Like everyone we’re hitting pause for a bit. (Currently hunkered down hunting furiously for the fast-forward button!). Since we can’t press on, we’re looking back. Perhaps if there’s anything good in all this it’s a sudden surfeit of time to replay fond memories in slow-mo. How lucky we are that through photography, travel and wildlife, there’s a prepper’s-size stockpile of stuff in the memory bank to help us through the hiatus.

In recent days we’ve even dusted off old travel journals from way back. A lot of the stuff’s cringe-worthy so you can imagine the laughter we’ve had at what we wrote and at just how green we were in those days, but it did flesh out some wonderful, half-forgotten moments.

Just thumbing through for an example. Flashback to the summer of 1994. Our annual holiday that year was a self-drive safari; a much looked forward to break from our life in London as journalists. We were visiting Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, staying at Main Camp (see main pic above – accommodation was ‘simple’, no luxurious thread counts). It was my first time in Africa (Steve’s third).

The following extract has me catching up with my journal on June 21. We’d booked to do a night drive or ‘moonlight viewing’ as it appeared to be called then. Anyone who has been on a night drive on safari in Africa will see it was a very different experience back then…

…On arrival back at camp we noticed they were planning a moonlight viewing. This was due to take place from 6-8pm (it gets dark here just after 6), but there was some confusion as to whether it would take place and whether the guide would turn up. There was the usual problem over payment and paperwork, but eventually the drive was on. We set off at last – about half an hour late. We had American and Japanese passengers on board and drove our car in a convoy through the park with only parking lights from the vehicle in front to guide each car. The ranger guiding us was in the front vehicle and the arrangement was that indicators would be used to point out anything of interest. Full beam headlamps would be used once the animal was in view and only on the guide’s say so…

Steve thought that basically we’d just see elephants, looking like big eerie masses in the dark, and not much more. But we were to be surprised. As it turned out we saw a pack of about nine or ten wild dogs trotting along the road with their kill (an impala)! Their faces were bloodied – they looked at times like masked highwaymen because of their blotched coats and chocolate muzzles. We had interrupted their meal, but they were reluctant to leave the ragged bits of meat they were sharing. Eventually they shifted the carcass to the side of the road, and we passed by. We wanted to stay and watch. It was the second rendez-vous we’d had in a week with these rare animals, but the convoy plodded on to the raised platform above the waterhole…

It was interesting to be there in the moonlight and to see how lovely the plain around the pan looked, but we saw very little game. Peter, our guide – who we’d by now deduced was not entirely sober – explained that the reason there was little game was because the pump at the pan had been broken for three or four days and the water was very low. He told us that on one recent moonlight viewing they had watched lions with their kill right by the platform steps…

We got back to Main Camp. Nothing to report on the way back. Then went back to our chalet (number 11 again!) to freshen up quickly before going to dinner at the Safari Lodge down the road. Just as we were about to drive off Peter flagged us down. He wanted a lift back to the staff compound where he stayed. At first we couldn’t make out what he was saying – he was even more drunk now and waving his rifle in the air wildly, a bottle in his other hand.  You don’t refuse a drunken man with a gun so we headed off to the small settlement as instructed. Although quite drunk Peter steered us to the beer hall there (he was its chairman apparently) and insisted he buy us a beer in exchange for the lift. We felt it would be impolite to refuse and were curious to see the beer hall, but we were also a bit worried about what the local brew would be like and the fact it was getting late for dinner.

The beer hall was an interesting experience – almost exclusively male, ramshackle, with a wire-mesh serving hatch for those who wanted to drink outside. Inside was heaving and smoky and loud because of the music and blaring football on TV. Peter introduced some of his friends. One called Richard chatted away to us with his lion stories from the reserve. By now Peter was a bit incoherent. We stayed for a beer and the day ended on a high. We had seen the wild dogs and had even caught up with the World Cup scores (Brazil beat Russia).

How naïve we sound! It seems strange now, looking back to that pre-Internet age, but we still go a bit cold when we remember the guy waving his ancient AK47 around in the back of our little hire car, slurring directions at us as we drove off into the darkness and what seemed like the middle of nowhere. And then we smile about our little adventure and think how nice it was to drink beer and chat about football with some new friends during a moonlight viewing of the World Cup back in June 1994.