What sparked up a jaded traveler..

When I was younger I travelled extensively, I was an international athlete and we went to competitions all over the World. The only trouble was that all the trips were pretty much the same and each week-end was like this:

• Travel to location - usually direct from work

• Find Hotel and check in
• Go to venue for training session
• Compete in early rounds of competion
• If not through to later rounds: have dinner, drink too much
• If through to next day: have dinner, go to bed
• Compete in later rounds or support team mates
• Travel home go back to work

Remember we were younger and could manage on a lot less sleep than now! Every now and then we did get to see or learn about some of the places we visited but it was not the reason for our travel and we were really focussed on competing not sightseeing.

Later in my life I worked in the travel industry. I wish I could say it was as glamorous as it sounds.... Imagine being invited to an exotic location for a "familiarisation visit" - this is normally a two or three day visit with a group of people you have never met before and where a maximum number of hotel inspections and visits to local tour or activity providers is crammed into the time available.

At the end of it you can barely remember which hotel was which - after all just how many combinations of bed, bathroom and balcony are there? You think you enjoyed dinner talking to the guy who runs the aquarium or was it the worm farm?

And then I got into my current life in education and travel associated with that is about attending conferences as a delegate or speaker and suddenly there is time to actually enjoy the travel and the locations. So in 2005 I was speaking at a conference in South Africa and decided to spend some time afterwards visiting the safari parks.

That trip not only restored my faith in travel but the experiences also restored my faith in nature - words cannot adequately express the pleasure of spending time in the animal environment rather than my own....

The best part of the trip for me was staying at a place called Tembe - an elephant reserve at the northern extreme of South Africa. We spent three fabulous days following the herds and getting to know some of them well enough to recognise them as individuals. Such brilliant and noble beasts and smarter than most people give them credit for. The video I have attached to this is what I filmed when we were charged by an angry mother protecting her two week old baby - check it out.

You live in tents at these camps but when we say tents we mean a pretty elaborate structure of wooden floor, rigid cavas sides and plumbing! So one night we are trying to sleep and there is this continuous knocking sound of horn against wood... and like all good city dwellers my first reaction is irritation that we are being kept awake by what we thought was an antelope rubbing its antlers against our tent!

As the night progressed we worked out the noise was coming from under our floor and we had by then also worked out that it was a warthog, not an antelope. Much stamping on the floor did not frighten the animal away and eventually we did get a little sleep.

The next morning (we all got up at 6.00am to catch the dawn activity) we told the owners of the camp that there was a warthog under our tent and could they check it out for us - not long later they returned to tell us that it was a female warthog and that she had just had babies!

How bad did we feel making all that noise when she was in labour?

So now we are proud god-parents of a family of warthogs and isn't that a great excuse to go back to Tembe again one day?

There are so many things that come to my mind when I think of this trip but the most important thing is that it has changed my attitude to travel from a thing that you have to do into something that can just be a pleasure. I can marvel at nature again and get to know the interesting and unique things about different people.

But even if you are not a blase traveller as I was - consider a visit to South Africa and let the veldt and the animals weave their magic on you too.