13th October 2006 -
Ever since I was six or seven years old I've known all about safaris in Deepest Darkest Africa. You begin by kitting out in a khaki safari suit, a Pith Helmet and an Elephant gun. You hire a couple of local guides and an Elephant (complete with sun canopy) then silently stalk through the jungle till you see a rampant lion or stampeding water buffolo and then you shoot it and return to camp. Once there you relax with a sundowner, usually gin & tonic (the quinine in tonic is good for preventing malaria) and then feast on the day's catch. Traditionally this would be served by a shiney faced local chef as one watched the sun melt into the horizon. In reality though, there are one or two adjustments required to this paradigm. Firstly for safari suit read tee shirt, shorts and sandals, and for jungle, National Park. Guns have been replaced by the Nikon SLR digital camera and the G&T is more likely to be a can of Tuska beer or perhaps a cold chardonay if you're lucky, and designer drugs rather than quinine are more commonly used nowadays to control malaria. The romantic backdrop to my daydream quickly evaporated in the reality of the hot Serengeti sun. Nevertheless we did see more wild animals than you could poke a stick at. We watched lions and leopards kill and eat their prey and we listened in alarm as stray baboons and hyeneas visited our camp site in the wee small hours to sort through our rubbish can! This may not have been the Eroll Flynn type safari I had always imagined but it was exciting experience we will never forget.
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