Pips

May 6, 2009

On our first game drive yesterday morning, we made the acquaintance of two South African couples who are staying at the lodge with us. They’re from Durban, in their fifties and clearly well-to-do. I gathered that one of the men owns a helicopter business, the other is a pilot of some sort, one of the women runs a coffee shop on the beach and the other woman is a trophy wife. The two women are an absolute riot and I’m sad that the group is leaving today because they were so entertaining.

When we first met them, they kept joking about “pips” and cracking themselves up (Clearly, they’d been drinking a lot during this trip.). None of us were following, but they didn’t care. We learned later that “pips” means “seeds,” or something like that. Understanding this cleared nothing up.

Last night, as we were on the hunt for rhino, we encountered another jeep of tourists and the coffee shop owner (who’s super skinny, has clearly smoked her entire life and sports deeply tanned and wrinkled skin) asked the other ranger if they’d seen a rhino. He said that they hadn’t and she exclaimed, “We have!” as we drove off. Our ranger had to radio to the other jeep and apologize for her lie!

And today, as we continued our rhino quest, the blonde trophy wife became frustrated and said very slowly to our driver, “We’re looking for a large, gray animal. It has a single horn on its nose…” This led the other woman to conclude that she had a future as a game ranger.

The foursome were very entertaining and clearly were enjoying their vacation together. When we weren’t on a game drive, they were guzzling wine and beer, smoking their cigarettes and laughing up a storm. If it weren’t for the smoking, I might guess that I just caught a glimpse of my own future.