I’m a 65-year-old seasoned traveller and would be adventurer. I grew up in south-east Asia and got somewhat of a secondary education in the UK. Having spent many a day or two travelling between Borneo, Malaysia and Singapore via planes, trains, automobiles and boats to what could loosely be described as an educational dwelling on the Isle of Wight, I decided to forego another institution and opted for work, money and more travelling! Having trained as a secretary, I took myself off to the UAE and worked my way through them.

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When I returned to England some 3 years later, secretarial salaries were not going to cut it after Dubai, so I opted to get into Sales and moved to London. I ended up selling paper when the office was threatening loudly to be paperless by 2000 and in ’92 moved to Manhattan on a commission only basis. Thankfully I did well and stayed for 3 years, made some great friends and learned one thing from the Americans if nothing else – that the bottle is always half full. Being a true Brit, I’d only ever seen it as half empty before.

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Again, I returned home and, bored with sales, or not being able to get a job, can’t remember which, I undertook some chef’s training by way of a full fat cordon bleu course and promptly took off to Nose Be, an island north west of Madagascar, defined by it's lazy lemurs and Ylang Ylang plantations, to chef onboard a 120 ft classic motor yacht (that had been active in Dunkirk) for a period. A shorter than longer one as it turned out. 3 months on a boat in poor repair, mouldy and vermin ridden with an alcoholic captain prone to jaunts ashore solo and taking the only tender to feed his addiction, and an owner short on interest in the survival of it's crew, quite enough.  One of 12 crew members, my day started at 05:00 kicking the cupboards to scatter the roaches and ended at 01:00 after clearing up after 12 eccentric guests.  I finally jumped ship after a near death experience with food poisoning, picked up from an island eating establishment and from which I was left to recover untreated, care of said absent Captain who'd vanished with the tender, in my cockroach ridden bunk. I made my escape, still sick and broke, through Madagascar's capital Antananarivo, a complete blank in my memory, to join with a colleague in Mombasa. The Masai Mara was the first time I really had the privilege of seeing Africa’s treasured wildlife and in 1995 it was relatively quiet. I was hooked.

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I returned to the UK, entered the sales arena again and set up my business – a small lead generation company servicing high ticket and emerging corporate software companies in Europe. I got together with a long-time friend and Air Traffic Controller Paul, and together, both of us old enough to be grand parents, we miraculously made my daughter Georgia. When she was 2 and with a failed partnership though a good friendship, I decided to move to Spain and have been here, between Granada and Málaga, ever since.

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So, Georgia grew up in an outdoor environment, by the sea against a scenic backdrop of the Sierra Nevada, one of those locals where you can be snow skiing in the mountains in the morning and sunbathing in the afternoon on the beach. Unencumbered by too much technology and mobile phones until well later than her contemporaries in less sunny climes, she had, what could be termed by more than most, an idyllic upbringing.

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In 2019, Georgia went off to London to follow a career in music. I subsequently backed down my business, and my two best buddies  having recently sought out doggy heaven, I was left rather twiddling my thumbs.

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So, one non-distinct evening late April 2023, I found myself flicking through tv channels and landed on Nat Geo's documentary 'Into the Okavango'. A beautifully and sensitively filmed adventure in which a conservation biologist brings together a team of explorers and scientists including a river bushman fearful of losing his past and a young aspiring marine biologist from Angola, uncertain of her future on an epic expedition in 3 mekoro (canoe), from the source of the Okavango River in the Angolan highlands into the Okavango Panhandle. The aim to safeguard wildlife and save the Okovango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 1,500 miles, 4 months, 29 new species to science, 46 new to Angola. 118 species of plants not seen for 100 years and populations of wild dog, cheetah and sable antelope 300 miles north of where they were meant to be signalling a healthy ecosystem for those endangered species.

 

Totally enthralled, I immediately went to the website to get involved - all broken! COVID, I guessed, rightly or wrongly. But that wasn't going to stop me, and I ended up getting directed to ACELINK and the rest is history. The seed was planted and, like in one of those highly lit marijuana 'grow faster' plantations, on 8th May I was winging my way across the continent on a 6-week volunteering program in 4 locations in the Okavango and South Africa, through ACE (African Conservation Experience). HOOKED.

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My first location was south-east of the Okavango Delta. The project, created in partnership with well-known bodies like the Okavango Research Institute (ORI) and longtime Okavango Delta expert Christiaan Winterback, involved collecting data on the movement of specific species traversing various transects to identify changes in animal population over time to see how they are being affected by human activities.

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The information is shared with both departments of wildlife and natural parks to make management and policy decisions. One of the aims is to help maintain the biodiversity e.g. the interaction of carnivores with herbivores and herbivores with the vegetation.

Being able to do some good (volunteer money pays for fuel, vehicle maintenance, salaries etc.) whilst getting the opportunity to learn how scientists and conservationists are working to maintain the long term sustainability of one of the largest ecosystems in world, and see a huge variety of species in their wild environment without a gaggle of tourists around, was second to none.

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This project was followed by another in Vikela, north-west of the Kruger National Park. Here we were again monitoring movement and gathering data on key species such as rhino, cheetah, lion, wild dogs, and pangolin. We worked alongside anti-poaching professionals and got to witness anti-poaching dog training and were involved in tracking animals in the bush.

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The next project was the Phinda Wildlife Research Project. Phinda is situated in the Maputaland complex, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. Conservation aims we helped with here involved anti-poaching methods in the field, breeding programs for rare and endangered species and wildlife relocation efforts including the WWF’s Black Rhino Range Expansion Project, the Rhinos Without Borders programme, and lion relocation to Rwanda.

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And this is why I’ve decided to head to Africa as Sally’s Wheels to raise awareness and funds for conservation, local communities and eco-tourism in sub-Saharan Africa.