Friday, 6 February 2015

Safari Stories - Fellow travellers

My good friend Jimmy C has told me on many occasions that the companions on your holiday are a very important part, which explains why he and Kim are on their annual sojourn in Hua Hin and Linda and I are in Southern Africa!

When we arrived at our first camp, we had the place to ourselves for the first day - two exclusive game drives for just the two of us! Then we were joined by a young lady called Patsy - who has an impressively important job in NYC - and was experiencing her first visit to Africa on her own. Luckily we all go on very well and had a lot of fun together. For the last night we were joined by a Swiss lady travel agent of a certain age - enough said.

Arriving at Little Kwara we shared the dinner table with two 'elderly' British couples and were happy to learn that one couple were leaving early so would not be on the game drive but a little concerned that the others would be our sole companions for the next three days. Thankfully they also proved to be quite sociable - if a little set in their ways. Still we got on well enough and had a few laughs together - might have got on better with the wife if we had been told earlier that she was totally deaf in one ear and not just rude. Although she did tell us that she had given the departing couple a fake email address because 'she didn't really want to hear from then again!'

As we arrived at Tau Pan all the other guests were leaving and we were then joined by an Australian couple who had emigrated from Egypt 25 years ago who were to be our sole companions for the whole three days. He was a pompous GP who had done very well - shares in 8 GP practices in rural Victoria - slightly offset by his sheer joy at the experience of his first Safari. She was a mildly racist pharmacist - all for integration and critical of multicultural societies but very glad that her eldest son had married a girl who was 'one of us.' She interrupted every conversation with her inane chatter and didn't want to listen to anyone else - no hug for her as we left the aircraft and certainly no email exchange. 

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