Town day #2

14 June 2016

Another town day, but this time I was picking people up and saying goodbye to Lou. We left early enough from camp so that I was able to get to Beef Boys as well as allowing Lou to shop for curious and buy her a decent cup of coffee while we waited. We later found out that the lady who sold us the goods well and truly ripped us off. Another pet-peeve – when people take advantage of tourists and increase the price with 100%. Never taking anyone to that shop again. I stayed with Lou at the airport to make sure there weren’t any problems while our guide took the agents (who were actually journalists sent by our marketing team) to a restaurant to have lunch while we waited for our GM to arrive from Kasane. Luckily I did stay! Because the people who were supposed to buy her a ticket had a problem with paying in Pula’s but never thought to let anyone know – so her ticket was booked but not paid for. Common sense again! so after waiting for about 45min for them to fix the problem – Lou ended up buying the ticket herself since she would have had to pay them back in any case. I could see she was stressing the whole time we were waiting to hear – I know I would have too! There’s nothing worse than when your things aren’t in order at airports. I always like being through the boarding gates a head of time so that I don’t have to rush, although I’ve had to run a few times to the gate when I fly back to Johannesburg. So we finally manage to get Lou her ticket, she’s through the gates and it’s basically time for our GM to land. I phone our guide to tell him to come pick us up. He eventually arrives (taking too long for my liking) but luckily our GM still had to get his bag because good ol guide still had to drop off a piece of paper at the office and asked if I could do it while he waited for Shaun? My word. If he was quick about it, he could have done it on the way to the airport. So I tell him to go do it now but QUICKLY since we’re still waiting for the bags. I don’t how he manages to take more than 10 minutes to drop off a piece of water when the office is less than a kilometre away. In any case, he finally comes back, we find the chef at the airport and meet the journalists at the restaurant so that we can start heading back to camp.

Our GM was not impressed with the guides conduct while driving back – he hardly spoke to the journalists, instead spoke to the chef who was sitting in front by him. He even looked at his phone while driving – I didn’t see it, but our GM did. Then when we finally take the turnoff to the camp, he slows down by at least 30km. Because you know, the drive didn’t take an extra 45 minutes to get there, what’s another 45 minutes driving through mopane forests. He even switched off the vehicle when we saw zebra. After a while I had to tell him “ok thank you” in the hope that he’d get the point and carry on driving.

The journalists seem nice, but it just means I have to endure more small talk. Meh. Luckily the GM has to do more of the talking. I discussed more conservation topics than anything else. It's actually good practise, because like it or not, I'm going to have to talk to the conservation travellers about "normal" things if I want to get a long...

So here's to slowly becoming accustomed to small talk.

#wildatheart