success with his clients.

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Tanzania, My first encounter   

During my trip to Tanzania (where I was making my dream come true), after having climbed Kilimanjaro, I decided to visit the rest of this fantastic place. So, my guide got a friend to hire me a huge Land Rover.
I packed my things and left without any plans or itinerary, but only with the idea of travelling and viewing AFRICA. My first views of Moshi (the town where I started the trip from), was that of amazement. Everything happens on the street.

I saw vendors selling all sorts of goods on the street. Even fridges and mattresses. African men and women dressed in colourful materials were lining the streets, sitting in front of their sewing machines and working on creating some sort of garment.

This to me is what Africa and its people are all about. When there is a job to be done, it gets done, no matter where. I must tell you that I got so embarrassed at myself. You see, while I was travelling in my Land Rover, I started to see people showing me signs from their cars and also from the streets.
Initially I though "that is quite funny", but as I carried on travelling, I noticed that from every single car that passed, the people would go to lengths to stick their hands or half their body out of their window to show me what I thought were obscene signs. Eventually I decided this is not on and I even showed some of them signs back.

Eventually after about 45 mins. of going through this, at a stop street, I noticed that lots of people were pointing down at my car. So I stopped, and to my surprise, I found that I had a flat tyre for quite a long time, and this was the reason for all the signs and warnings.

I felt like a total idiot for thinking bad of the people warning me.

So, I had to stop at a small town and try to find a place where I could have the tyre fixed. Well, in Africa EVERYTHING happens on the streets, so, when I asked a person about it, he told me he can fix it quickly. I thought he had a garage to do it, so I agreed to a rate and to my great amazement, he whistled to some friends and after talking a bit of Swahili with them, they ran off to fetch some tools and got busy in my car right there, on the side of the road. I was so taken aback that I had nothing to say. Seeing 4 guys just deciding to fix a tyre on a Land Rover right there.

They seemed to know what they were doing, so I let them. I stood on the side of the road watching the proceedings until one of them obviously very concerned about me "the client", called for one of his friends to run and get me a chair to sit on.

So, there, on the side of the road, I was supplied with a chair to sit on and a coke to drink. This is entrepreneurship at its best!

It took them 2.5 hrs. to get the job done because they had to take the tyre from the wheel off with hammer and chisel. When they were done, they were drenched in sweat and dirty from toe to head.

I really enjoyed this so much, their spirit, their ingenuity, their improvisation that I paid hem twice the amount they had agreed. They were so happy that they even cleaned my car spotless.

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A Safari too close for comfort   

I recently had a very scary moment, not due to my fault but due to an overconfident guide.

We were doing an open vehicle safari in Huangwe National Park in Botswana, and we came across a lion mating pair under a bush. These were about 30 Mt from the road and although we could see them, they were not quite clear. The driver then decided to go off road closer to the lions and off we went. I thought he knew what he was doing so I left him.

As we got to about 8 Mt from the pair of lions, the vehicle’s left wheel fell into a hole in the sand. Right there in front of the felines.

The guide/driver then tried to get us loose, but he could not. I could see that he was not a very experienced 4x4 driver, as he forgot to engage the 4x4 before going off road.

Now, the problem with these cars is that you need to engage the front wheels manually by means of turning the diff lock on both wheels. But we could not get off the vehicle because of the lions.
After much hesitation from the driver, I had to take control of the situation and I instructed him first to put down the flaps of the land cruiser in order to protect the guests, who were starting to get really scared. The lion by now was aware of us and was watching our every move.

The driver then got on top of the vehicle to release the flaps and this made the male lion very upset. He stood up and gave us a very loud warning roar and then he charged for a short distance and then took off.
The lioness did something similar and they both disappeared under the bush.

At this stage then, I instructed the guests to watch out for the lions while I create a path under the tyre so we could get it unstuck. Eventually I had to get them off the vehicle and help pushing it out.
The driver kept on stalling the car, so I took over the driving and got the car in reverse and managed to get it unstuck.

All guests finally back in the car and off we went back to the main road.

Let me tell you that if that lion had decided to charge full on, we would have not had a chance. When he moved it was like lightning and it was a very scary experience seeing this massive cat come towards us.
I told the driver that this was a very silly thing to have done, because we could have ended with a disaster. Firstly he forgot to engage the 4x4, secondly he did not know his vehicle and third, he disobeyed a basic safari rule; not to go off road. Plus he put the vehicle instead of the guest’s safety first.

I was not impressed to say the least and the guests got really scared especially when I had to ask them to leave the car.

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Another wildlife experience to cherish!!   

Nature has a way to show you beauty in many ways, and sometimes although it can be cruel, it gives you the most incredible spectacles.

We were sitting in front of a water hole for a while and then we saw a giraffe running towards the water. Now this was a large one, and we noticed that it was running very strange.

As she came in front of us, we saw to our astonishment that a female lioness was hanging from her buttock, using her teeth and claws, and we saw that she had a big open gush on the hind leg.

She was obviously injured for a while now and she was very weak. So much so, that she collapsed 5 meters in front of us. This was such a shock to us, to see this giant come down and making a very large “thud” noise.
Because we were so focused on her and the lioness, we did not see that there were 6 other female lions trailing her, and as soon as she came down, they all went for her throat and held her tight for what seemed an eternity.

When they made certain that she was dead, they then rested (the lionesses) and they started tearing pieces of skin and feeding.

This was one of those spectacles of nature that only if you respect and understand the way it must be, you will enjoy it. The efficiency of the bite for suffocating, the strength of the felines at holding on, and the way they feed, was an awesome sight.

As soon as the animal was killed, we saw all sorts of other animals gather close. Vultures, Jackals, even a zebra came to see what was going on.

And they all knew their turn too. A completely purposeful killing, where nothing was wasted.
We stayed watching all this for about 4 hrs. and then we had to go. Next day we decided to return to the site, and we were impressed at how little was left of the giraffe. Some of the bones were cleaned white.
Nature is most amazing and most powerful when left as it should be.
This experience has always been in me, and I thank Nature for providing me such incredible opportunity.

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Elephants, elephants everywhere, not a sky to see..

During my travels, I have come across incredible wildlife, and needless to say that it is awesome to be able to experience it at close quarters, I had more than a close encounter once with my family.

We were sitting quietly at a water hole in the Addo elephant park. Playing chess and reading (because this is the only way to see things in the wilderness), when i looked into my rear mirror and saw a cloud of dust. I said to the kids, wow there is a dust storm coming!, just as a comment, not that it would inconvenience us, as we are used to these kinds of natural things. We then carried on with our games and reading.

A few minutes later suddenly everything became darker, in all sides and when we looked, we realised that the dust storm had turned into a grey wall all around us.

You see we were facing the water hole and I think most of the Elephants of Addo decided to come and drink water. But we were in the only path there was for them to access the water from the area they came from. So, they went around us and started queuing for their turns.

You see, elephants are very sociable and sometimes many families and their matriarchs gather at the water hole without any problems.

So, we were at the gathering. And to say this was a scary experience is an understatement. There were at least 200 elephants all around us and even if we wanted to move, there was no place for us to run through or out of the herds. They of course were not interested in us little humans, so mostly we were left to our own devices. But we were able to watch the interaction between them soooooo closely. Babies got very inquisitive and tried to sneak their trunks into the open windows, teenagers were playing a mere meter from the car, moms kept a watchful eye over their young all the time, and when one of them got annoyed and blew from her trunk at one of the aunties, we thought the world was coming down on us.
The power of these gentle giants is incredible, and their caring ways, and the way they all take responsibility for their young is something we as humans should envy.

We stayed surrounded for about 3 hrs., and we saw how each family took their turn patiently to approach the water hole and have their drink. We also saw how babies were helped to the edge and looked after by all the family while they tried very comically to use their trunks to drink water.

Eventually, one by one the families dispersed and stayed in the vicinity of the water hole, saying hello to each other and touching trunks, and making all sorts of noises. 4 hours later, we started to see an opening on the grey wall and we stayed put the whole time until they left.

We were so overwhelmed by the experience that we did not say a word for about 5 minutes. Eventually I decided to break the ice and made a huge scream to which my kids almost had a heart attack. We had such a good laugh at it. And let me tell you, we discussed the details of what each of us saw that day for weeks to come.

This beats any movies, games or television series.

My family still talks about this wonderful opportunity that Nature gave us to share such an intense and beautiful moment.

My kids have been going with me on all my adventures ever since small, and they have learnt to appreciate and admire nature for its power, beauty and simplicity, and this is better than anything any school could teach them.

I am grateful to have them with such open mindness and willingness to enjoy nature and life the way I do.

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Calamity can also strike during a tour.   

Tourists are like 3 years old children. When you tell them not to do something, they will go and do it on purpose. If you tell them not to go there because it is dangerous, they will do exactly that.

In my trips, I have all sorts of emergencies too. And this is where you as a tour guide must be prepared and remain calm.

In one of my trips, we stopped to see the highest bungee jumping in the world in the garden route. You have a fantastic view point from the cafeteria, where you can see the people jumping off the bridge which has a 289 meters fall below it.

We arrived at this place with my group of middle aged guests.
There was someone getting ready to jump and so, we all went to the view point, and although the view is great, one of the ladies in my group, decided to have a better vantage point and climbed onto the seat of a wooden table bench.

As she stepped on it, I warned her that it was a very slippery surface and this was not going to be a good idea. Nevertheless, she got onto the bench and unfortunately she slipped off and fell very badly onto the floor, hitting her head against the sharp corner of the table.

She managed to get a big cut in her head which started to bleed heavily.
I immediately went into action and got everyone to move away and treated her bleeding with pressure from my hand. Everyone around was screaming and panicking, so I had to shout orders to a few bystanders to help me. I got them to contact 911 and report the accident and request urgent assistance as the lady would need to be stitched up.

The emergency unit gave me instructions on the phone as to how to treat the bleeding and i concentrated on doing this first. We then got the lady moved to a better spot waiting for the ambulance.
Meanwhile the rest of the group was in shock to see all the blood spilled and some of them even freaked out. I had to calm 4 people and asked others to help them.

A Helicopter arrived at the scene and I had to fly with the patient to the hospital which was about 150 km away.
I instructed the bus driver to take the rest of the guests to the end of day destination, and to make sure all were accommodated properly.

I stayed at the hospital that night as the lady was operated and she got about 30 stitches in her head. Fortunately she was ok. In a lot of pain but otherwise alright.

Next day we were flown by helicopter back to our group who were very anxious about their travelling friend. On arrival there, we had a big reception from them and I was thanked many times for all the trouble I went to, and for managing to organize all the things under pressure.

The lady gave me a huge hug in the morning and thank me for helping her, and for keeping everyone around me, calm and for acting so professionally under the circumstances.

This is the moment where you as a tour guide need to shine. And if you think tour guiding is an easy job, let me tell you it is not. And the reward you get from the knowledge that you did good in helping, is the best and stays with you forever.

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Too close to my baby!!!   

Animals have no mercy when it comes to defending their young. And I experienced this first hand.

During a safari in the Kruger Park, we were driving on an open land rover and I, as the tour guide, was sitting in the rear sit, which slightly overhangs from the vehicle at the back.

Normally the main guide drives the vehicle and finds the animals, and the secondary guide assists and complement the comments. So, that day, I was the secondary guide.

We found a family of Rhinoceros; mother, father and baby, and the guide took us right next to the family. It was awesome to see and feel these great creatures right next to us.

The main guide was telling us all about the behaviour and life of these amazing animals, and we got to tell the clients a lot of information on them. Unfortunately we both focused on the mother and the cute baby, and we lost sight of the male, which had disappeared from view. Bad mistake!.

We were busy telling the clients how powerful these animals were, when we heard what sounded like a locomotive approach. We did not have time to react in any way. The male rhino charged our vehicle from behind with all his might, and hit the bottom of the wooden plank where I was sitting with his horn. This broke the plank where I was sitting, and I literally flew forward to the front of the vehicle with the impact. The male rhino then charged again from the side and the driver then had to make a quick run for it.
After the second charge, the male stood there like saying: have you had enough yet?. We certainly got the message and moved away from the family.

My flight was so out of a comic book, that everyone packed up laughing (me included), and they all took photos of their guide having been thrown around by a rhino. I tell you, I went down in history.

On our return to the lodge, we checked for the damage to the vehicle and we were astounded by the strength of these animals. The vehicle looked as if it had been hit by a truck or something. The side of it was completely bent and the back was all dented in. The rhino had not a scratch on him afterwards.

Moral of the story: when babies are involved, in the wilderness, stay away and respect the space that the animals give you.

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Beautiful people, beautiful land!!!   

My trips have taken me to places I would never have dreamed of visiting, and I have been able to meet incredible cultures and learn so much about humans and their ways.

One of the most beautiful people I have met, are the Himbas of Namibia. These are the ochre people, covered completely in a red cream from top to bottom including their hair.

These people live a semi native type of life, and they are still semi nomads in and around Namibia. The men are cattle herders and the women are the ones that maintain their camps.
Women take pride in their looks, and for 3 hours every day, they get together in the village and they groom and make themselves beautiful.

To them, the body is part of the ornament and they are not shy in any way with it. They bear their breasts completely bare, and they let them grow to enormous sizes as a token of beauty. They are shy people but you cannot walk over them as they very soon pick up anyone that tries to abuse their looks or presence.
In one of my trips, I was doing a 28 day Safari through Namibia, and the one route that I was given was a 4x4 track along the river bordering Angola.

Our truck was heavy and I was travelling with 26 Spaniards. The road they gave us to take was a single track, and there was no way to turn a vehicle around. After put putting for about 2 hours, we came to a stone bridge that had been washed away by the current, so we were stuck right there and then. We could not turn back and could not go forward. So, I decided that the best was to make an adventure of it all, and after talking to the guests, we decided to camp there and then and we decided to rebuild part of the stone bridge to get across.

We worked for about 3 hrs. that day and another 1.5 hrs. the next morning, and eventually we got it done.
What made the whole thing amazing, besides the fact that the guests were very keen on it all, was also that we were visited by a group of Himbas during the night, as we had been stuck in a spot very close to their village.
They in term called a number of other men and helped us with the bridge fixing.
At night, we made a big fire and they came to join us for supper and showed us their beautiful dances and shared with us some of their customs.

We learnt that Ladies are very skilful in their tasks of up keeping the camp or village, and untidiness was not in their vocabulary. We were offered Mopanie worms to eat as an offering. This kept us laughing for a long time as every one of my people almost threw up trying to eat one of these creatures. The Himbas thought it was hilarious, to see these city slickers unable to eat such delicatessen.
Their dances were so powerful and had so much grace that we were all taken aback by their performance. Children danced around the fire with such freedom and beauty, that we forgot where we were completely.
The women then sang for us under the stars and this was the most beautiful choir I have ever heard under a starry sky.

Seeing the men and women dance so freely, their bodies moving and forming amazing shapes with the shadows created by the fire, was an experience that left us all touched. The fact that all women were topless and that the men were wearing just a simple cloth to cover their groins, was completely forgotten, and we all blended in this moment. Two groups of people so different in customs, culture and ideas, and yet so much the same as human beings.

The next day we slowly and carefully got the truck over the bridge, and we all cheered to our achievement. The whole Himba village came to greet us good bye, and gave us such beautiful simple good bye presents such as a thorn, a twig from a bush and a calabash of sour milk.

This is Africa at its best, and this is why I always urge people to come and visit its beauty, its people and its cultures.

My guests were so happy that we had gotten stuck, or we would have never been able to experience this moment.

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Bias ideas into one’s Head.   

My travels have taken me to many destinations and I have been honoured to meet incredible people.
Most times we have certain ideas about groups of people that are not really positive, and unfortunately are based on what the media makes it to be.

In one of my trips to Namibia, I was given the task to carry with me an ex Russian General from the cold war and his partner. When I was told about this, i thought: wow, an ex-General!.

I must admit that I was very bias about it and I resented the task. I thought, these are the guys who keep the world on their toes and are some of the cause for the world’s miseries.
Anyway, I decided that I must show my professionalism, and also that I am better than them, so I would do it well.

When I saw my guest arrive at the Airport, I was really taken aback. I was expecting a despot looking man, with a serious face and no sense of humour at all. Instead, my guest was quite an ordinary man, in his sixties, and his partner, a girl of no more than 25. Very pretty, but also very young. His face showed a life full of sadness and stress, and his body language was that of a beaten up person.

I met them and the next day, we got going on our 15 day trip through Namibia.
The man was very pleasant, very gentle with his partner, and also a very well educated one.
Every night, we would sit at dinner and talk about the day’s activities and discuss some of the issues in the world today. And these conversations are what made me understand that I was completely misinformed about the world, specially his country and the Cold War.

My guest explained to me that he was an Ex-General during the cold war, and that they were forced to do duty in the Nuclear Silos. Yes, you read it right. This man had 6 silos under his command, each with a nuclear missile that could be launched at the push of a button (his).

He also explained to me, that although this sounds bad from his side, they had no option but do it. His family was taken prisoner by the government and they were told that if they did not cooperate, their families would be executed.

Now, they had a very stressful time. They would be at the silos for 6 months at a time, away from their families and any contact other than their government. They had to make contact with their superiors on a daily basis, and their order was, that if they could not establish contact with their superiors within any 24 hrs. period, they were to assume that a nuclear war had started, and it was left up to them to decide on the release of the missiles. Can you imagine the responsibility?. He told me that many of these people went mad because of the pressure. Some of them even run away because they did not want this on their shoulders.

The pressure they underwent during these times was too much, and his family could not take it. So they left him and he never saw them again.
This is a sad story, told by one of these affected persons who I always thought were monsters, hungry for war and for killing people. But it was not always so.

His partner also told me how he suffers from nightmares every night, and how he has to get away from everything every now and then because of his inability to be with people.

They met in hospital while both undergoing therapy and this is how they came to be together.
This experience has told me that in every conflict, no matter how bad it looks, there is ALWAYS two sides to the story, and even on the bad side, there is a different story than the one portrayed by the media.
Our political and religious ideas cause nothing else but pain and miseries in this world. Both profess to unite people, but both excel at doing exactly the opposite.

I was so humbled at having met such a person, who although was not a hero, or a celebrity, was this ordinary person, who went through very rough times, and who managed to stay sane and pulled through it, and was able to share his experience with the world.

I know that maybe you will be saying: yeah, that is what he tells you!, but deep in my heart, and deep in his eyes I saw that he was being honest about the whole thing. And this is what makes tour guiding a rewarding experience. Meeting with people, learning their life experiences and having that human contact that otherwise would be tampered with by the media and what they want you to see and know.

He explained to me that now they are all retired individuals, most of them with shattered lives and trying to pick up the pieces of their lives left.  

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Water is the only currency   

There are moments in life that make you realise how materialistic we are, and how we measure everything in terms of money, without realising that some things are more valuable than any money available.

During one of my visits to Tanzania, while travelling on the Serengueti, I came across a group of Masaai men. Real Masaai men, walking in the plains of the African landscape.

This was my opportunity I thought, of getting a fantastic picture of them. So, I stopped and approached them to ask if I could take a picture of them, expecting to be asked for some money in exchange. I offered them a few dollars, and to my surprise they did not show any interest in the money. I then thought, ok, maybe they want more. So, I offered them double the amount, to which they did not flinch at all.

They then pointed towards my vehicle, and then I though, I am now in big trouble, they want my car!.
So I tried to convince them again to take the money, but one of them approached the car and pointed inside it.

When they saw that I was not getting the message, the man then pointed at my 2 lt. coke bottle which was filled with water. I understood then what they wanted. It was 41 degrees in the heat, and water is nowhere to be found. So, for these people, water is precious. So it was there that I got my wining shots with the amazing Masaai by using my 2 lt. of water as currency.

Let me tell you, I offered them initially 5 dollars, then 10 dollars, and only 2 lt. of water did the trick.
When I gave them the bottle with water, they all drank just one sip from it, and immediately put it in a bag which was then covered by a Masaai blanket and hung over one of the warrior’s shoulder.

I, in my stupidity and ignorance, then offered them 20 dollars for the trouble, but they ignored it completely and walked off.

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A special Kitty cat   

In one of my trips to Tanzania, I was travelling alone through the Serengeti and I decided to go down to Ngorongoro Crater, which is one of the most spectacular places on earth.

The crater itself is about 30 km in diameter and you drive up to the rim of the crater on the outside and then you go down into the crater itself, where you will find the most amazing wildlife.
On this particular trip, I saw a Cheetah standing next to a tree on my way down to the crater. I stopped the vehicle next to it and decided to wait and see what the feline would do. After waiting for a few minutes, the cheetah stood there watching me as if asking: How is it going?.

I decided that he was relaxed enough for me to get out of the vehicle, and I then got out slowly and went to sit on the roof of the land rover. After sitting there for about 3 minutes, the animal decided that if I am going to be there, he might as well come and join me. So, to my big surprise, he walked towards the car, jumped with one single leap onto the bonnet of the vehicle and then onto the roof where I sat, and came to sit right next to me.

In my teachings about wild life I learnt that they are actually very scared of humans and that they could never tackle a human. So I decided to trust my knowledge, and not panic. I was very relaxed and I even talked to the kitty while he was approaching me, and when he sat next to me, it started to Purr.
This moment for me was one of the most rewarding.

Nature talking to me, and trusting me that I would not over react or harm this beautiful animal. I must admit that I was a bit scared, but my love for the moment gave me the will to enjoy it without making a fuss about it.
It was wonderful to feel this animal next to me, watching the landscape, sniffing the air, and hearing it’s purring as if to say; cool man, you are very cool!.
After sitting there for what seemed an eternity, the cheetah decided it is time to leave, and stood, paused for a while and after licking his lips, jumped off and disappeared into the bushes after looking back at me to say good bye.

Nature has unique ways to show you its beauty, and this was a sign from it to me. I blended into wild life for a short moment that I will not forget.

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Leave them all up there.             

My trips are always a new experience of something new or special.

On one of my trips, I was asked by a group of 6 ladies, all divorcees, to take them on an excursion up to the top of Africa. Yes, of course I am talking about the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

People climb this awesome mountain for many reasons. Some take it as a challenge in their life, some just enjoy the beauty and scenery (which is quite spectacular), others like the challenge of getting to the highest mountain in Africa, and others like my ladies, decided it was a good idea to go to the top of this grandiose mountain and leave their exes up there.

So, off we went, on a special climb. Ladies met at a counselling session for people that have divorced, and they all completed their session to learn how to cope with their divorce. The last task in their session was to confront their exes and tell them to leave them finally alone. So, the whole trip was an actual cleansing.

We climbed for 5 days, struggling day by day, step by step as we went along. At night, while we camped on the slopes of the mountain, the ladies would talk to each other and told their unique saga. I don’t need to tell you how awkward this is for a guide, who barely know them, and needs to make them feel ok about something he knows nothing about. Well, that was me. 6 Ladies having an emotional breakdown on the slopes of Kilimanjaro for 5 days in a row. It was quite hectic, but at the same time an eye opener.
On the 5th day, we had to do the summit night, and we started to climb as usual at 11 at night, with the idea of reaching the top by about 7am.

I need not to tell you how my ladies struggled this last stage, as we were reaching the stunning 5890mt above sea level. At dawn, we eventually got there, with the sun just teasing to come out, and with minus 12 degrees.

Ladies were exhausted but amazingly, they all gathered their strength and pushed for the last leg which is to reach Uhuru peak, the highest part of Kilimanjaro. After reaching it, and celebrating, they formed a circle and each took out a photo of their exes.
They each in turn spelled their heart out to the man in the photo and told him to leave them alone. Each one ending in tears and sobs. As each spoke to their exes, they held each other and gave support to each other. It was so intense a moment, and then I realized how important it was for these people, to let go of their emotions, and how important this trip was for them. I felt the pain for each of the ladies, and felt how difficult their separation had been. To be quite honest, I cried as much as they did, just listening to their statements.

When each had had their turn, they stood up and let me tell you, I have never seen instant new people before in my life.

The ladies that stood and celebrated were not the same which I helped get up there. They were ecstatic and full of vigour and energy and they all thanked me for the effort I put to get them there, and for the encouragement I gave to those that almost did not make it. 

After watching the Sunrise, and taking a moment to enjoy the 360 view of Africa from the top, we started our descent, and these ladies were in Turbo mode. That night, as we camped on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and made our last fire, the ladies sat laughing, giggling and having a great time, reminiscing their left love as if it was a long ago story.

It is amazing to see people transform so much from pain to happiness. And this taught me that some things in life require closure for some people.

It taught me that one must find a way to deal with pain in a way that will bring happiness. This is what my ladies did, and I was and I am so proud of having been there for them.

I will never forget my divorcee ladies!!

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Crazy is an understatement.           

So, sometimes you are asked to help a new trainee guide get a bit experience and also show them how and what to do. However, you never expect to get what I got on one of my shadowing occasions.

I was asked if a new lady guide could shadow me for a while, for her to get a bit of experience on the road.
Of course, me being who I am, I agreed to it, and met the lady who was in her late 30s.

Upon talking to her, I could see that there was something wrong with her. Every 3 to 4 words, she would twitch her body and her eyes would open really wide. I got a bit off when I experienced her for the first time, but then I realized that no matter what, everyone deserves a chance, so, I decided to put my stupidity aside, and help her with whatever I could to make her a guide.

She shadowed me for a few days on a few local trips and although she had a boasting personality, every time I asked her if she wanted to give a go to guiding, she declined the offer.
As a matter of fact, when we got onto a bus with 46 people and I asked her to introduce herself, she shut down completely and did not know what to say. I thought at this point, she needs a bit of time, so I continued with her for a few days.

As days went by, it was quite obvious to me that this lady was suffering from something more than just being shy. She smoked like a factory, every time we got off the busse and she would disappear when she thought I would ask her to assist me in any way.
I eventually decided to have a talk with her and I told her the positive things and the negative things that she was doing so far, so that she could correct her mistakes.

She took it quite well and I thought, ok, so she is trying. We carried on for about 2 weeks, until I had to run an overland tour with 48 people on a bus. Of course I asked her to come along as this would be a great opportunity to get some real road experience.
We got going and all was ok. She even started interacting with the guests, which made me think that finally she was loosening up.

One of the things that I was a bit shocked, was the fact that very often while talking and twitching, the “F” word would come out of her mouth. Even in front of the guests, which was very shocking to them. I had to tell her what a big NONO that was.
We travelled along the garden route and stopped at the Bungie jumping site to see people jump from the bridge.

Now, if you read my stories so far, you would see that here is where I had a big disaster with one lady who stood on a table to get a better view, and fell and hit her head, creating a big open gush in the head.
What I did not mention in that story, is the fact that besides me having deal with the severely injured lady, I had to deal with my shadowing tour guide, who went into total out of control mode.
The moment the lady fell and started bleeding, the shadow guide started shouting and screaming and swearing at everyone to move away and she started to scream that she was now in charge.
She grabbed the injured lady and started to shake her wildly asking her if she was ok and why had she been so stupid etc. I immediately asked her to move away as I could see that she was doing everything wrong, especially by shaking the lady from her shoulders, while she was bleeding badly.
The more I asked her to move away, the more she refused to do so and eventually I had to get really cross with her.

I had to ask other passengers to remove her, which had to be done by force as she did not want to leave the injured lady alone.
When they took her away, she started swearing at me and cursing me, but at that moment, my focus was on helping the lady who was bleeding and was traumatised by the experience.

Needless to say that I had to call the ambulance, a helicopter flew in to take her to hospital and I had to go with her. She received 20 stitches in her head.
Once the ordeal was finished, I then met with the rest of the group, including the shadow guide. She was totally out of control with me and started shouting and swearing at me for not allowing her to apply her first aid skills.

Had I let her do so, she would have probably cause some even more severe injury on the lady, as she did not know a thing about patient first aid care and how to remain calm on such situation.
The guests reported that she was screaming at them the whole trip to the hotel until the bus driver toll her to sit down and be quiet or he would ask her to leave the bus.

So, I decided to call the operator who asked me to take her, and reported her behaviour. I asked them to remove her from the tour, as she was causing very bad stress for me and now with the guests.
They then told me to drop her at the nearest bus terminal, give her money and send her home.
Well ladies and gentleman, this is easier said than done. Next morning I asked the driver to take us to the George bus terminal and I asked her to come with me. We got off the bus and I had already put her suitcase handy, as I knew this was going to be a major scene. I then explained to her that her tour operator wanted her to return home. Gave her money and opened the luggage compartment to hand her, her suitcase. All hell broke loose.

She started screaming at me, swearing and even pushing me and hitting me. I tried to explain to her the reasons but she went again totally out of control and started kicking the bus, got onto the bus and swore at the guest, at how ungrateful they had been etc. etc. etc.

We had to forcefully get her off the bus and eventually left while she was still kicking and screaming.
The people in the bus gave me a big clap when we eventually left.

I then apologized to them about the whole thing and although we ended laughing about the craziness of it all, I knew that deep in their minds, they were not ok with it. After all they had paid for a holiday to enjoy and not for some crazy woman to get on their bus and act as she did.

I knew there would be repercussions about this, so I wrote a factual report, which I then passed around the guests, and asked them to read and tell me if they agree with what I was reporting. They all did and signed the report off together with me.

When the tour ended, I then went to the operator, to find out what was the lady’s problem.
It turned out that she never completed her guiding course or even her fist aid course, which is compulsory for all tour guides. Her mother was a very connected person in politics, and managed to convince someone to try and get her into a tour guiding position without the completion of her trainings.

The lady in question had had a very bad car accident 3 years ago and the result of it was an injury to her head, which caused her to be slightly mentally handicap. Her mom, was trying to get her to be independent from her and this is where the tour guiding came about.

I was shocked at what I heard, and told the operator that it had been a very irresponsible thing to have asked me to take someone with that background on tours.
She could have cause permanent damage to the injured lady and she definitely caused some damage to the touring reputation of our country.

Needless to say that since then, when I am asked to take a shadow guide with me, I ask first for a full background, and I meet with them previous to any tour. If I see even a slight problem, I turn them down, as I do not want a repeat of this ordeal in my stories to tell. 

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Our kitchen is running away from us!!        

Many times, you think back at what happened and you realize how lucky you are that nothing bad has happened.

On one of my many long road safaris through Namibia, I was sent with 11 guests to travel along this incredible country.

I was supplied with a 12 sitter Land Cruiser, which is one of the best vehicles for this kind of trip. The guests sit comfortably in it and we pull a special trailer which is your total camping support solution. This trailer is fitted with a full kitchen kit, tables, chairs, gas stove and compartment for all the food needed for the trip. It even has a fridge. On top of it you then put all the guest’s tents and sleeping mats. So, all in all, it carries your entire camp. Guest’s luggage is then put on roof rack on top of the land cruiser.
We got on the road and you know, the first two days are the most difficult and taxing for a guide, because you have to teach the guests how to setup the tents, and mainly how to setup camp. And not everyone is up to it.

So, after 2 days, everyone sort of gets into the mode and the mood, and from there onwards everything starts falling into place.
We continued our road safaris, visiting spectacular places in Namibia, including Fish River Canyon, Sossusvlei, Swakopmund, Walvis Bay, Brandberg, Etosha and then we headed north towards the land of the Himbas.

On this route, you have to climb a very steep uphill. And when I say steep, this pass has an angle of about 30 Degree.

So we started the uphill and the land cruiser was struggling a bit with the power. I decided to engage the Hub for 4x4 traction, and this has to be done manually at the hubs of the wheels. So we stopped, and put stones behind the wheels, to make sure car was secured on the uphill. We then got in the car and carried on.

Suddenly, the vehicle was booming up hill and as I looked in the rear mirror, I saw that the trailer was rolling down the hill. There goes out kitchen!!, I said out loud. The guests thought I was joking, but when I stopped and got out the vehicle, they realized that it was by no means a joke. In the process of starting up again, it got disengaged from the vehicle and of course the laws of physics demanded that it must roll down the hill. I watched for about 5 seconds how this trailer was getting away from us.
Lucky to our fate, it went against one of the sides of the road which was a wall of mountain and it stopped against it.

We stopped and walked back to the trailer, which had rolled down about 200mt in total.
We all had a nervous laugh about it and I then decided that we would need to take the stuff up the hill by hand, as it was clear that the vehicle was not going to be able to pull the trailer without getting disengaged again. So, on we went with the carrying of the goods up the hill.

We had to do a number of trips and eventually after 2 hrs., we managed to get it all up. We joked and laughed all the while and everyone got into the spirit of things. We all felt like we were better than any land cruiser we could have, so we felt pretty good about ourselves.

Eventually I had to tie the trailer with ropes to the car in order for it not to get unhooked again.
Upon inspection, I discovered that the piece of metal in the hooking system that keeps the ball of the tow bar in place, had gone, so the trailer was sitting on the ball without any way to secure it.
For the next 12 days we carried on with the trailer like this and we had to check on the connection every now and then to ensure that it was still ok.

I invited the guests for dinner that evening just to thank them for the help and the good spirit.
These are the things that can happen on a tour like this, and it is up to the guide to turn it into a fun or an experience that the guests can see as special. You also learn a lot from experience like these.
I learnt that although you are given tools by a company that is supposed to have checked everything, you need to recheck it all yourself.

That is how I am now, even though I am told everything has been checked, I recheck everything to the annoyance of the people that I work for. It might be annoying, but in the end, I go with confidence into a tour. 

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I am not staying here!              

In life, you come across different people from different walks of life, and specially as a tour guide, we get to know some type of people that we don’t even know they can exist.

We get annoyed sometimes at petty little things, and sometimes we make a fuss about it, but we don’t realize how lucky we are for having so little and being able to enjoy the simplest things in life.

I was asked to be the guide for a very wealthy family from Argentina. They arrived in their own private jet and I had to climb on their plane and take them around the country. Very smart I thought and wondered at how is it possible for people to have sooo much.

We left Cape Town and landed in George and we were picked up by limousines and were taken to the only 6 star hotel in the country: Fancourt.
Upon arrival we were welcomed as kings, and we were taken to our rooms. Now, let me tell you that these were not just rooms. Each ROOM, was a fully furnished house with kitchen, bathroom, lounge, dining area, etc. Beautifully furnished, and decorated with exquisite ornaments and original Rembrandt paintings.
The family consisted of Husband, Wife, Daughter, son and granny.

Upon arrival to the rooms/house, the first one to get off the courtesy cart was the granny, who walked into the unit and 10 seconds later came out disgusted saying “This is disgusting, I am not staying in this dump!

Now you must know that as a tour guide, when you get a guest making a comment like this upon arrival to an establishment, all sorts of explanations pass your mind ranging from dirty toilets, to unfinished beds and even a room not cleaned after the last occupant, so, I run into the unit checking what had she found wrong.
I looked everywhere and all was spotless, so I came out and asked her to please tell me what was wrong so I could fix it. Her reply to me was simply: “I am not staying here”, so I could see that she was really annoyed, so I ran into the unit again and decided, it must be the toilet, I checked it and it was once again spotless. I was really at a loss here, so I came out and asked the lady to please be specific as to what had she found wrong so that I could rectify it. She then told us: “the paintings on the walls are horrific and I will not stay in a place with such bad taste”.

At this point, her daughter rolled her eyes and her son in law also rolled his eyes and said: “here she goes again”.

While they tried to convince her that the paintings on the walls were not that bad, I contacted the hotel manager and explained to him the issue.He came promptly to see what could be done for the old lady, and decided that if she does not like the paintings, then he would remove them all.
We therefore went ahead and took off all the original “Rembrandt” oils paintings from the wall, and left the unit with plain white walls instead.

The daughter then asked her mom to check and although she did it with apprehension, the old lady was now more relaxed but still sulking about the original setup.
We ordered tea on the stoep to make her feel better, after which she thanked us for the effort and we all got on with our lives.

Needless to say that I then went to reception and thanked the manager who told me exactly what he thought of this petty lady and her ways. We had a good laugh about it.

We then carried on for the next 12 days and visited many places in South Africa, all the time staying at really very expensive hotels and eating in luxury most of the time.
But at all venues, they found something not quite ok, or something that they disliked, for which I had to make special arrangements for them.

On the final day as we were on our way to drop me off back in Cape Town, I was thinking of what was I going to say to them to apologize for all the “INCONVENIENCES” they encountered during their trip.
As I was getting off their plane, they thank me eternally for the trip and told me to my amazement that this had been the BEST HOLIDAY they had had in their life. My jaw almost dropped when I was told this, as I immediately though: if this was their best holiday, what was their worst holidays like.

This made me realize that I was so lucky to be what I am, and to have what I have. I am lucky to be able to appreciate things in life no matter how they come. And I also realized that there are people in this world, that although they have everything, they cannot find happiness.  

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Water animals in a sea of sand.          

My trips have given me lots of pleasures, of things that I have been able to see, experience and visit that otherwise I would not have been able to do without being a Tour guide.

You might not know it, but I am a wildlife person. I love everything about Nature, animals and vegetation alike. I respect the natural world and I am always amazed at what Nature is able to do and provide.

I had heard many times about the famous Desert Elephants of Namibia, and I always dreamed of seeing them one day, knowing that this was a dream that was probably never going to come true, because of the scarcity of these animals and the almost zero chances of seeing them along the routes of my trips.

I am a believer that if you are connected with Nature from your heart and soul as I am, Nature will always reward you with some amazing moments, and I have had a few of those which I cherish.
One of those moments came when I was travelling with a group of people along the skeleton coast in Namibia.

We had already stopped at the Diaz colony of seals, which was an awesome spectacle, seeing thousands of these animals grouped in one place. We thought that nothing could top that.
But as we turned inland towards the more deserted part of the area, we were travelling through somehow surreal landscape, with flat grey landscape on the right and almost red orange dunes of sand on the left.
The landscape was so hostile, hot and inhospitable that we thought “Nothing could survive it”. But then we suddenly saw some very black dots on the red dunes that were totally out of place.

As a guide, you learn that when something does not look right anywhere, there is an opportunity for something special, so I slowed the vehicle down to take a better look at the black dots.
I carried on slowly and as we got closer, I realize with much amazement that what we were seeing was the Desert Elephants that were so contrasted against the dunes that they stoop completely out of the landscape.

We stopped and got out of the vehicle and the guest could not believe what we were seeing. 8 elephants walking on the dunes in single file. And to top it all, they were heading towards were we had stopped.
I instructed them all to lie down and stay low, so as to not interfere with the animal’s path and nature.
We watched them walk slowly and every now and then they would stop and lift their trunks pointing them in our direction. I know that they were aware of us and so they were very cautious. They came to a stand about 30 meters from us and I could see that the matriarch decided this was a bit too close for comfort and she then took a slight deviation to the left. We saw these incredible creatures walk peacefully pass us and as they walked, the only sound we heard was their breathing.
Their footsteps did not make a sound against the sand, and although they were heavy animals, to my amazement, their legs would not sink into the sand. 

After what seemed an eternity, we stood up and saw them leave just as they came, and within 15 minutes they became dots against the dunes again and vanished into the landscape.
It was such a surreal moment for all of us, that no one made a sound or comment. We stood there simply just absorbing the moment of what we had seen. After a while, we all came out of the spell of the moment and we celebrated it by shaking hands and hugging each other in happiness.

I can only share this with you in writing, but nothing compares to the actual moment. It has stayed in me and I often stop and thank Nature for allowing me and my guests to share that unique moment.

My guests also could not thank me enough for that moment and it became the highlight of the trip.
This is what I, as a tour guide, live for. Being able to find sometimes such a moment and share it with people, who will remember it for the rest of their lives. 

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Death everywhere, but not a dead one found.   

Sometimes, a simple situation can be transformed into something completely different just by the nature of it.

While doing a Flower tour with a group of amateur botanists, I was given the task of finding the black Orchid which is endemic only to the area where I live.

Before embarking on this tour, of course I did my homework and took it upon myself to get as much information as I could on these plants. I studied many essays and got a more or less good idea of where these flowers could be found.

We started the tour and started travelling to areas where the famous Namaqualand flowers were blooming.
This is a spectacle that one must see it to believe it. You get only for 2 to 3 weeks of the year, a landscape covered with multicolours of flowers of the Namaqualand.
Kilometres upon kilometres of colourful fields and amazing colours that overseas visitors come here to experience.

Now, the Namaqualand flowers are easy to find, as there is an area for them and a town called Darling which is the capital of the flowering season. And they have all sorts of official call hotlines to report on the status of the flowers. All you have to do is call and they will tell you where to go to see them as the season goes on.

But nobody knows anything about the black Orchid.

As we carried on with the tour which was now on day 3, I started to get quite worried as I took the people to the areas I had researched, but could not find the ghost flowers.

On the 4th day, I had run out of places to visit and decided to do a final trip more to the north of the areas where the flowers were supposed to be present. Yes, I did make sure that the time of the year we were doing the tour, was correct for the time of the flowering of these flowers.
We went about 120km further north and although we saw some amazing species of succulents and desert vegetation, the Orchids in question were nowhere to be found.

Guests were very happy so far with what we had seen, but I could feel the disappointment that they could not see these flowers. I was getting very despondent as I could not deliver what I set out to find for them.
On our route back, we were travelling on the highway and as we started to travel along a flat piece of landscape, I saw a few very distinct black spots on the ground in front right next to the road.
I decided to stop the vehicle to investigate and as I walked into the landscape, I saw a few of these plants and to mine and my guest’s amazement, they were the famous flowers.

Now as you look into the landscape from one direction, you can almost not see them, but if you walk into it, and look back, then suddenly you see these black flowers staring at you.

Now, I know that when you think of orchids, you immediately think of delicate, large flowers. But this is not the case with these ones. They are tiny, not taller than 10 cm from the ground and they are not pretty at all. They actually look like the flowers of a weed. Very uninteresting and unimportant. But as you study them, you start to get amaze at these little plants. Their flower is penta-symmetrical and are almost black in colour, with a slight yellow tint in the middle. The petals of the flowers are almost flat against the ground.
I learned that the black colour absorbs lots of heat and the reason for the flowers to be so flat against the ground is to cover the rest of the plant and not to allow the moisture of the plant to escape from it. So keeping it humid in areas where there is little water.

So we got off the vehicle with everyone so happy with the find. Because these guests were amateur enthusiast, they were here to study and document these plants. And because the flowers are so low in the ground, they all lay flat on their stomach to take photos, and make drawings.

Now picture this: a vehicle right next to the highway, 16 people lying all over the landscape on their stomachs, not moving.

Cars started suddenly to stop and people were running towards us, as they thought there had been an accident. Much to their amazement to find out that there was no accident and it was just a bunch of people studying plants.

I had to intervene a number of times to explain cars that stopped, that nothing was wrong. I kept on having so much fun that afternoon, watching all these dead bodies spread over the landscape. I also got my moment of satisfaction, knowing that I had been able to deliver what I had promised.
Although I did not know the exact spot where to find them, my systematic search had paid off and my instincts (which I use quite often) guided me to the area.

It is always a big satisfaction to see the smile of my guests being happy and satisfied with the trip.

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 Wet Hole of Death         

I am not a person that can be scared easily. As a matter of fact, I do not recall even in my childhood being scared of something. People always find me cold because of this, as I am not always giving the expected reaction when someone has tried to scare me for some reason.

However, I have been really scared only 2 times in my life. In this story, I will tell you about the second time I was scared.

I was chosen to be the tour guide and leader of an expedition of a group of Russians river rafters that came to Zimbabwe to do all the Zambezi rapids.

I was very excited at the prospect of this trip when it was given to me, as I was told that the people coming were the world river rafting champions, so I knew this was not going to be a standard type of adventure.
When I went to receive my group at the airport, I saw 8 couples, strong men with very thin and almost needle like women. I thought to myself, oh, the river rafters came with their wives or partners.
They had a lot of luggage that included their unique rafts, specially designed for them.

We departed on our trip to Zimbabwe the next day and I was amazed at how organized they were with everything. We arrived there and were picked up in a truck. We loaded all the gear and got on our way to the river, where we were met by our river guide.

They had all the food, and everything needed for the 6 day trip ready by the edge of the river.
The guests then started assembling their unique rafts which had to be put together on site. It took quite a while and everyone helped, including the ladies who were in their bikinis hoping to get a good tan while doing so.

The rafts were quite something. They consisted of 2 large inflatable tubes which were held together by an aluminium harness that held them in a mini catamaran fashion. The passengers or paddlers mounted the tubes just like you mount a horse and they tied their knees and legs to the tubes by means of a stripe. Two sat on each tube on each side, so 4 people were on the raft.

Now you have to see these people and what they are able to do with them. To my amazement, the thin good looking ladies, who I thought had just come along for the trip, were actually part of the river rafting crew. And my jaw dropped many times as I saw them performing on the rapids. They were as strong as the men and they were NOT afraid of ANYTHING.

I was allocated a spot on the supplies raft together with the assistants and with the main guide who was a large African man, very confident and someone you don’t mess with. So, after everything was setup, we got going and it was a fantastic feeling. Here I was, in the Zambezi, accompanied by the river rafting champions and starting an adventure that was first in my life.

I had heard of the white waters of the Zambezi, but only when you navigate them, you feel the power of nature.

The first 3 days we went through medium to not so medium rapids, and every time I saw my guests go through them expertly. Sometimes their raft would capsize and their bodies were submerged under water for what seemed an eternity, but they always managed to use their oars to tilt themselves up. Remember that they were strapped to the tubes, so if the raft capsized, they were stuck under water.
At the end of the 3rd day, the leader gave us a talk about the next day. Referring at all times about the “death hole”.

He explained that we were going to fall into a water hole and we would need to wait until he instructed, for us to paddle out of it. And when he says paddle, we would need to paddle as if it was the end of the world. This did not make us feel at all at ease. But we listened and joked about it around the campfire. My stomach was already in butterfly mode, after hearing about this “death Hole”.

Next day we picked up camp, and we departed on our next river day. Round about mid-day, and after tackling 3 major rapids (which I thought every time it was the famous “death Hole”), the leader then told the 6 of us in the supply raft that “here it comes”.

I need not tell you how these words put us all in adrenaline mode. I looked to the front of the raft looking for a hole and all I could see was water. Suddenly my eyes could not believe were I was going to fall into, as we approached the edge of a huge waterfall.

My heart came to a total stop as I thought: my gosh we are going to die here!. The raft fell about 3 meters into literally what is a Hole in the water. After the fall, the raft was just floating at the bottom of this wet pith. As I looked all around the raft, all I could see was WATER, water streaming up and down the walls at very high speed and a noise that could only be described as the end of the world. We were stuck here, not moving and the guide kept on shouting, WAIT, WAIT , WAIT; while all you wanted to do was to paddle out of here, but you knew that no amount of paddling was going to help.

I was soooooo scared that for a second I really thought, this is it!!. But then my experience with people came to my senses and I realized that the tour leader, although was shouting, he was not in panic mode, but simply in action and waiting mode. He was in control, and I hoped with all my soul that he knew what he was doing, so I waited and waited for his instructions.

After what seemed forever, the raft started to rise up the hole slowly and almost made it to the rim of the hole.
This is when our leader used all his bad language dictionary repertoire to shout to us to paddle and paddle and paddle like men not like sissies, to paddle for your life etc. etc.

And let me tell you, we paddled for our lives like I have never paddled before. While doing so, I kept looking at the edge of the raft and the edge of the rim of the hole, and slowly, the raft was starting to move forward, out of this insane place.

We eventually came out of it, and I have never screamed so loud in my life, realizing that we had made it alive. It is a feeling that you can describe but you have to live it to understand it.

So, what was all this about?. To understand it, you need to know a little bit of physics but put in simple language; the reason why the Zambezi is called white river rafting, is because the river is very deep, and although the water is turbulent, the rocks that cause this turbulence are very deep under water. So deep, that if you fall in the water, you will be flushed away but you will not hit the rocks at the bottom. All you do is let the water carry you with your life vest which keeps you afloat and the rescue kayak will come get you after the rapid. The spot where the hole of water is, has a large circle of rocks at the bottom, which creates this water hole as the water passes over the rocks at very high speed.

The water is not always constant and the flow changes every so often, changing the profile of the bottom of the hole which rises every now and then. The river guides know this and that is why you wait at the bottom, for the change in that profile to get out past the hole to the other side.

Now, your mind does not care about theory and physical facts and about logical explanations. Your mind just sees DANGER of the highest nature when you approach this place and all your senses tell you get out of there. Your body goes into mental shock before you even fall in the hole, so, no amount of preparation makes it any easier. You shake the whole time you are under in the hole, and all you can think is that you are going to die.

Even after you successfully get out of there, your body then tells you: Hey man, that was not cool!!! This, I must say has been one of my scariest moments.

I take my hat at the guys who tackle this on a regular basis. And I respect their actions, guidance and total knowledge and control of such situation. Bearing in mind that everybody’s life are on their hands, and they had never had a single incident where they lost anyone’s lives due to negligence or bad judgement.

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I’m first. Are you kidding me?    

In my journeys, I sometimes get surprises that are totally unexpected and leave you with your mouth open.
I deal with a lot of Indian groups during our winter, which is their summer. So, South Africa has become a very popular destination for them, especially the adventure type Indians. They come here in large groups, and even come with a chef to cook their meals.

The type of Indus that come, are generally families, that include from the baby to the granny, and they just love any type of adrenaline adventure and sport.

I also do the more private Indian groups, and in one of my trips I got to take around the garden route, an Indian family which included husband, wife, son, daughter, niece and granny. They were really very nice people, and most importantly, very bonded as a family. I enjoyed so much seeing how the grandchildren looked after their granny with so much love and care. They always made sure that if there was a step or even an uneven path, they would hold granny by the arms making sure she would not trip or fall.
The granny was 85 years old, but so full of life. We started our trip and along the route, I was asked to organize some adventure activity such as quad biking, zip line, sky dive etc.

So I arranged for all these activities for the family, excluding the granny, who I thought, no, she is not going to do them. Big mistake!.

As we arrived at the first activity which was zip line, everyone was given a harness, and when the granny did not get hers, she asked me what was going on?.
So I explained to her that this activity is very intense and that I was not sure it was a good idea for her to be hanging from a steel cable while zipping through the air on it.
She told me it was total nonsense and she was doing it!. So I complied and arranged for her to get her harness.

I was very apprehensive at first, but then I thought, if she wants to do it, why not. When they started with the zip lines, the first one to go was her, and she loved it. Not only was she strong enough to hold on properly but she even managed to wave while she passed on the zip line.

After this first activity completed, I then realized, that the granny was part of the adventure package, so we continued to the quad bikes, which she tackled almost like a pro.

The last activity along our 4 day route was sky diving, and here I thought, she will draw the line. Another Big Mistake, the first one to get kitted was her, and even the instructor asked me if she was going to be ok.
I told him that she will not take no for an answer, as I knew if they refuse her she would put up a fight. So, she was ready and when asked who wants to go first, her hand was up before everyone else.
Now, let me tell you that this is no joke. They fly up to 4000mt and do a tandem free fall for about 30 seconds before opening the parachute. Then they glide all the way down until they do a hard land on sand.
The granny jumped and we heard her laughing as she came down for the landing. The instructor told me that she even asked to do pirouettes in the air while they were free falling.

This lady, made all the other sky divers look like sissies. The main thing was that she was the adventure spirit behind the entire family, and this made the family a very special one.

I loved seeing this old lady enjoy herself as if she was a teenager. I guest age is only a number!!!

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Not without my yogurt!  

Sometimes you get to deal with unreasonable people. And no matter what you do, you cannot change their ways. For a tour guide this is a real challenge.

When you do a long trip with a group of people, you get to see the real them, and you get to deal with their mood changes and also become stuck with their dynamics, which can become quite complicated.
I started a 22 day road safari from Cape Town to Victoria Falls. This trip takes you through amazing Namibia; from south to north and then east across the Caprivi Strip.

I had 16 people with me and the whole trip was in camping style. Some people get into these adventures knowing exactly what it would be like, but other have had this dream about camping, but have never done before.

The first 2 days is quite a challenge for you as a guide, as you have to teach and assist them on how to setup their tents and how behave while at the campsites. Well, on this particular trip, I had a mix of people that ranged from the young to the elder and from the very fit to the not fit at all.

As we started the journey, and up to the 3rd day, I noticed that one of my guests; an old lady, was not having any breakfasts in the morning and she had become very abrupt and moody.
I approached her to find out if she was ok (because people sometimes get sick but will not mention it). When I asked her if anything was wrong, her reply was “there is no yogurt”. I could not really understand her answer so I asked her to explain what she meant, and she replied “there is no yogurt, this is unacceptable, I only eat yogurt in the morning”.
I then asked her if she had filled in the special dietary requirements on the form prior to her tour, to which she replied, I don’t care about forms, “I only eat yogurt for breakfast”.
Now this is an easy thing to deal with if you are in a city where there are shops for you to quickly run and buy the needed yogurt, but we were on the road, in the middle of the Namib dessert. Not a shop to be found.

So , although it was not my fault, I apologized to the lady for the lack of her desired food. Her attitude did not change.
And not only did she make sure I knew she was upset, she kept on telling me how unprofessional this was, that no one bothered to have yogurt for her.

After another 2 days, we reached the town of Swakopmund, on the coast of Namibia. Here I went to pick up provisions and I made sure I bought enough yogurt for Africa (although I did not have to).
So, for the next 3 days that we stayed in this town, the lady was ecstatic because I had her desired yogurt for her breakfasts.

It was time to leave again and I, again made sure I bought enough yogurt to last me the next leg.
The rest of the group by now found it very funny that this woman was demanding yogurt on a camping trip through the desert, but every one took it with humour and we got on with the trip.

Unfortunately on the second day, due to the heat of the trip, the small fridge we carry on the vehicle, was not strong enough to hold the yogurt fresh, and 2 litres of it went off and became uneatable.
When I told the lady in the morning, all hell broke loose, and I was told how incompetent I was, and how disappointing this trip had become because it did not cater for her desired yogurt.

She screamed at me for at least 5 minutes during the breakfast session until two of the other guests approached her and told her very strongly to please “shut Up” and take it easy.
They told her: “lady, if you had a special dietary requirement, you should have said so before the trip. You are making Marco’s life impossible and now you are making Our trip impossible too”.

They commanded her to sit and eat what there was. This was a very intense moment which I tried to dissipate by explaining that normally the fridge is able to hold things fresh but due to the excessive heat we had the last two days, it was not strong enough. Everyone understood perfectly what had happened and told me not to worry any more about this.

For the next 3 days, they implemented the ice law on the lady, and she was isolated from all their doings and conversations. I felt really bad and also had to cater for the rest of the group and then try to integrate her by trying to talk to her also.
I was pulled by two sides that did not want to interact with each other. You as a tour guide cannot take sides, and although the lady was in the wrong, she was still my guest, so I tried by all means to make her still feel part of the group.

On the 3rd night after the incident and still with no one but me speaking to her, she stood during dinner and apologized to the group for her behaviour and apologized to me also for her demands.
We all forgave her and lots of hugs and handshakes were given, which turned the trip around. We carried on like a happy family until the end of the trip, and her yogurt story became a joke among all of us, including her. I in turn made sure that every time we got to a city she got her share of yogurt.
She became the “yogurt queen of the desert” among us.

Now, let me tell you that experience teaches you many things and one thing I have learnt is that when an issue as petty as this arise, you need to cover yourself.
I wrote a factual report on what had happened and asked everyone in the group including her to read it and tell me if it was accurate. I explained that this was important in order for this not to happen again to any visiting guest.
Everyone read it and signed it, including her, who was very happy with the whole thing.
3 months later after the trip, I was called for an enquiry, and it just so happened that a formal complaint had been launched against me for my lack of understanding and for mistreating her during the trip.

Lucky for me, I had the written report signed by everyone including her, and this showed the panel that I had acted in a professional manner and at no time did I do the things she accused me of doing. So the case was dropped and that was it.

My only regret is that I really hoped that the lady had enjoyed her trip and that she had used the opportunity to admire the wonders of Namibia, but she kept her anger about the issue inside her and this somehow may have taken away the good memories of the trip.

I just hope that my “yogurt queen of the desert” lady one day can sit and remember all the wonderful things she did with us even though the yogurt was not there.

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You are early or going Nowhere!   

Many times your experience counts, even if it means doing things in a really ridiculous way.
On one of my many adventures, I was travelling with the River Rafting World Champions (see Death water hole).

After our adventure in the rapids of the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe, it was time to depart on our flight back to Johannesburg.

I know the Victoria Falls airport very well and the way things work there. Very very slow is an understatement, and also no one there cares about your problems. So, you have to cater for this type of modus operandi and make sure.

Our flight was at 13:00 but I decided to get there really early, seeing that we were carrying all the heavy equipment (the rafts). I explained to my Russian gests that it was important to get to the airport much earlier, or we would risk not getting seats on the flight. Luckily they agreed and they accepted the fact that they would have to wait at the airport quite a while, so we left at 7:30 and we arrived at 8am. To everyone’s surprise, the airport was closed. Closed?, yes closed.
We waited outside until about 9:15 which is when the personnel started arriving and then the airport was opened.

Apparently the earliest flight coming in that morning was at about 11, so they did not see any reason to have people at the airport in the early morning.
In any case, we had a good giggle about this fact and we proceeded to the check in counter. We were the first ones to check in. All 18 of us got our seats, and we were all set. Now it was just a matter of Waiting.
The airport is really tiny, so there is really not much to see. We sat on the chairs which were very uncomfortable and everyone did their own thing.

At about 12:00 people started arriving to check in for our and another flight that morning. We saw the queues getting busy and we all got the satisfaction that we were ready, and that we had come in early. A Group of 15 people then arrived and got on the queue. We watched them reach their turn to do the check in as a group and as their Tour Leader presented their passport, I saw the lady at the counter go “whoa, you are very late”.

She checked her computer for a while, called another colleague and between both of them checked their system and got to the same conclusion: there were no more seats available on that flight!.
Now, let me explain how things work over there. Flights are oversold sometimes by up to 30%, so if you don’t arrive early, there are chances that you will not get a seat and you will be put on the next available flight to the same destination.

I Know, I know, this is ridiculous, but this is Africa, and this is the way it is done over there, and only a guide with experience will know this.

I need not tell you the amount of arms up in the air, the amount of shouting and screaming that went on for quite a while, the amount of officials that were called to the desk by the passengers. But all this to no avail. There were NO MORE seats left in the flight and the only thing they could do was to put them on the next flight, which was that evening at 8PM.

Some of these people had connecting flight which they would miss, so the pandemonium was amazing.
My guests were quite amazed at what was going on and after I explained to them what was the issue, they all thanked me for the early arrival, as we saw that had we not arrived early as we did, we could have been the group standing screaming and shouting at the ridiculous of the situation.

We saved the day by getting there early.

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I have done something terrible.   

It is always nice to get to fly around the country and see the different places. But sometimes flying for the wrong reason is not a very nice thing.

Once I was travelling with a large group of guests around the country, after which we were flying to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

I always ask guests just before departure from hotels two questions: Have you settled your bills? And have you taken everything out of any safe you might have put, Money, documents, passports?. This I do always, because I know what can happen if you leave it behind, especially if you are travelling. It is part of my routine in order to avoid delays or even unexpected returns.

Well on this occasion, my guests (who were from different parts of Europe) were quite used to my instructions upon arrival and departure from hotels. I even have a way of handling the luggage, so as to make sure that no one is missing their luggage upon arriving at hotels or even upon boarding a plane.
After 10 days of road trips from city to city and visiting some very spectacular places, we arrived in Cape Town and we dedicated the next 3 days to doing local Tours. People got very relaxed and enjoyed themselves very much with what the city has to offer.

On the 4th day it was time to leave the hotel and take a flight for our next leg on the tour. We loaded all the luggage on the bus, and all was set to depart.
Just before leaving of course, I did my usual routine and asked the questions : Have you settled your bills? And have you taken everything out of any safe you might have put, Money, documents, passports?. The reply was about 90% yes, a few people had forgotten to hand in their room cards, which I collected and before going to return them, I repeated the questions, specially pertaining the money and documents, as I knew we were going to fly to another city and then another country. No One then reacted and I then went to return the forgotten cards.

Got on the bus and we left very happy for Johannesburg.

We did a group check in, in which case we normally present peoples passport copies that the tour leader generally carries (which as you will see is not a very good system). We all got our seats and went through security check and waited for our flight. Lots of laughter and talks about the nice time we have had so far. The flight was uneventful.

We landed and were picked up by our bus driver and taken to the hotel where we were staying just one night. There had not been any connecting flights that day so we were forced to do a stay over for the night. We arrived at the hotel and after handing the keys to the people, I was ready to go to my room when one of my ladies (very shy and timid one) came to me almost in tears.

I asked her what was the matter and she then told me she had done something terrible. I thought she had broken something in the room or something like that. But it so happens that she had left her passport in the safe of her room in Cape Town. I asked her if she did not hear me asking specifically this question in the bus TWICE before departing from the hotel in Cape Town, and she told me that she heard it but never clicked in her mind.

So, what to do. Need the passport urgent. I called the tour operator, who immediately sent someone to the hotel and managed to get the Passport from the safe. The operator then went to the airport and tried to send the document with one of the airlines, but not one wanted to accept responsibility for it.
The lady had to have her passport the next day at 8am as we were departing for Zimbabwe. So, without further hassling, I then had to take a flight to Cape Town at 7:30PM, arrived at the airport at 9:12PM, collected the passport from my waiting operator representative and took another flight back to Johannesburg at 9:45 arriving back there at 11.20. Phew!!!.

I think I should be given the Guinea book of records for the shortest visit to a city ever!!.
I returned to hotel quite exhausted and handed the lady her passport to which she thank me eternally for it.
Of course she had to pay for my flight and she even gave me some extra Tip for the trouble at the end of the trip.

We departed next morning for Zimbabwe and everyone clapped when they were told by the lady via the microphone what had happened and what I had done to fix it. So I was the hero of the saga. We continued our tour of Southern Africa without further glitches, but at all times when there was time to leave hotel, I implemented the rule that everyone must show their passports to me in the before departure. This became a laughing matter from then on.

Now, remember that I told you it was a bad idea for the airlines to accept a copy of the passenger’s passport when travelling in a group on a domestic flight?. This is the reason why.

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Going blind, going blind!  

On my many trips I have never felt so incredibly stupid as this one.

This was actually my first attempt to climb Kilimanjaro. It was a dream of mine that I had ever since I was told we were emigrating to Africa when I was 12 years old.

My life changed completely coming to this continent. And we went through many stages in our lives, including the very good stage, when I had my own IT business which was doing very well for about 12 years. After this time, I thought to make one of my dreams come true, and I decided to go and climb Kilimanjaro.

I booked a ticket to Dar Es salaam and I left.
On arrival, I walked out of the airport with 38 degrees and decided to get something to eat. I got a pie and cool drink and sat on the side of the road, to the amazement of the people around me, I was the only white person in the area, and was acting like one of them. This made a few guys come to sit next to me, and a friendly man asked me what was I doing there?. I told him, I came to climb Kilimanjaro.

With a big smile he told me: that is very nice, but you know you are in the wrong city don’t you?.
To be honest with you, I never did any research about the climb. I put in my mind that I wanted to climb Kilimanjaro, and all I knew was that it was in Tanzania, and therefore I got the first flight to Dar es salaam. That was it. The total plan. I decided I wanted to do it totally free, no bookings, no preparations etc. So, I discovered that afternoon, that now I needed to take a flight to Kilimanjaro airport, which I did later that day, thanks to the information given by the good man on the road.

This sounds silly, but I wanted to improvise the trip. Nothing pre planed, no schedule to keep up with.
I arrived at Kilimanjaro and then took a cab to Arusha to look for a hotel. While wandering through the busy streets, under the scorching sun, I met another very nice character who also asked me what was I doing there. So, I told him I was there to climb Kilimanjaro.

Coincidence has it that he was a freelance guide that knows the routes to the climb. I was very happy to hear that and I asked him if he could then guide me up, to which he agreed.
The deal was that I did not want to go up in a group, with porters and the whole paraphernalia that the companies organize for the climbers. I wanted to carry my own stuff, setup my own camps and cook my own meals, so I wanted to be just me and the guide.

So, the next day, we bought provisions, I had already a 3 man tent and sleeping bag and my guide (who had never carried his own stuff up the mountain) was very keen on the opportunity.

We started our 6 day climb (you can do it in 5 or 6 days, depending on your level of fitness) and I enjoyed the scenery and the mountain. I am a keen climber and camper , so for me this was perfect.
My guide was not in his best zone, as I could see he struggled with his rough sac every day. As a matter of fact on the 4th day he was so exhausted that I took his rough sack, tied it on top of mine and carried on to the next base like this. Of course, he was very ashamed of himself, as his guest was carrying the load for him, but I reassured him that it was not an issue. We were a team and this is what team mates do.
We started the summit climb, on the evening of the 4th day , starting at 11pm. This is done so that you reach the summit by about 7am which is when you see the spectacular sunrise over Africa.

The night was cold, very cold. And I was amazed at how many people were attempting the summit that evening. Right through the night, you could see a line of lights all the way ahead and behind, as you climb in single file through the contour path leading to the summit.

Right through the night, I took it easy, as I knew we were entering high altitude and I was very well aware of the altitude sickness issues. I took one step at a time, and as we went up and up, I felt my chest getting tighter and my breaths deeper. Legs were aching with each step, but we climbed on.

Eventually at about 5:30 in the morning, it started to get light and I could then start to see the majestic landscape around us. We stopped every now and then to appreciate it all, and each time it got harder and harder to carry on. My vision became slightly blurred, which I though, ok altitude is setting in , so I must exercise caution.

As time went by, all was ok with my body but my vision got slowly more blurred. So, I took longer rests to counteract the altitude effects. As the day got started, and the light came out, my vision got really bad, and I started to get a bit scared, because I was not feeling any symptoms other than a blurry vision. I tried carry on, but could not see where I was going, so I told the guide that I needed to sit for a while to catch my breath.

I was really scared because I really could not see. Everything was blurred and all I could see were shadows of things moving in front of me. I found this really strange as I grew up in the Andes Mountains in Chile, walking up really high mountains. I never had any problems at all.
I decided I had to let my guide know what was happening and he told me to rest. I sat on a rock and rubbed my eyes in dismay. As I took my hands off my eyes, suddenly everything was perfect. No more blurred vision and I could see clearly. I looked at my hands and realized how stupid I had been about the whole thing.

I was wearing a balaclava over my face which only allowed my eyes to be exposed. So as I took breaths, the steam came up the balaclava and left via my eye opening. Now, I must tell you that I have very long Eyelashes, and the steam got to them but because of the extreme cold outside, it condensed on my eyelashes and it became icicles hanging from them, therefore forming a curtain in front on my eyes which did not allow me to see.

When I showed my guide and told him what was happening, we laughed out so loud that people thought we were losing it because of the altitude. I felt so stupid, but relieved that nothing was really wrong and that I was going to be able to get to the top without problems, which we did 2 hours later.

We reached UHURU peak, which is the tallest place in Africa reaching 5890 Mt. The view from the top of Kilimanjaro is amazing, and the feeling you get to enjoy a view of Africa 360 degrees around, is indescribable.

After our photo session and enjoying the summit for about 30 minutes, we started our descent which was very fast, back to base camp.

So we did the climb in 5 days and I felt on top of the world with my achievement but also totally stupid with my so called blindness which until today, my friend guide mentions every time we write to each other.

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You are not invited!  

Seeing nature at its best is what I love the most. No matter what it is, from a small beetle to a large animal, from an ant carrying a leaf, to a large animal kill, they all give me a sense of magical purpose that I respect and try to understand.

On my trips, very often I have to undergo walking safaris through the bushes. This is a very exciting thing to do, but at the same time a big responsibility and it can be dangerous at times. So, as a guide, here is where you have to use all your instincts, knowledge and experience.

We undertook a safari in the Kruger National park with 12 guests. After instructing them on the things to do and not to do, we started our trek through the landscape hoping to have some sort of encounter with wildlife.

The format of the walk is normally one rifle up front, one rifle at the rear and the guide in the middle. Riffles are there only to look and check at all times, they do not interact with the guests at all. Only the guide is the one that talks and gives instructions. It is very important that the guests follow every instruction for the safety of the group.

After walking for about 1 hour, and seeing a few antelopes and some giraffe a distance from us, we got into an area of dense vegetation, which I instructed the riffles to keep a look out for.

As we were to come out of the bushes I signalled everyone to stop, kneel down and rifles at the ready. I heard a distinct chewing and cracking of bone very close by. We crawled slowly out of the bush and to our amazement there were 6 spotted hyenas, eating a baby elephant carcass. We were in the upwind side of the kill, so the hyenas could not smell us but we could, and the sweet smell of blood was all around us.
They were breaking pieces of bone as if they were made of flesh. We could see the power on their jaws and also why they have the reputation of having the strongest bite in the animal kingdom.

The hyenas saw eventually our presence but they stood their ground by their food. They all made like a wall between them and the carcass and started showing us their teeth and making very loud shrieking noises.
It was clear that they wanted us out of there, and although they did not charge, we got the message loud and clear and after a few photos and intense minutes of observing them, we decided it was time to carry on and not push our luck any further. We walked carefully away from the site, and we could already see other scavengers in the area.
 
Jackals, Vultures etc., and if there are those, then there is a good chance that the big cats might be close too. So it was very important to get away from the site as fast as possible.

Standing there, looking at the blood and at how the hyenas were covered from head to toe in blood, and how they tore and the flesh and broke bones so efficiently was an incredible scene. My guests were so happy to have had the opportunity to see it and experience it live.

After we walked a few minutes, we decided it was far enough and we stood on top of a slight hill, watching the landscape and at how lucky we had been.

Nature allows you to enjoy such events but only if you do it with respect and without going over the boundaries. It is up to the tour guide to know when and how to do it.

I am lucky that I can read nature in many ways, and although I do not profess to know it all, my experience and what I have learnt from other field guides has always helped me make informed decisions about these kinds of sightings.

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No seat belt, no go.    

In Africa, you have to be patience and sometimes we have to endure the most of people’s stupidity and corruption.

I was doing a solo transfer to go and meet my guests in Windhoek Namibia. I was driving the Land cruiser and got to the border with Namibia at about 6pm. I went through the South African border post without any issues. Then I proceeded to cross the bridge over the Orange river to reach the border post on the Namibian side.

Now, the drive across the bridge is only a 200mt long and then you get to the Namibian border. I got on the vehicle and just drove across as I usually do. Upon arrival at the Namibian Border, an official stopped me and told me that “there was a big problem here”. I asked him what was the problem, and he pointed towards my seat belt, which I had not put it on after leaving the South African side. I explained to him that all I did was cross the bridge, but he told me that it was a big problem and that he would need to write me a ticket. I then realized that arguing with him was going to be futile, so I apologized and told him to write me the ticket.

He took his time in doing so and then handed me the paper, saying that this was going to be a big problem now. When I asked him what was the problem now, he told me that he could not let me pass unless I paid the fine immediately. I said to him that it was not an issue, he must just tell me where I must pay it and would do so.

My question came as a shock to him as I don’t think he expected me to ask where I must pay it. He probably expected me to offer him a bribe. He then showed me a path where I should go and I will find there the officers where I can pay the fine.

I knew that he was making my life difficult just to see if I could offer him something, but I played along with his game and went to the place he showed me, which was still within the border post of the Namibian side. I drove to the place just to find everything closed and no one in side. By this time it was already 9:30.
I went back to the man, and he then told me that the problem was still very big. I then asked him if there is any other office where I could pay the fine and he then told me that he was the only official on duty.
I then asked him if he was the only official on duty, why did he send me to a useless place and asked him why was he wasting my time like that. I asked him if I could not pay him the fine as he was the officer on duty, to which he say it was ok. So, I asked him for a receipt of proof of payment before giving him the money, to which he replied he had nothing to give me a receipt.

I told him it is impossible for an official to be receiving money without giving a proof of payment so I told him that I was sure we could get a receipt book from the office and I decided that I had enough of this man and went into the office of the border post to ask for an official I could talk to.

The border officer followed me very scared. A captain came out and I was asked what was the problem, I did not reported the officer at the border but I asked him if he had a receipt book available as the officer had given me a fine and had told me that I needed to pay it immediately to him, but when I asked him for a receipt, he did not have a book.

The captain immediately picked up what was going on here, and after speaking to the officer very sternly in their language, he told me that the officer had made a mistake. I could pay the fine at any police station in Namibia while traveling.

I did not need to pay anything to the officer. I was then allowed to proceed to border control and after getting my passport stamped, I then managed to carry on with my journey.

I must confess that I walked out of there tired, frustrated but with a smile on my face as I managed in a very elegant manner to accuse the officer of corruption, without actually accusing him directly. It gave me a pleasure to expose these individuals that try their luck with the visiting tourists, who come into their country and bring income to them.

Moral of the story: Wear your seat belt, especially when crossing a border.

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Moody Elephant, not good company.

In many of my trips, I always look forward to my wildlife experiences.

During one of my many visits to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, I decided to take the afternoon off after sending my guests to Chobe for the day.

I wanted to enjoy the fall all on my own, so, I decided to walk from the hotel to the entrance of the falls.
This is a short 800mt walk that one does through a tarred road. Now, remember that Victoria Falls is a town within the jungle. There are no fences or anything separating civilization from wilderness. Animals roam the city all the time, and you always have to be careful when walking about, that you do not encounter some wild Buffalo or a moody Elephant.

Well, while in was on my way, I saw at a distance a huge elephant right next to the road, under a tree and minding his own business. Many people were walking past him at close range and it looked as if the animal was not at all bothered by the human presence.

After carefully checking his mood and behaviour, I decided that it was ok to walk past him as everyone else was. So, I started cautiously walking towards it on the opposite side of the road as everyone else.
As I reached the back of the elephant (which was now literally 6mt from me), the elephant decided that it had had enough of people sneaking behind it , and it suddenly turned around and came running towards me. Ladies and gentleman, it is one thing to see an elephant running, and another, to see it in real life and running towards you.

Luckily I am a sportsman and I can run pretty fast. I ran for my life for about 50 Mt. watching the giant getting closer and closer. I saw a few cement poles next to the road in front of me, and I aimed towards them. Fortunately, a large 4x4 was coming in my direction, and they saw that I was in trouble, so, they hooted at the animal and used the vehicle to stop him from catching me up.

The animal stopped, trumpeted a few times and decided that I was no longer worth the chase.
Needless to say that I was relieved that it had stopped the chase, and I was thankful to the owner of the vehicle that came to my rescue.

My heart was beating so fast that I could actually hear it myself. That was really pure adrenaline moment!.
It just comes to show, that animals have their own ways, and no matter how much we think we know them, they will still surprise you every now and then. One must never take them for granted and respect their space.

On my side, lesson learnt!. Never sneak up behind an elephant, no matter how calm it may seem to be.

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A broken table is a broken trip.       .

My friends the Indians come to South Africa every winter. They come in bus loads, full families together to enjoy our hospitality and country.

They are known for having their own ways, and this is what makes them special guests for me. One has to have plenty of patience and many times restrain from getting frustrated.

One of my groups made out of 6 families and 42 guests in total, arrive in Cape Town and we took them straight to their check in at the hotel.
While doing the check in, children were playing and running around in the foyer while their parents were busy with the paper work. Unfortunately, one of the children while running, bumped a marble table, and this fell and broke.

There was a big commotion and the reception people came and asked the parents of the children to please calm them down and they were told that they would need to pay for the broken coffee table.
The parents of the child, agreed and arrangements were made so that they would settle the payment before departure in 4 days time. I specifically asked them to please make sure that the table was paid before departure date, so that we would not have delays.

The departure date came and of course they had not settled the table. When they checked out at 8:00 am, they were given a bill of R8000 for the broken table.
The guests were not happy at all with the price of the table, and started arguing with the receptionist. As far as they were concerned, the table did not cost more than R1000 and they would not pay the R8000 being asked.

45 Minutes went by arguing and eventually the husband took R 2500 and threw it to the face of the receptionist, who was not impressed at all. I had to intervene and asked him to please not be rude as this was not acceptable behaviour.
They carried on arguing as they were told that they needed to pay R8000.
After speaking to management, I convinced them to give them a reduced price, so, they were asked to pay R 5000 for the table. I spoke then to the guests and they still refused to pay.
By now, it was almost 10am and many of the other guests had gotten off the bus to come in support to the guest with the problem.

I advised them to take the offer and pay, to which they refused.

Management of hotel, then decided to escalate the problem and called the owner of the hotel.
In the meantime, the guests were telling me to just leave and get going, to which I had to explain to them , that we could not leave until the matter was settled, because if not, they would call the police, stop the bus and bring us right back to the hotel if we left.

20 minutes later, the owner of the hotel arrived in a very smart looking car. The lady, looked really business like and a no nonsense type. She walked in, asked a report of what was happening, told everyone of my guests that were shouting and screaming (all at once) to keep quiet and asked the hotel manager to check what was the value of the broken table in their book. The man confirmed that it was R8000 but they had given the guest the option to only pay R5000. The lady then said, “R8000 is the value on our books, therefore they must pay R 8000”. Having said that, she then instructed management not to let them leave until bill was settled and left.

Of course, my Indian friends were now even more upset and the arguing and shouting continued for at least another 30 minutes.

By now, it was 11;30 am, so, many of the other families were now quite upset about what was going on , and eventually the rest of the ladies, got off the bus, and confronted the parent of the guilty children and told them to pay and get going. Enough time had been wasted already and they realized that we were missing out of the activities and sightseeing that we were supposed to do en route that day.

The man then had no other alternative but to pay the R 8000. He took his money, counted it and threw it at the reception desk.

Finally I though, the saga was over, and I got everyone back into the bust for departure.
My final shock came, when I saw 4 of the men, carrying the table out of the hotel and told me “ Marcos, you can take the table with you and use it at home”.

I could not believe my eyes at this action, and I had to explain to them that they could not do that, because they were not buying a table, but rather paying for the damage, and also there was no way that we could put the table anywhere in the bus.

Finally at  12:10 we departed on a trip that we were supposed to have left at 8am. We had 420km still to drive and 2 activities to complete. We eventually managed all of it, by arriving at destination at about 9:30 PM, to which the guests were not impressed.

Needless to say that this was the most awakening experience I have had , about their mentality and ways. I still love them dearly for their spontaneity and their free spirit.

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How I met the love of my life.

Love has a way, its own way. And just when you think it does not exist, it just comes down like a bomb!.
Unfortunately, I am one of those men that is part of the divorce statistics. My first marriage did not work, and by mutual agreement, my ex-wife and I decided to divorce and be friends again.

Needless to say that I got involved again with someone else, but this relationship also did not work. I eventually decided that I was faulty and I was not destined to have a partner, so, I decided that real love does not exist.

Now, during my travels and tours in cape town, we always stop at a craft market before putting our guests on a boat cruise to go and see the seal island.
One of the stalls in the market had a lady with the most beautiful and peaceful smile I have ever seen.
With time, I became friends with her, and I always used to bring her and her mom , clients to purchase souvenirs. That was my excuse of course, but I really liked this lady. Many times I would invite her for a cup of coffee, to which she would happily accept, and we would enjoy a cup, telling jokes and stories of my daily tours and her customers.

Time went by, and I always used to look forward to bringing clients to the market, just so that I could visit her again.

One day, I was on my way to a 40 day trip. So, I decided before departing from Cape Town, to take my guests for a last minute shopping at the market.
So, Obviously I took them to her stall, where they purchased many things. When they were done, I decided to give her a big hug to say good bye, and told her while doing so “one day I will come and marry you”. To my astonishment, she replied “I will be waiting for you”.
I then left with the most incredible sensation in my heart and soul, as I was not expecting her to let me know that she actually liked me.

So, for 40 days, I thought about this and remembered her words and smile.

When my trip was finished 40 days later, I flew back to Cape Town and decided to go and see if this was real or not. So, I landed and before going home, I went to the market to see her.

Her beautiful smile welcomed me as usual and gave her a big hug and asked her “Did you mean what you said to me on departure?” to which she replied, “of course I did, I am waiting for you” and she kissed me.
That was the most beautiful moment I have had. We got engaged the next week and got married a month later.

The best thing I have ever done. 10 years down the line, and I am still as in love with her as I was then.

My love BOMB hit me with the biggest hammer I could have asked for.

My Hazel, still has the magic of the smile and her personality.

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Gentle giants with a mean purpose

During covid, Tourism went completely dead, and we had to find alternative means of getting income.
Lucky for me, I was offered to be the manager of a recently built Lodge in a town called Potchefstroom.

I was very excited to take the position, as it involved managing a large private nature reserve of some 3000 hectares, where they kept Buffaloes, Zebras, Antelopes of all sorts, and the beautiful gentle giraffes.
So, we moved in and settled into our new life. My duties included managing all aspects of the running of the lodge, including making sure wildlife in the reserve was always in good shape.

Although it was during the full COVID lockdown, we were very busy. It looked as if people refused to be stuck in their houses for months and they were willing to risk a fine by travelling to our lodge and spending a few days there (quite frankly I don’t blame them because the lodge was really spectacular and so was the wildlife).

So, we got into our routine and I decided that the place was too awesome not to enjoy. I therefore started to take a run every morning through the farm, which is very large. These runs took me everywhere around the nature reserve and I started to get a real good sense of the wildlife and the place. It was so incredible to have the opportunity to be able to run through the wilderness of such a place.

I often encountered some buffaloes and koedoes, sable antelopes, zebras and giraffes. When I did, I normally stopped and took some nice picture of them.

One morning, while taking one of my cherished runs, I encountered a tower of giraffes (this is the term used for a group of giraffes) quite at a distance from me. Roughly about 100 mt., so, I stopped to take some pictures and to enjoy the view.
I raised my phone and got them into focus, and started my photographic moment. I was so enjoying the moment and did not notice that the giraffes were getting bigger and bigger on my screen. When I finally clicked on what was going on, I looked at them without the camera, and saw 8 giraffes galloping towards me at full speed.

Now, ladies and gentleman, I am a fast runner and I realized they were coming for me, so, I ran as fast as I could through the field of grass, aiming towards an Acacia tree that was about 50 MT from where I was.
While I was running, the giraffes were galloping almost in slow motion at an angle from the road I was running through. I realized then that I was not going to make it as they were rapidly catching up to me, so, I decided it was time to go for plan B. I saw a thick medium size bush and I dived under it, where I then stopped all my movements, including my breathing.

I saw the giants looking for me all over and I could see that they meant business. After a few minutes, they decided that I was no longer around and they slowly made their way back to where they came from.
A giraffe can kill a large animal with just one kick, so I was very aware that if they caught up to me, I would be in big trouble, therefore, my decision not to carry on running and hide in the bushes instead.

My heart was pounding and I waited a few more minutes before slowly standing up, making sure they did not see me. I then crawled on my knees to the Acacia tree were I managed to get my breath back.
Needless to say that I left the area in a hurry.

I decided that it was very odd for them to have attacked me like that, and I went back later on in a quad bike to investigate the behaviour.

To my amazement, they were in the same spot. But even more amazed I was, when I saw that there was a newly born calf. Beautiful and still weak from the birth.

Then it all made sense.
The baby had just been born, and when they saw me around, they saw me as a predator threat to the new born, and collectively they decided to chase the threat away, as they knew the calf could not run yet.
Nature has a purpose for everything.

I have always seen these gentle creatures as peaceful and gentle, but let me tell you, seeing 8 of them coming at you, it’s not gentle at all. You can see that they have a purpose and that they can harm you no matter how docile they look.

When I was looking at them from the distance on the quad bike, they kept an eye on me but this time they left me alone, and I realized that they also needed to be left alone, so, I left.

Another lesson learnt from my own National Geographic!!!!

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Kodak moment, you like this pose or that one?

Many times, when we are doing a game drive, we have special moments that are created by the animals themselves in the surrounding that you are travelling through.

While visiting Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, we were doing a game drive early in the morning. It was a particularly cold morning and not much was being seeing during the drive.
The guide even resorted to show us bush tracks and the smaller things such as beetles and different types of plants and flowers.

After about 1.5 hrs., we suddenly saw a movement on the left had side of the vehicle about 30 Mt. into the bushes. It was a female Leopard, what luck!!!

It was walking slowly and without worries alongside the road we were driving through, so, it was easy to follow it. It then came towards the vehicle and climbed onto a tree stump and sat there looking at us. Posing and looking every now and then away or sideways. Almost like posing specially for us. After what seemed an eternity (but really just a few minutes), it stood up on the log and posed further for us in all the possible angles you could imagine. This kitty was really enjoying being in the spotlight.

It then jumped off and carried on walking at a distance of about 5 MT from our vehicle. We followed it for another 10 minutes until it jumped again on top of a giant ant hill and sat there for another set of poses. It was very funny because it did not just sat there in one position, but it kept turning around and changing poses every now and then , almost as if someone was instructing it to do so. We got amazing picture of the kitty in front of us, and all you could hear was wow! Awesome ! wow!.

Again after a while, it jumped off and went to a tree where it climbed with such easy until it got to a branch that was overhanging just above us. There it lay with the iconic leopard style of both legs hanging on either side of the tree branch and looking at us as if saying: you like this pose? And kept changing the look and position of its head so we could get even better pictures.

We sat there looking at this incredible animal putting a show for us for quite a while until it decided the show was over. It took one giant leap from the branch where it was posing, to the ground, stopped, looked back at us, licked its mouth a bit and wondered off into the bushes.

We sat there just enjoying what we had seen for a few minutes, and everyone in the vehicle was spellbound by what had just happened.

We went back to our camp, and had our breakfast, and of course everyone bragged at the special kitten we had seen.
I was especially thankful for the moment, as the animal showed us that we were all relaxed enough to stay by us for such a long period, which is not common.

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Kodak moment too close for comfort

Another very special experience with wildlife was when we were doing a game drive in Bayala, which is one of the largest private game nature reserves in Kwazulu Natal in South Africa. It is 30000 hectares big, so, you have a lot s to explore and also plenty of wildlife to see.

In a particular morning , while we were doing a morning drive with guests in an open jeep safari, we encountered 3 female lionesses resting in an open area where there was lots of sand and also a few large ant hills.

We stopped about 6 mt from the pride and situated the vehicle right next to one of the large ant hills. This was not done with any intention at all, it just ended being that way. The ant hill was then located right next to the last sit on the rear right hand side of the vehicle.
We watched the lions resting and grooming themselves for quite a while. One of them decided it was thirsty, so, it got up and walked to a nearby small pond of water and satisfied its thirst drinking water right in front of us.

We thought this was an amazing moment for photography, so, everyone in the vehicle was clicking frantically at it with their cameras.

The lioness went then back to her companions and decided that it was too much of an exercise what she had just done, and dropped herself next to another one of the lazy cats.

A few minutes passed and then another one of them stood up, and stretched herself quite vigorously and took a slow walk towards the vehicle. It reached the front bumper where it took a good sniff and then walked to the right rear of the vehicle, where it found the ant hill that we were parked next to.
This lady lioness decided that it would be a real good vantage point to be on top of the ant hill and with one leap, it jumped on top of it and sat watching us.

Now, ladies and gentleman, remember that our vehicle was parked right next to the ant hill and the mound was as high as the car itself, which put the cat right next to my guest who was sitting on the last sit at the rear on the right hand side.

So, my guest was literally sitting right next to a wild lioness. My guest froze and all he could do is look away, eyes closed and you could see he was not very comfortable having such a predator so close to him.
We of course took many photos and even asked him to look at us and smile, but no words managed to get him to open his eyes and to smile.

The lioness at this stage was looking at him as if saying: what’s your problem!. It eventually relaxed on the mound and rested her body fully on it, crossing her front paws, still looking at us.

The man eventually opened his eyes when we told him that the lion was no longer sitting up, but when he opened his eyes and saw that the mean cat was still there, he hunched back again in a “I am scared position”.

Long minutes went by and eventually the lioness decided it was also thirsty, and therefore it stood up on the little hill, looked at us (actually at him), licked itself a bit and jumped off to the pond of water where we saw her drinking some. After that, she went to join her female friends and they carried on being what lions do best: lazy oversized kittens.

Now, many people have asked me, how come we do not get attacked by lions or other animals in a situation like this?.

The answer is very simple: animals cannot really see us when we are within the confines of our vehicles. All they see is a large thing moving, and because it poses no threat, they are not interested in it. The moment you start moving too much and you let some part of your body protrude from the vehicle, suddenly you become something of interest or a possible danger. But for most part, even the smell of humans is a deterrent for animals. They have an instinct fear to humans. This is the reason why, even when you do walking safaris, animals will smell you and rather leave the area rather than confront you.

The poor man in the rear sit, finally got to relax, and when we asked him how was the experience, he expressed very clearly to us that it had been one of the scariest moments of his life!!!

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Keep your cool , or you will be cold forever.

One of the scariest moments I have had in my travels was when I was doing a road safari from Cape Town to Victoria Falls.

This was a 21 day camping trip with 12 guests. I was the guide, driver and cook for the trip.
The trip is taken on a 12 seater land cruiser plus a trailer, where we carry all the kitchen and tents, plus the guest’s luggage.

Every 2 days we arrive at a new destination which is normally a lodge that has camping facilities.
Our trip got going without any issues and the guests got into the rhythm of the trip quite easily.
After 6 days travelling, we reached the awesome Fish River Canyon in Namibia, were we setup camp.
The place was so beautiful and peaceful that I asked the guests if they would enjoy sleeping under the stars for that night, as it was a completely clear sky. Guests were very excited to the idea and I instructed them to take only their sleeping bags out and leave them rolled up on top of the sleeping mats that I had arranged in a circular fashion around a bonfire that I had made.

We then continued with the afternoon and the dinner under the stars, after which we sat around the fire for quite some time. Everyone admiring the stars that were plenty and very clear.

Late evening, I decided that I needed my rest and excused myself and went to my sleeping bag to sleep.
Now, you know how they say a mechanic’s car never works properly?, well, this would apply to me in this occasion but not because of the car. You see, I instructed everyone to put their sleeping bags on their mats, but to leave them rolled up until it was time to get into it. This is done to avoid getting any surprises crawling into your sleeping bag while it is unattended. But of course, me being that mechanic, had put my bag down and had unrolled it.

I got into my sleeping bag slowly and as soon as my feet reached the end of the sleeping bag, my heart took a skip and I went cold, for my feet had touched something soft and cold. I immediately knew that it was a snake. My instincts of course told me to withdraw my feet away quickly, but my knowledge of the animal stopped me from doing so, as I knew that if I moved my feet now, the viper or whatever was there, would bite me.

I then needed to relax and assess the situation, so I just lay there very still for a while.
Eventually I managed to put a plan together, so I called my guests to come to me and gather around because I had something very important to tell them.
First thing I told them was that I needed them to stay calm for what I was about to tell them, because I needed to stay calm myself.

So, I told them: “there is a snake in my sleeping bag, and I cannot move or it will bite me”.
All hell broke loose and the ladies started crying and they all went into panic mode. So I had to shout at them to please listen carefully and carry on my instructions as I was going to tell them.
After everyone was calmed, I asked them to bring all their sleeping bags and put them on top of my feet on top of my sleeping bag very slowly, so as not to make the snake react.
They all slowly did so and once that was done, I asked everyone to go and sit by the fire and wait for me to give them more instructions.

I then decided, that all I could now do, was wait. My theory was that if the snake would get too hot, it would crawl out by its own will, so all I had to do was wait (that was just a theory though).

About 30 minutes went by in which everyone kept asking me if I was ok and if it had moved yet. I became quite annoyed at the fact that I had to keep answering questions, while in real life I was fighting for my life.
Eventually I felt the snake moving, and advised my guest that it was doing so. They all became very restless and I had to tell them to move away from me and the fire.

The snake moved a bit more, and after an eternity, it decided that it was too hot in there, and it started to find its way out.
I was lying on my back at this stage, and I felt it crawling through my legs, then it got onto my stomach and it then came out to the left of my neck crawling slowly its way pass my head. When I saw its head passing next to me, I realized how bad a situation I was in, for I saw that it was a Puff Adder, one of the most poisonous snakes in Africa. If it had bitten me, I would have had only 40 minutes before I could find help and before all my internal organs would start rotting away, as it is a Cyto-toxic venom.
The snake eventually crawled away past my head and away from the fire place and disappeared into the bush. I then told the guests it was gone and gout out of my sleeping bag. My heart was beating so fast and I was sweating.

Lucky for me I was ok and the guests all hugged me and touched me as if I had been attacked by a buffalo.
Needless to say that we immediately put up the tents and everyone decided that it was way too risky to sleep under the stars.

I apologized to them for having shouted at them, but it was the only way to make them react accordingly. They all understood and I was branded a very super cool person for having kept my cool at all times.
That is all very well, but I was scared, really scared on that moment. I also knew that we were in the middle of nowhere, at least 50 km from the nearest town or village and the guests did not have any sense of directions where to go if needed, so I had to keep my cool no matter what.

In the end, every time we set up camp, they would make a joke of when I was going to invite another girlfriend to my sleeping bag again!!.

The trip ended after 21 days of fantastic memories of viewing and activities that they took with them, including my snake saga.

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Can’t you make a plan? 

So, we tour guides get asked to do very strange things sometimes. Most of the times we are able to accommodate the unplanned, but in one of my trips, I had to really make things work anyway I could.

I was asked to fly to Johannesburg and collect a group of 17 Guests who according to the tour operator were coming from Venezuela.
So, me being from South America, I said great, and took the flight to Johannesburg and waited for my Venezuelan guests with my sign at International arrivals.

After waiting for about 1 hour, the flight landed and the passengers started to come out in drips and drags.
Eventually (after waiting for almost another hour), my guests started to come out.
To my surprise, they were all Russians, and only one of them spoke a few words of English.

I immediately called the tour operator who had hired me to find out what was going on. After I explained to her that the guests were from Russia, she asked me : but they are from a town called Vialoweska, and this is in Venezuela right?.
I could not believe my hears; an operator that does not know where their guests are from ?. I explained to her that Vialowieska is definitely NOT a town in Venezuela, and asked her if she did not check where they were coming from when she organized it all.
Her reply was that they were coming via an inbound operator and she was only asked to organize the South African leg of their tour.

Anyway, she then asked me if I would be able to make a plan, to which I replied that I do not speak a word of Russian and that I could give it a try, but did not want to be blamed if it did not work.

She agreed and I decided, ok, this is going to be real challenge, to try and communicate with a group of people from Russia without knowing a word of Russian.

So, for the next 12 days, I used body language to guide them and try and explain all the things and moments that normally one would do it by means of talking.
I used my hands and facial expressions a lot, and this became a very fun and funny thing for the guests as they tried to understand what was I trying to say. Many times they ended laughing so much at my acting that their stomach hurt.

This , I must admit, was a lot of effort from my part. Have you ever tried to make yourself understood just using your hands and body language?. It is not easy and quite exhausting.
As the days went by thou, it became easier for me to show them what I wanted them to do next and what they were seeing. Always with a lot of laughing, but I managed to get the messages through.

After 12 days , I had to say good bye to my Russian friends, and they all gave me a huge hug and they got the one who knew a few words to thank me for the fantastic effort I put in making their holiday an unforgettable experience. This was for me a great moment, to know that my guests enjoyed the trip , even thou we had the difficulty of the language.

I felt really proud of myself and you know what?, I got many referrals from Russian guests who specifically asked for me to be their tour guide even thou they knew that I do not speak Russian at all.

Tour operator also thanked me, as they received a complimenting letter about my ways and manner in which I conducted the tour. It comes to show that it is not the language so much that you need, but rather the attitude.

Spacieva!!!! (Russian for thank you)

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Parcels of death! 

So, many times you do special things for guests in order to make them feel good about their trip or sometimes to make up for some issue arising during the trip.

In one occasion, I was asked to fly to Johannesburg and receive a group of 37 guests, and do a 12 day tour of South Africa with them.

The operator got information that their arriving flight had been delayed by 3 hours, which made it very difficult for the trip for that day, as we were supposed to get on the bus and still do a 4 hour travel to our first destination. In our original itinerary, we were supposed to go straight for a light lunch before departing from the airport, but this was no longer a possibility because it meant that we would depart really late from the airport and therefore arrive very late at our destination.

The decision was made, to collect the guests and get going straight away.
In order to minimize the damage of the "no lunch scenario", I was then instructed to buy goodies and make little parcels for all the guests, which I found to be a very good idea.
I was given a very good budget per person and went to buy all the goods I would need to be able to make these parcels.

This decision was made in the last minute, so, I really only had time to but the goods and get going for my flight to Johannesburg. I decided it was not a problem. I would have plenty of time there to make up the parcels. I then placed all the goodies into a medium size box and got on my flight.

On arrival in Johannesburg, I then collected my luggage from the carousel and decided to go and find a nice quiet spot to prepare my little surprise parcels, so, what better place than the parking lot.
I went downstairs and found a nice corner where I could then get on with my parcel making.
My idea was to make a nice African looking parcels using brown paper bags and putting a ribbon to close them with all the goodies inside.

I included a small bottle of water, yogurt, some dry fruit, chocolate, snack packet of different things, a fruit and a packet of chips. I was very proud of the things I was putting in the parcels as they were real South African things, and I thought, the guests will love the idea.

I started making up these parcels and placing them on the floor next to the box of goodies.
After a while, I saw a security guard coming very slowly towards me, and this looked very strange as he was sort of trying not to make any sudden movements. Then I saw two other guards also coming towards me in the same style. I wondered what was going on so I stood up and smiled, and to my surprise all 3 of them bent further down and put their hands in front as if saying “don’t do it”.

One of them then approached me slowly and asked me to move away from the parcels slowly. I suddenly realized that I was in a bit of trouble, and I then saw that there were now 5 more security men surrounding us from a distance. So, I moved away raising my hands and told the security who I was, and what I was doing. Of course they did not really believe me and they asked me to kneel down and put whatever I had in my hands on the floor.

I told them clearly that I had no bomb or anything that could hurt anyone and asked them to check the parcels. They eventually got to me but they were very careful not to be aggressive (I think they were scared that I would trigger my BOMB!!!).

They asked me to slowly open one of the parcels, to which I complied and they then asked me to open the rest of them.

Once they saw what was inside the parcels, they all seemed to relax and then I showed them my itinerary and explained what was happening with my incoming guests.

The tension was broken when I made a joke and told them that my guests are probably going to be the only ones exploding from so much eating of my goods.

So we all ended having a good laugh and they even helped me finishing up my parcels. I had a few spare goodies which I then gave them and they were very happy to receive it.

Of course it was my doing to have chosen the parking place to do this. I just wanted a nice peaceful place I could do it, but I now realised that it was very foolish of me to have chosen the parking spot.
Things could have gone much uglier than what it turned out to be.

Moral of the story: if flight is delayed, don’t make bombs in a parking spot!!

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River Rafting or River Wrestling

 One of the ugliest moments I have seen on a tour, was when I had to take a group of 16 guests on a river rafting trip along the Orange River in South Africa.

The trip consisted of 5 days of navigating in 2 man canoes along the Orange River. The river has many rapids , nothing dangerous, but lots of adrenaline moments. Company that organized this sent a crew of 5 people to do the catering, the setting up of the camp every day and of course to look after the guest’s safety and comfort while on the adventure.

The Main leader, was travelling with his girlfriend, and they were carrying the supplies for the group in their canoe. With the result that there was no place for his girlfriend to sit in the canoe, and she had to make do sitting on top of the pile of bags in their canoe. It looked really uncomfortable and we all commented that it did not look safe, but we all saw that these people were used to do this trips and we just let it be.
We eventually got going with 3 of the staff in rescue canoes, in case anyone fell in the water, they would very quickly get to the person and put them back in their raft.

We navigated for about 40 minutes until we got to the first rapids, and we had a great time going through them. The leader with his girlfriend struggled trying to keep the canoe up. It really looked over loaded and uncomfortable for the girlfriend who had to balance herself all the time. But they made it through and we continued along the river.

Later on , we arrived at our second rapid, which was a bit more hectic than the first one. We all went through and then we watched the leader with his girlfriend have a go at it (as they always stayed last). As they went through, the man could not control the canoe very well and their boat capsized and all the goods ended in the river floating away. He then blew a gasket at her and started shouting how stupid she had been and how useless she was etc. Of course, there must be a time when patience is done and this is what happened to her. She then started screaming back at him and they started fighting in the water with her throwing punches and calling him all sorts of things.

This carried on for almost 20 minutes and it was very ugly and uncomfortable to watch. Eventually one of the other staff members approached them and told them that the guests were watching them. The moment they heard this, they immediately stopped their fight and tried to make it as if it had been just a joke, but we all knew that it was not so.

They tried to gather all they could from the river and we camped not far from there. As we got off the river, they apologized to us, but we could all see that there was something very wrong going on.
I called them all to a side and told them that this was not professional at all and that my guests were very distraught from what they had experienced in the water.
They all assured me that it was not going to happen again. I spoke to my guests who I saw were very tense with it all, and we all decided to let it pass but a report was going to be sent to the company about the issue.

After setting up camp, we made a fire and enjoyed our meal under the stars. We all retired eventually with sore arms and legs after our first day of river rafting.

Next morning, very early we heard screaming and shouting again, and the two were at each other once again, not caring that they had guests with them. I quickly got up and went to speak to them and told them that this was going to stop right now.
They once again apologized, but you know when things are going to carry on like, and they will not get any better. I met with the guests and we decided to cut the trip short, to which the couple begged us to please reconsider as this was going to cause serious problems with their work.

Unfortunately I told them the decision was made and the guests wanted to go home. They then had to call for the company to come and get us via one of the escape routes. Of course when they came, their main boss arrived and wanted to know what was happening. Unfortunately for the couple, the guests all told their boss of the two episodes we had had, and the big boss then apologized once again and asked us if he could organize someone else to carry on, but the guests were already in a bad space and decided to just go home.

We ended the trip 3 days earlier but we decided to go and have a good time in Cape Town and we visited Mama Africa which is a fantastic restaurant with live African dances and music.

It is a sad thing that we could not finish the trip, because the rapids in the Orange River are awesome and very safe to go though.

The couple that acted as our leaders were taken off the trips.

It was really very ugly to see a man reacting to his own doing. We all saw that at some point the canoe was going to tip over because it was overloaded (against his girlfriend’s advice). His ego did not want to accept that a woman was telling him what to do. And instead of him trying to help her after she fell in the water, he started abusing her verbally and showed no sympathy for her at all.

We were all just glad to be out of their very ugly space.

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Leave me Alone!

During my trips, you get to experience all different types of people and specially on the long ones, you get to experience the dynamics of how people interact and how their moods can change and become a huge problem.

I was doing a 16 day Overland Safari from Cape town to Victoria fall with a group of 16 guests.

The trip was done in camping style. Every 2 days we would move from one camp to the next and set up camp together with the guests, who sometimes struggled to set up their canvas igloo tents.
It takes about 3 days for everyone to get into the rhythm of things , but once they get it, it becomes very easy.

My group consisted of couples and they all seemed very nice and lots of fun.

On the 3^rd night, after we had had a very nice meal cooked my myself, and after everyone retired to their tent, we were all listening to the beautiful silence of the landscape which is a magical thing to do, specially for those that live in the cities, who have never been able to be able to listen to the silence.

The silence was suddenly broken by screaming and shouting coming from inside one of the tents. Both Man and Lady were shouting all sorts of things to each other, including bad language. I waited to see if they would calm down but the conflict escalated even more and the shouting got even louder.
I was about to get out of my tent when I heard a Zip of one of the tents being unzipped. Someone got out and 3 seconds later that person (who was the lady of the conflict) came to knock on my tent. I opened it fast and the first thing she told me was that she wanted her own tent.
I explained her that I did not have a spare tent but I could then give her my tent, to which she agreed.

I then very quickly had to take all my belongings out of my tent while she went to fetch all her goods from the tent she was sharing with her husband.

I could see that she was in a very stressed mood, so I decided not to ask questions and went to sleep in the truck. All this time , her husband kept on telling her how unreasonable she was acting but she did not want to listen to him or anyone.
After a while, she settled in her tent and everyone went back to sleep.

Next morning I got up to prepare breakfast and eventually my guests started to show signs of being alive by exiting their tent, including the lady who I offered her a cup of coffee which she took gladly.

Eventually her husband came out and when he tried to approach her, she chased him away telling him to leave her alone.

We could all see that there was a very bad conflict going on between the two of them, so, everyone stayed away from both of them.

We carried on with the days activities and everything we were supposed to do, was organized per couple, but from that day on, she insisted on doing things on her own, so I had to organize separate bikes, separate, canoes, separate flights for skydiving etc.

During meals, specially dinner time, she would seat on one side of the camp and he would be at the opposite end, and when he tried to approach his wife, she would immediately tell him to “Leave me alone”.

It was really tense, because we did not know how to be with the two people fighting and the atmosphere grew very tense around the group.

Anyway, days passed and this continued through the trip. Group got used to them like that and we all carried on as if nothing was happening.
The husband approached me one evening and asked me if I could talk to his wife, but I told him that I did not want to interfere at all as it was not my place and both of them were my guests, so, I had to respect both of their privacy.

We eventually reached Victoria Falls and had our last dinner at the Boma, which is a fantastic experience in victoria falls, with drumming, dancing and good food.
Even that evening the husband tried to approach his wife and she moved away and went to dance on her own.

Next morning they were due to catch a 12 PM flight. The night before, the lady approached me and asked me if I could take her to the airport early morning, to which I told her that there would be no problem.

Woke up at 5 and I then took her to the airport, where she had apparently organized her own way back on another flight.

I went back to camp and started preparing breakfast for the rest of the group, and eventually the husband came out and when he saw that his wife’s tent was empty, he asked me if I knew where she was.
I explained to him that she had asked me to take her to the airport early in the morning.
His eyes started tearing and I could see that he did not expect the outcome of it all.
I offered him a cup of coffee and saw him sitting alone in a corner, very upset and down.

I eventually took them to the airport and the moment we got there, he tried to look for her but she had obviously left already.

It is sad to see people breaking up specially when they are supposed to be having a holiday and have fun together

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Kitty cat wants warmth!

During a safari that I was doing with 3 guests in a small car, we encountered a mating couple of lions. They were right next to the road and we stopped to observe them.

The cats were very relaxed and did not seem to be affected by our presence.
Eventually the male lion stood up and made his way towards the car, which to me and my guests was a plus. The male lion seemed to like the feel of our car as he started to rub himself against the body of the car.

Eventually the male decided that it was too cold for him to be walking on cold tar and he took one leap and landed on the bonnet of our car.
The car shook vigorously and he then decided that the warmth of the engine under the bonnet was exactly what he was looking for. So, he lay down on it with his legs hanging from both sides of the bonnet as he was too big to fit on it.

This was super cool for me and the guests as they never in their life thought that they would have large kitty cat on the bonnet of a car.

We stood there for quite a while and more vehicles arrived at the site, which made us become the centre of attraction to everyone.
Of course the only photos we could take, were those we could take from the inside of the car through the front window of the vehicle.

After quite some time, I decided that it was time to move on, so, I shook the car gently forward to signal to the lion that I wanted him off the bonnet.
It simply looked at me and carried on doing what they like doing bet: Nothing!

I the shook the car a bit more aggressively and this time the ion slid a bit off to one side, but by using his claws he managed to stay on the bonnet.

My next try was much harder and the lion this time slid off the bonnet but used his claws not to fall off suddenly. He then walked off to where his lady was and decided to go and join her on the ground.

Needless to say that we were the star of the show for all the cars around us, and people took special interest in taking photos of the scratches the kitty cat had left on the bonnet.

When I returned the car (it was a rental) and I was asked what had happened to it, the guy receiving the car thought that I was joking when I told him about the lion. I had to explain to him many times that it was not a joke at all. Eventually he saw that I was telling the truth when the guests told him about it.

He then thought that this as way too cool and called his colleagues to come and see the scratches.

If this had been my car, I would have left it as is. Who else could claim that he had a Lion scratch the bonnet of their car?

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Heart broken
 

There is nothing worst for a Tour Guide and I think for anyone to have to leave someone behind that you know needs support and help.

This happened to me in one of my trip, and it has haunted me ever since.

In one of my 23 day trips from Cape Town to Victoria Falls, we arrived at a private nature reserve for doing 2 days of Safaris. One of the wives of one of my guests did not come on the afternoon Safari and I was told that she was a bit tired, so, I let her rest and we then left for an afternoon safari.

It was a fantastic safari and everyone enjoyed it.

We then came back and at night and we then all gathered for a beautiful dinner under the stars.

At this point, the husband of the lady that had stayed behind, came to tell me that his wife was not feeling well. I then immediately went to see what was wrong with her, and when we got to the room, she was breathing heavily and did not look good at all.

We then put all the emergency procedures in place, in conjunction with the lodge manager, and we called an ambulance to come and check her out.
The problem was that we were 2.5 hrs. away from the nearest city and ambulance service, so, we had to wait and monitor her condition while the ambulance got to us, which was sometimes after 10:00pm.

On arrival the paramedic assessed her and immediately saw that she needs to go to a hospital. I then instructed the husband to go with her and that we would come pass the hospital tomorrow on our way to the airport. So, he left with her in the ambulance.

Next day, we all checked out and I collected the couple’s bags and set out to the hospital which was 2.5 hrs. away.

We had learned in the meanwhile that the lady was put into ICU but that she was stable. This was a big worry as we were all very concerned for her.
On arrival at the city where the hospital was located, it started pouring with rain, and I had already made arrangements for the husband to check into a hotel next to the hospital.
I then asked him to meet me there. Unfortunately with the rain coming down in buckets, we both got soaking wet and when I met him at reception, I could see that he was very distraught because of his wife’s condition.
I asked the receptionist at the hotel to organize him a room where he could dry himself , and after chatting to him I learned that his wife might need a major operation, and that they would have to stay behind as she was in no condition to carry on with the trip.

My heart sank as he told me all this with tears in his eyes. His concern for his wife was huge and he had no one to stay with him in this small town.
Unfortunately, we were on our way to catch a flight that same day, so, I could not delay or even stay with him to help him,  which he understood.

I told my boss, to please keep an eye on the proceedings and stay in touch with him so that at least he would not feel that he was alone.
The hardest part was to give him a reassuring hug of good bye, knowing that all things were not quite well. He thanked me with tears in his eyes and I had no option but to leave him there.

We all felt terrible in the bus, but the rest of the tour had to continue for the rest of the group, which was quite large.
I kept in touch with him throughout the rest of the tour, and found out that she had to undergo a very stressed operation.
Lucky all went well, but they had to stay over for 10 days before she could make her trip back to her country.

I have never forgotten the distress in the gentleman’s face when I had to say good bye to him.

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Tired of your nonsense

Covid was a very trying time for everyone. And to me and my family, it was a time to get together and get through it no matter what.

I was offered the opportunity to be a 5 star lodge manager at Kraal lodge, which is situated in Potchefstroom, South Africa. I moved my family there, where we got a nice cosy house to stay in.

Our lives settled into the running of the lodge with my wife, and the children got used to the new routine of having to go to school and also the life at a game reserve.
The reserve was large; over 13000 hectares with all kinds of wildlife, which included giraffes, antelopes of all sorts, zebras, and Buffaloes. Lot of them.

Now the lodge itself was situated on top of a hill with stunning views of the surrounding landscape. The front of the lodge was planted with very nice lawn, which had to be maintained. Water was an issue to keep it wet and healthy, so, it was quite a challenge to maintain its green colour and healthy status.

Buffaloes need to eat, and they can smell fresh juicy grass from miles. So, these guys decided that coming to chew on my lawn was their past time.
Every day I would find the lodge lawn trampled and full of holes from the hooves of these heavy animals, and I had to then do my best at repairing the damage.

This got really bad as it became the everyday routine of spending hours sorting the mess out. I eventually decided that enough is enough and asked for permission to fence the top of the lodge with electrified fence, which I was then allowed to do.
I spent 3 weeks then installing poles, and stretching cables all around the lodge, and eventually I connected the whole thing to 8000V of electricity.

Now, I know what you are thinking right now: how cruel of me to have done so!. But the electric shock is not the type of shock that you would get from a normal electric circuit. This is the type of fencing that is applied to most farms where there is livestock that needs to be kept in certain areas. Actually very rarely do the animals get a shock, as they are able to smell the electric current flowing through the wires.

Now, you would also think that 8000v would be enough. Let me tell you that I learnt very quickly that in order to stop a buffalo from going through your fence and dragging the whole thing with it, you need at least 15000v. I had to repair the fence a number of times as I had to test which current would be correct to keep them out of the perimeter of the lodge.

One day in my frustration, seeing that they had broken the fence once again, and taking for granted that they had disconnected everything, I grabbed the cable to move it and got a shock that I jumped so high and I was numb for about 5 minutes.

I was so upset with these creatures, as all I wanted, was for them to understand that there was 13000 hectares of natural grass that they could eat, but my lawn was supposed to be out of bounds for them. I walked that morning after having my electric shock to the lodge itself for a cup of coffee, resigned that I was going to have to fix the fence once again. Then I saw these animals chewing and trampling my lawn. Now, ladies and gentleman, I am a peaceful guy, a naturalist guy and a patience person, but that moment made me blow a gasket! If you know what I mean.

I got so upset with these beasts that I walked into the kitchen, grabbed two large pots and went outside and stood on a rock close to the buffaloes and started banging the pots together, making a hell of a racket.
These animals I found, do not like noise, and very quickly they scrambled away. I followed them beating the pots and eventually I had them off the lawn and area.

Let me tell you, this must have been the funniest thing my staff had ever seen, as without me knowing, they were already in the lodge waiting for me to come in, and they saw the whole thing.
When I finished chasing the buffaloes, they were all almost crawling on the floor with laughter after seeing this guy chase one of the most dangerous animals in Africa using two pots as arsenal.

We had a good laugh and they told me that they had never seen anyone so angry and so determined to get rid of these large monsters.

I then decided that the best way to keep them away was to make a noise every day at different times of the day to warn these creatures to stay off my lawn. And it became a routine. I would go late in the evening, and early morning and beat the two pots together making a noise.

And you know?, they eventually got the message and stopped coming to eat my lawn.

When the owner came for holiday from Australia, he had such a good laugh hearing me bang the pots and thought I was nuts, but accepted my uncruel method and it became a feature of the lodge, to come and see the manager manage the buffaloes!!!!

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I envy them

I have met many people in my life and travels. And some of them have left me with either a new view in life and others with a special feeling in my heart.

In Lesotho, I was traveling with a couple, who every year come back to Africa and ask me to take them to a new African Destination.

This particular year, I decided that they needed to visit the Kingdom of Lesotho, which is a locked country within South Africa. Roughly 150km by 140km circular country, surrounded by mountains with a population of about 2 million people, out of which 87% live in rural conditions up in the mountains.

This is the kingdom of the Basothos. Very humble and modest people, with amazing traditions, but because of the harshness of their environment, they always have a worn out face, although they are happy and enjoy their way of life nevertheless.

I decided to take my guests to meet two very old sisters that leave up in the mountain, to see how they manage to survive in this place.
I organized a Tour guide, who happened to be one of the sister’s son.

We drove for about 1 hour up into the mountains, through very rough terrain. Not a place that you would normally drive a normal car through. Eventually we stopped at the edge of a cliff in the middle of nowhere, and the guide told us that we would have to walk from this point.
We got off the vehicle and to my astonishment, I saw a really steep cliff going down and a very narrow path, not suitable for people with any form of vertigo.

We then started the walk down this path, and while walking, the guide explained to us that his mom and sister have been living here all their lives. The one lady is 108 years old and the other one 105 years old. We scrambled down this treacherous path for about 45 minutes until we got to a large rock outcrop and stood on top of it wondering how much further until we get to their place.

Well, we just went around the rock outcrop and to our amazement, under this big rock was the ladies home.

The rock was a very large outcrop which over hanged out of the hill and the valley bellow was right under our eyes in front of the rock. Under the rock outcrop, there was a structure of mud houses built into the rock. Very solid, very rural and very pretty, as they had decorated it with nice earthy colours. The two mud hats were surrounded by a small kraal or enclosure to keep the sheep and goats inside.
Chickens and pigs were running loose around the complex. Then, there they were, two very old ladies, sitting around a small fire, with a steel pot in the middle and a beautiful smile when we arrived.

So serene, and at total peace with themselves and their environment.

They greeted us and showed us their humble huts, and we sat for a while asking them questions about their life and what they did there.
To our astonishment, both sisters’ husbands had passed away when they were very young, and since, they decided to retreat to the mountains.

They do not have any contact with the rest of the world, other than when their son brings in visitors. They had not been to town or out of their area for over 20 years now. They explained to us that they have found total peace here and that they were very happy, with no stress, no worries, and no commitments other than the day by day survival.

They had chicken to provide eggs, goats and cows for milk, and they tended a small vegetable garden which provided them with basics.

We sat looking at the landscape with them for quite a while when they invited us to “listen to your souls”.
It was an amazing thing to do, to simply be at peace with everything around you.

The most astonishing thing was the fact that the tour guide only charged us for fuel there and back and as payment, he requested that we carry with us some fresh fruit and drinking water for the ladies, which we did, and when we gave these items to them, their faces lit up like children receiving the nicest of sweets.

After a while we had to leave them and started the trek up the path to the vehicle.

I had never felt the feeling of jealousy for that kind of life and peace before. I realized that we complicate our lives without need, and that going to see how these ladies lived, so happily with so little is a valuable lesson to us city slickers who are always striving for more material things.

I honestly can say that I Envy their life.

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Stop leaning on me

You know when your partner sometimes takes the whole bed and you are left with just the edge of the bed to hang on?.

Well, while on a safari with my wife, we were travelling through Namibia, camping at every place we stopped for a rest.
We travelled through the Naukluff Park, which is an incredibly beautiful desert area of Namibia. Although it is a desert, it has amazing colours and contrasts everywhere and sometimes you cannot believe that you are travelling through such surreal landscape.

We happen to be travelling with our dog “Petunio” who used to come with us everywhere.

This particular afternoon we headed for the campsite at the entrance of Sossusvlei, which is in the middle of the red Namib Desert. Upon arrival, and trying to get the permit to camp, we were told that the dog was not allowed in the campsite. It was late afternoon and there was no other place close to camp, as the nearest town was at least 3 hours drive. We then asked the ranger if it was ok then for us to set up camp outside the fence of the park for the night, to which we got the ok.

So, we then looked for a nice suitable place along the fence outside the campsite and setup our tent. We settled for the night after cooking a nice meal and spent quite a while looking at the stars.

This is the nice thing about Namibia. You can literally stop anywhere and camp and not have to worry about a thing.

We then decide it was time to go to bed and we settled in our sleeping bags for the night. My wife on one side and our dog petunio next to her.

I woke up at night very uncomfortable as I felt my wife had put all her back against me and had me penned against the tent side. I tried to push her away many times to no avail. She was too fast asleep to move. The whole night I had to keep pushing her away and I even resorted to using my elbow to make her move to her side.
This went on the whole night and eventually I was too tired to carry on fighting and fell asleep.

I woke up the next morning feeling relieved that she was no longer so close to me. To my astonishing when I looked at her in the morning, she was lying in the opposite side of where I was pushing her the whole night.

I then decided that it was time to feel what was then next to me, and I was shocked to feel that the body I kept pushing away the whole night, was still next to me but on the outside of the tent. I then woke her up and told her to be very quiet. I unzipped the tent and saw that a gemsbok, which is a large grey antelope with very long and straight horns, was lying next to the tent. It obviously felt that the heat of my body was a nice thing and decided to lie down next to me for the night.

The most astonishing thing about this is that my dog knew the danger of scaring an animal as large as this, and kept quiet through the night and never made a sound.
Eventually the gemsbok saw my presence and stood the whole 1.8 mt and probably close to 600Kg with horns 1.2 mt. long. It wondered off slowly into the desert and we stood there admiring the beauty of it.

Needless to say that we moaned at our dog for being so useless a watch dog, but he looked at us with a face like saying: I actually saved your life by keeping quiet!! 

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First White rubbish collector

I came to South Africa during the peak of the very cruel system called Apartheid.
This system separated people by ethnic group and by race, and under this regime, non-white people did not have many rights and were completely oppressed by a brutal system, created and implemented officially by the Afrikaner government.

Black people, which included African, Coloured and Indians, were given a very low human status at that time here in South Africa, and were only considered good for hard labour and nothing else.

When I came to this country, I attended a school where I did my secondary phase, and afterwards, I went to the Afrikaans university of Pretoria. All these institutions at the time were exclusively for whites only.

During my university years, I was a student very much in need of cash and pocket money, which my hard working mother could not really provide, as she was getting a very small salary, which was just good enough for our basic needs.

I have never had any problem with hard work; so, when I saw in the newspapers at the time, that they were looking for anyone willing to come and work at the municipality, I took the opportunity and went to apply for a job.

During this time, the municipal workers, who were all black, were undergoing strikes against the government and against the apartheid regime, and the municipalities were running behind with the everyday tasks.

When I presented myself at the municipal office, for rubbish collection, they looked at me with very incredulous eyes, not understanding why this white guy was applying for a job that was supposed to be for a black person.
Nevertheless, because I was a white person applying, they had to consider me, and they then appointed me as one of the rubbish collectors. Also, because I was white, I was assigned the cleanest truck in the municipality.

We went out the first day and spent the day hanging from the truck and collecting the rubbish from the houses we were passing. My team was made of 3 black men (who though it hilarious that a white man was working with them), and myself.

We got along without any problems and we had good laughs the whole day when they would challenge me to pick up the next bin, which they thought I was not going to be able to do because of my weak look as a whitey.

At the end of the day, we had to report to the depot and we got our pay. To my astonishment, I got paid 4 times what the rest of the guys got for doing exactly the same work, but because of my skin colour.
I could not accept this, and called the guys and asked them to put all our wages together into a tin which we all did, and then I split it evenly between all of us.
The guys were ecstatic because suddenly they were earning more than double what they would normally get for a day’s work.

So, from that day, the staff would fight to get on my truck so that they could also enjoy the better pay. I made a lot of very dear friends during those days, and although I don’t like to relate to race, most of them were black fellows with whom I shared fantastic moments of hard work and fun.

The newspapers intersected our truck once, and wanted to interview me because of the fact that I was a white person doing the work of a black man. I told the newspaper man that I was not interested in becoming his news story; I was merely another person working for some extra money like everyone else.

These kind of inequalities were the common thing at that time in South Africa, and although it did not affect me because I was white, it affected me morally, seeing how millions of black South Africans were being treated by the regime, and worst of all, was the fact that we could not say a single word against it or you would end up in jail.

I am so happy that we managed to get out of this stupidity in a peaceful manner and that the dignity of all South Africans has been restored after so many years of oppression and suffering.

I have huge respect for my fellow black South Africans and their tolerance and patience.

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A whitey gardening? 

During the apartheid in South Africa, certain jobs where expected to be done by black people and other jobs by white people. Most of the labour jobs were done by the oppressed black population. The education system was made so that black citizens were not able to get a proper tertiary education and were kept in the dark in all aspects of education, because it was the best way to control them; by keeping them as ignorant as possible.

During that time, I was a student at university and any form of income to make pocket money was welcome.

My aunt at the time had a very wealthy lady friend, who used to pay me for looking after her house while she went on holiday overseas.

On one occasion when I arrived at her house to look after it, she was very annoyed because her gardener could not cut the edge the way she wanted it. I offered to do it for her and after many hours of cutting and trimming, I managed to do a straight edge around her house for which she was delighted.
She then saw my potential and asked me in a very shy manner if I would care to look after her garden, to which I replied that it would be no problem.
We made a deal and agreed to the wage for doing so, and this then became my every week job, where I would come and maintain her hedge and garden.

In Pretoria, this has to be done very regularly because of the soil and weather, which makes plants grow really fast specially during the summer season.
So, every week I was there trimming and cutting.

Her neighbours, who were all from the high society, saw me, and found that my work was very good. So, they came to ask her for permission to hire me to do the same job in their gardens, and this is how I became very popular in her street as the guy who could trim their gardens to perfection.

Now, you have to understand that this was something very new for all of them, to have to hire a white gardener to do this kind of work.

The word got passed around and somehow it got to the TV crew, who one day arrived while I was trimming one of the gardens and asked me if I would mind an interview. I was very surprised for this because I did not know what I could possibly be interviewed for; I was not popular, famous, or had not won any price anywhere.

I reluctantly agreed but asked them what the interview was about. They told me that I was doing unprecedented work in the area and they would like to make a story of it.

It was only when they started asking me questions during the interview, that I clicked what was all about it. They had never seen a white person doing this kind of work and they wanted to know what inspired me to do it, what was the reason for me to want to do a job that would normally be done by black people.

I got really annoyed with the whole thing and eventually told them that I was prepared to do any honest work for money just like any other human would, like our black comrades do all the time. I made it very clear that I though very little of them, for wanting to interview me and not a black person, who have been doing it all their lives. Why did it take a white person to be noticed doing this work, when there were thousands of African people who had been doing it forever.

This is the type of mentality we had in those times in South Africa, it did not occur to the media or government that we were all equally fit to do any tasks irrespective of the colour of the skin.

In the end, the interview did not go the way they thought it would, because they saw that I was not going to give into being a hero for doing a job that was supposed to be for black people and not for whiteys.

I think also this is the reason why the interview was never aired. It went against what the supreme white expected from another white person at that time.

Never the less, I can claim to have been probably the first whitey doing some gardening in the area which was controlled by the Afrikaner apartheid government. So, in a very minute manner, I was already fighting against the system.

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