23 Attempts at Love

Chapter 14: The Mini-Gap, Part 2

Despite my preference for tall, tanned Australian men and a four-week holiday travelling around Australia, I avoided all distractions (with the Mike exception) for the whole time I was there, and never regretted a thing. There were nights I was alone in a hotel or a hostel somewhere, bored out of my mind and with my finger hovering over the installation button for Tinder, but I messaged my friends instead. I spoke to family. I watched films and read books and distracted myself: I was trying to prove to myself that I could be happy and independent and go a whole four weeks without needing to talk to or date anyone. I felt happier for it.

This brings me to the second part of my mini-gap holiday: South Africa. This was the part Mum was dreading the most: she'd watched a documentary on violence in South Africa and had convinced herself that I was going to die. She loved to describe herself as a free spirit and wanted me to do the same, but in Cornwall or Yorkshire, not halfway across the world.

I flew into Port Elizabeth mid-afternoon after another awful flight (although I was getting used to them by now) and was greeted by Jeff: a South African ranger who worked on the reserve I would be staying at for the next couple of weeks. Jeff had the biggest, widest smile you could imagine and hugged everyone to say hello. He spent the journey to the reserve entertaining our small group of accumulated travellers with stories of the reserve and his family, growing up in South Africa and all of the people he'd met working in the tourist industry.

"I love it," he told me. "You people are always so interesting!"

The reserve was based roughly two hours north of Port Elizabeth: a five-star hotel surrounded by a thick, electrified fence behind which lions, giraffes and elephants were kept in sight, but firmly away from anyone they could eat, trample or otherwise maim or seriously injure.

Obviously I wasn't staying in the five-star hotel. I'd signed up to do two weeks at the reserve with a load of other travellers between 18-30, to work on the reserve and rough it in a huge hostel behind the main hotel with two rooms: one for girls, one for boys. There was a log fire in the main room linking the two bedrooms (although, can you call a room with fifty bunkbeds a bedroom?) and a small kitchen we could make snacks in. I soon learned to love the fire: this part of South Africa was cold. Very cold. Rangers often wandered round dressed in five or six layers including hats and gloves, and the wind crept in through every crack in the walls, every gap in the doorways and windows. This was a big change from Australia.

Days started at 6am with an hour for breakfast, showers and sorting out equipment before heading out for the day. Sometimes we were working with the lions, sometimes with giraffes, monkeys, elephants, snakes. The rigid structure of the days felt more like bootcamp but I didn't mind: when else was I going to get to bottle-feed a baby orphaned cheetah? Or have monkeys use my arms as swinging bars? When else would I walk across a reserve for hours, analysing and examining various poo and marking down anthill locations?

To call home I had to sit in the main hotel reception and connect to their Wi-Fi, which was perfectly allowed as long as I didn't disturb any of the hotel guests. In South Africa I was only a couple of hours ahead of my parents at any given time so it was a lot easier getting hold of them for a chat in my free evenings when I wasn't helping to cook a braai or watching a film on the TV in the main lounge room with my new friends from the reserve.

"How's everything going? Are you saving all the animals from extinction?" Mum asked, propping the phone against the kitchen wall while she cooked dinner for her and Dad. Sam and Katie were both out elsewhere with friends, all grown up.

"Nearly! I'm working on it. I fed a baby cheetah again today," I grinned, showing them a print-out photo of the cheetah the hotel had on display. Dad walked into the room.