Hello, Grace again!
It being my first experience of tour group travel, I thought some of you might enjoy hearing about "the other safari" we are on...
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Dramatis Personae: Act I*
The CEOs
Linda - Kenyan tour guide with a wonderful laugh. Cheeky, clever, and warm. Seems to enjoy telling us that we will need to wake up "veh-ry veh-ry early" just a little too much.
Lulu - tough-as-nails, butch Namibian on the outside, total softie on the inside. She's our driver. So far, Lulu has taught us the best beer to drink in East Africa (White Cap, apparently) and some Afrikaans swear words (she's got some road rage).
The OGs
(We've been with this group since Nairobi)
Grace & Rocky - your humble narrators.
Breanne - Canadian nurse. Totally overexcited about everything, asks lots of questions, carrier of a Stanley cup. She's delightful.
Kehlani - A former NYC inpatient social worker who quit her job to embark on 6 months of worldwide travel. She's 2 months in. Effortlessly cool, good sense of humour, all around great value. Just qualified for the New York Marathon.
Leah - A cop from Melbourne and our youngest member at 24 years old. Job notwithstanding, I really like her. She is struggling with the inability to find a good flat white.
Laura - Her defining personality trait seems to be that she's German. Rocky pointed out that everything she says seems to be a complaint, which is true - but she's on her 5th G Adventures tour (her third in Africa) so I guess she must be enjoying it somewhere under the Deutsch scowl.
Kevin & Yves - The Swiss Boys! I spent the first two days trying to work out if they were a couple, but they apparently both have girlfriends back home. Kevin has a nice camera and is our resident bird nerd. Yves may be lost, having quietly confessed to me on our second safari day that "I don't really like animals so much".
Emma - An English lass coming up to the end of a 60 day overland tour that travels all the way from Capetown to Nairobi. Quite funny. Apparently ex-army, though you wouldn't know it to look at her.
Erin - Canadian dental hygienist who has also been travelling since Cape Town - and boy does she like to tell us about it. Highly extroverted. I find her quite charming, but she's driving Rocky slightly nuts.
Cayleigh & Shiz - gal pals, also from Perth. Cayleigh is heading to Botswana after our tour finishes to study to be a safari guide herself. Shiz (full name Shiralee) is a primary school teacher who is always impeccably dressed.
The Newbies
(Halfway across Uganda we were joined by a whole bunch of new people whose tour started with the gorilla trekking.)
Fabian & Nadia - Swiss couple. Somewhat haughty, but not altogether unpleasant. I don't know much about them because they generally keep to themselves. They dress like semi-professional tennis players. Maybe they ARE semi-professional tennis players.
Jackson & James - The footy bros from Melbourne. I think they're both sports dieticians, but maybe just one is and I've spoken to him twice? It's hard to be sure. They just climbed Mt Kilimanjaro and have trouble squeezing into bus seats next to each other because they're so jacked. But they play Nintendo with each other on the rides, which is quite sweet.
Clodagh - Irish software designer, she's with us for a week or so before breaking off to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. Wearer of excellent jumpsuits and owner of the most impressive camera lens of the group. She has a spreadsheet wherein she has planned out every international trip she is going to take until 2038 - not an exaggeration, I've now seen said spreadsheet.
Alex & Sarah - Texan friends who, in the words of Kehlani, are the kind of tourists who give Americans a bad name. Alex is a tax lawyer and actually seems quite sweet on her own, but Sarah is impressively obnoxious. Notably, she wondered aloud if it was "even worth it" to see the gorillas if she had to get up at 4:30am.
Emma & Emily - Sydneysiders, good eggs. Emma is doing a PhD at Cambridge on Australian family law, so we have a lot to talk about. Emily tells great stories and has also been winding up the Texans intentionally by talking about how good gun control is.
We're losing a fair chunk of this group in a few days' time when we return to Nairobi, before heading to Tanzania.
Stay tuned for Act II...
Grace