2 February 2011, 0600: Unable to sleep any more after rather a poor 3.5 hours through a toothache, I decided to take my exhausted body for a refreshing jog. Before dawn, it was cold and I used my head-torch; I got round my circuit in 53 as opposed to about 40 minutes - a very fine little sortie.
Teeth problems deprived me of proper sleep for a week, but our local Maple Lea Dental Practice fixed serious problems from an unexpected failure of NHS treatments. An abcess and a cavity were separately treated on this day, so that I got out to Johannesberg in good order and expecting a fast return to full vigour, despite conscientious objection to taking any sleep during the 11 hour flight from Heathrow, lest I miss an opportunity for cloud stereo photography.
Those taking the group flight with EXPLORE were in a minority, and were last to arrive at Johannesburg's Cozy Den hotel prior to setting out southwards in two vans for Dundee. I had less time to get sorted after the flight than expected, and my first faux pas was to question the contents of an £8 lunch box that had been pre-arranged for everyone; "depends what's in it" I replied when asked whether I would have one. I just wanted maybe some juice, and certainly no peanuts on a temporary dental dressing. Everybody else was energetic, enthusiastic and ready to, so I got one.
I sat in the passenger seat next to our co-leader Graeme Anderson on the drive to Dundee, and enjoyed his stories of
research for a master's degree on grasses. But an attempt to raise enthusiasm for Jeremy Taylor's 1961 song
"AG PLEEZ DEDDY" made famous in the hit show "Wait a Minim"
failed utterly. Please could we return to the Good Old Days GOD of the 20th Century so that I don't have to sing this
with a horrid little chorus anomaly included:
Pop corn, chewing gum,
peanuts and bubblegum,
ice cream, candy floss and Eskimo Pie.
Ag Deddy how we miss
n-word balls and liquorice,
Pepsi Cola, Ginger beer and Canada Dry.
[Thanks to authors and publishers for their (implicit) permissions ..]
Suppose you tell your driver "Well you really are a great driver. If you carry on like this we'll finish our journey real quick". You intend a compliment, but for a joke you say it as though you mean that you think we're all going to die. The fun lies in having people wonder whether or not you are serious.
On a different occasion I suggested that I could jump out of our safari vehicle and "the stupid lizard thing wouldn't give me any real trouble at all, would it?" The idea here was to stimulate an animated lecture on the fighting qualities of the lizard, but I think that people thought that I really might try it.
I suppose that I seemed like a silly and rather vicious old fool. On that holiday toothache had weakened me and I lacked presence of mind. I used to be late for assignations and then fail to apologize, which was grossly insensitive. Trevor Ashenden has a telephoto picture of me by the beach at St Lucia looking miserable. He transfers his pictures from each day straight from his camera on to picasaweb, paying picasaweb relatively small fees. Access is free: he has a great way of contributing to memories of his many trips, both for him and everyone else.
For me this tour was good in that I did get elephant stereo-pair photos. Others' photos were really good. Our vehicles were old and probably illegitimate in terms of Kruger National Park regulations, but that didn't matter. Their diesel engines were noisy but that wouldn't have mattered either (though it was a mistake to ask). I would have liked to be seated higher over the road. We saw lots of elephants - too many. It seems impossible to decide which particular elephants to cull; and the response has been for South Africa to ally with Mozambique and with Zimbabwe to expand Kruger National Park northwards and eastwards. The unsolved problem of what to do about large numbers of Loxodonta africana, along with large numbers of Homo Sapiens, is depressing. See the wonderful book by Michael Garstang, "Elephant Sense and Sensibility" (2015).
I think that EXPLORE's tour ZK03FEB11 could well have been two days longer, to take in a visit to bushman paintings near Piggs Peak in Swaziland and to look closer at the geological features. The shopping opportunities were great, but there was too much pressure. At some £43 per diem for the trip, I was no big spender. It seems that this popular safari tour is a great money-spinner for EXPLORE.
On 28 Feb 11 I uploaded my elephant stereos et al. to appropriate places on this page, ready to start work on an EXPLORE tour in April to Madagascar. Late on 1 March I got a telephone interview from Shaun Harris, Customer Relations Manager for EXPLORE; after a while it became clear that he was throwing me off the upcoming tour to Madagascar, booked earlier on the basis of three previous EXPLORE trips. No doubt encouraged by Chris Taylor, I had received a barrage of negative comments from others on ZK03FEB11, and Mr Harris ended by telling me to go elsewhere than EXPLORE for future trips. This was totally devastating, as I thought that my overall contributions had always been strongly positive. It took me about 4 months to understand what had happened and recover some self-confidence. (Photos may be found on picasaweb.)