Uncover The Thrilling World Of Eco-tourism With Author Peter Allison!
hi welcome to overlanding from home my name is Anton I'm an avid Overlander lover of Nature and humanitarian by heart the past while I've always been interested in the outdoors and I want to hear about other people's experiences and their rigs yes the big rigs the small rigs everything they've done to design them and how they plan it I hope you enjoy listening let's find out who today's guest is oh no no don't don't go there all I've got after that [Music] is I'm pretty sure I'll pause I love you my little warthog well blessings to you too good lad yes yes you did you manage to find a corner a quiet corner of the house amongst the chaos um we'll see how quiet it is once the toddlers aim for it with intent ah you know when they get tunnel vision there's no end yeah I I know I've been trying to host webinars and know there's my realization through this is everybody's saying oh it's great we get to work from home and just watch Netflix how easy is that I have a full-time job I'm trying to you resurrect a bit of a writing career and a dayare it's nights dude my office is a nightmare um I'm literally walking over things I got cables all over the place I was like a Somali the other day getting a getting a land cable from straight from the routa into the Apple TV so we got decent internet on the TV because we don't have the local DStv and stuff and um you know I was like a real Smiley out the window through a pop um down the outside of the house back in through the back of the wall it was awesome it's been it's been amazing I paid uh 200 bucks for a guy to come to my house to recm the the land cable that wasn't working and I couldn't exactly take it out so um I ended up paying more than what I should have but it's working and I'm and I'm happy and and my dor is happy and that's really all that counts yeah yeah how old is she again she's six she's six and uh going on 24 she's done four degrees uh and Masters in um um in home uh killing parents and how to scream the loudest and I don't want um and I love it to bit world my my daughter's been managing the Middle Eastern peace process for some oh wonderful and that's why it's in the state of T oh well you know listen the oil price is down which means fuel is cheaper so I think she's doing something right well well she's she's sounds Discord chaos every all right so I want to let me just start here I think we've had our opening St so folks listen thanks very much for signing in and listening again today is an epic one for me I um I've always been uh since I've known Peter Allison who is the guest today um I'll read a bit of his bio and wanted to little things but um you know this is going to be a different a different part of a of a podcast than what we normally have so Peter if you don't mind I'm just going to kick off uh from here is is is that a good start for you yeah absolutely go for it okay so so folks um Peter left Australia um aiming to travel for a year and I think that went a little bit pearshaped because he was wanting to study law and uh went on a totally different side of it um and for 26 years um he's been in the Safari industry um causing trouble uh creating creating problems for bosses I'm pretty sure but has incredible stories uh he's written two books both with great headings cuz once you listen to this chat you're going to understand you're going to want to read the book so so go and support the guy he's busy working on a third book like you've just heard he's trying to resurrect a a a writing industry uh that I think is now coming back obviously because of um of the of the virus issues one of the books is called whatever you do don't run um and a f let me just go back and have a look a picture on that book uh is uh where is it I actually went on to Amazon um there's a lion on it which is pretty awesome and the other Bookers oh there's a truck going past as slow as it can obviously all right well now we know first gear Works um and the second book is don't look behind you uh and there's two options there on a on a you can have either on Kindle or paperback one has a crocodile and the other one has a elephant that looks a lot bigger bigger than you Peter so um I hope I got all that right is that correct yeah elephants are bigger than me well you know I've seen the size of your head I'm not so sure thank you that is that is definitely a complete joke um and since you've you've uh you've um unfortunately departed from the African Shores you are now Daddy Daycare in uh back in England yes so it's um funny enough a country I never imagined living in or settling in I I was really the rare Australian that didn't come here straight after school or university to to do bar work this side as you pointed out I I actually ended up in Africa at 19 and that's bar work was what I did but I did it in a game reserve in the Sai Sands uh in the Epic year of 1994 which is of course a huge one for South Africa yes yeah yes that was a big turning point for us and so many things obviously had changed so you came at a very opportunistic time and um I I I recall and if you can just come back and tell me please that because I don't want to get it wrong um the first story you told me um was how you met some Chap and you said I need to get this vehicle from here to somewhere in Botswana and you ended up just something like the next day is that right taking it and disappearing yeah so that was i' I'd worked in the bush for a little while at that point and I'd started guiding and I thought oh I know what I'm doing here I remember a friend had actually said to me he'd come to visit and he said um and this is a South African friend yes I knew Australia and he said oh this is really nice isn't it but it's not particularly wild is it and I was a bit flabbergasted by that looked Bit You Know Rich look there's a warthog that's pretty wild I I'd come from Sydney and so to me the Sai Sands seemed Wild and I'd be on my game drive and I'd be saying guys I've got one of m Da ingu because you know Rangers as they calling their love to use a bit of local lingo yes mugh ingu he's um walking by the sign post for exitor near the power lines at the junction of the Dam Road and everything you mentioned was man-made and you can always see the hand of man um and obviously once I got to botan I looked around went oh ni Rich's point but the way that I got there was just looking for that saying well he's provoked me now I better go and find out what this is and I wandered into the office of a safari company asked if they might have any jobs going and uh a guy uh who remains a friend Chris kruus has got a very distinctive voice it sure we got a job can you drive a car you want a job it's like if you asked if I could ride a camel I would have said sure of course I can um and I I could sort of drive a car by then he didn't tell me it was a game drive vehicle and that it was in Johannesburg and that I had to drive it to the okavango Delta and I'd never been to Johannesburg before and I'd never been to the okavango Delta before and that was my job interview was getting uh one of your favorite things so 4X four vehicle yes from joerg and of course it had no mirrors um I mean a rearview mirrror would have just shown me the the back row of seats um it had no roof it didn't even have a canopy on it sorry Peter what time of year was this uh it was summer and the reason know that is not just the sunburn that I got but it also absolutely bucketed with rain on me at one point which means in bana it was summer which is and and you it had the fold down wind screen which I'd folded up which was pointless anyway yeah yeah well the horn kept the horn bills out of my teeth um but um yeah and once it started raining I don't know why I decided to put the wipers on and but they changed the angle of the wind screen and so the things were flexing and straining until one just flown off and somehow in the slipstream came straight up over and whacked me in the foreward uh um just it was one of those those Journey you can found it that's right like another bloody Horn Bill one was a wiper yeah but you know the the the I got into M um and then I thought okay job interview done and somebody then told me oh no no no you're going to the most rem remote camp in the okavango you're not done yet and I had another days driving ahead of me um and I was given a a staff member that they swore knew the way with the ominous name of Dorcas oh nice the Dorcas did not know the way but this was I think my real introduction to Botswana began then where I had to drive through a series of villages with names like um bets ETA six ET a 12 for some reason and you would know these places now on that road up to shawi correct and I don't know if it's still the case but you put your vehicle onto a barge that was hand pulled so it's not it's not hand pulled anymore now they've I would say now for the last bunch of years they have two uh two PS on there two barges that are are motor that are moted but and I'm sorry to in but for some random reason they've decided to build the Bridge which which grinds me because there's no need for that I mean it's just gives such an atmosphere when you climb on a barge and you just sitting there for 20 20 minutes you know going across anyway sorry I'm in interrupting so you made it across yeah made it across and then of course from there it was all dirt roads um which was no great impediment because the tar Road had not been that spectacular it was it would have suited drunk driving with all the swerving and weaving you had to do um something I also discovered was a bit of a a national Pastime in Botswana was drunk driving but um it's a common in you would have to be drunk to drive those roads properly I think is what you're trying to say yeah yeah if if you're not leaning and lurching all over the wheel and you you definitely don't want to be going in a straight line anyway so once I was on those sand roads um and I thought I knew how to drive a four-wheel drive and again being summer that sand is hot so it's looser and it just it it sucks at your tires like it's a Kardashian um and I'm really hoping that most of you listeners don't get that reference um it it just excuse the P yeah so you you're you're in trying to grind your way through it and of course Dorcas was looking around I thought she's looking at this place with as much Wonder as I am I don't believe she's been here before um and she basically eventually we we passed some kid and and she I didn't speak any set swana um and I was delighted to learn she did so she had some use she obviously asked him which way was it to to Duba was the camp we were going to and he said oh yeah yeah give me a lift so in he jumped we drove and we ended up in some little village and he said and he jumped out and I said well where's he going she said oh no he doesn't know the way but his uncle knows the way and so then his uncle comes and gets in and starts showing me the way along these dirt tracks and we got to another Village he jumps out where's he going he says he doesn't know the way but his friend does his friend gets I'm a taxi after full day of being the local taxi service I really just didn't know what my other option was one of them made a mistake and we actually found the camp Oh and that was it then I lived in the okavango for years because couldn't find my way out well that's a good start because if you look where Duba Camp is it literally is uh in the middle of nowhere and there are no direct roads and uh it's it is it's an amazing place I think now it's flooded right I mean now with with the amount of rains that have come down this year and no one's there to see it which is which is quite sad um it's uh it's quite interesting the people who operate it don't like this but it's um it's nickname in the industry is now scuba planes oh that's true you could just float down there well if you didn't get hit by the you know between the Crocs and the hippos and you could um I have I have driven that road yes I drove it last year for a humanitarian trip which I did with you guys and uh um it was it was amazing that road uh I think removed uh all my fillings out my at my teeth um it completely disjointed my back I may have lost a leg from the of corrugation on the road um it's it's a really nly road so once you get over the P um all the way down uh to P Sanga it is in fact the road after Sanga up to gundu is uh um is better than the that beginning Road and and they don't change tie pressures there there's there's no sense of understanding about tie pressure they just drive the sing and rattle their teeth and and tie everything down so it's it's an amazing part of the world I love it completely love it I that's just it you were describing the various injuries are did to you and I was I was about to say and yet you loved it didn't you because completely completely and I think this is what excites me about chatting to you is that there are just endless uh endless stories I mean I I know that you've traveled quite a bit and I I I I don't know I'm going to ask a few questions just to understand I know that you have a young family so I don't think you've traveled a lot with um uh with your kids um I know there's there's a very one I want to ask you so you're a you are definitely not a vegan um you you you eat meat like most uh real African men um but your wife doesn't now how do how is that challenging when you when you overlanding or you you're out you know in a vehicle or going in through uh what do you take to cook what do you how do you move it around I mean uh I know that you don't Overland so this is not about overlanding per se it's about the experiences that you've had and uh in the African bush which I I think everyone should hear um is has it been has it been a major challenge um it's where it's a challenge is not so much cooking I mean there's to the greatest fallback is of course pasta correct pasta and a and a jar or tin of sauce is Works anywhere and the the great thing with that is you make pasta you throw in the sauce and then I can throw in some chopped up sausage or something like that your BOS whatever it is which you can cook on the side it's actually really easy um it's less of a challenge than you imagine where it is a challenge is places like Namibia and about a year and a half ago so the kids then were two and a half and six months old and we did 10 days around Namibia um barely sore a sealed Road and of course namibian a unique breed maybe not so unique much like um argentinians where chicken is considered a vegetable that's a for me I haven't that one if you've eaten chicken yet that's a salad um when when when PR would announced that she was a vegetarian you could just see them they looking at me it's like does that make you gay so why did you marry your husband and say no she just and of course basically the vegetarian option in Namibia is they cook the same dish and then they just move the plate the slab of steak onto their plate yes um and you know serve it with disdain and the the blood oozing into the potato that they just served my wife PR um you know there's you always get past it and once you in lodges and so on they cater pretty well to it um it's less of a novelty for them um dealing with the you know International visitors they do but on the road it's yeah you past those sorts of sources rice and then the next day is perhaps rice with pasta yeah not a lot of variety but not a lot of difficulty no no it does sound a lot easier than I than I did think I mean obviously I've been trying to obviously so but I've been I've been moving away from eating so much meat uh to eating a little bit less meat and and more uh more on on the n on the on the veggie side and uh I mean I've I've created a few wonderful ways and uh the one thing is obviously I have a fridge and and and all that stuff but having having carrying veggies instead of meat when you open your fridge your M's like d are you okay what's what's going on you know we just passed a Butchery what's what's the problem you know um and you and you and you try and explain I'm trying not to uh um you know go crazy on the meat side I want to I want to I want to experience something different and that's what Africa is it's about experiences and I think um writing a book tell me a little bit about the book what was the what was well hang on a second so so you for first and foremost are a a a very a ecotourist guide is that correct yeah I mean again if you're in South Africa they tend to use the term like Ranger when that's actually should be reserved for people who work for the Parks Board and actually Patrol the parks it's a it's a diff yeah we're Jeep jockeys um I was a safari guide and basically what we do is this poor scientists go out there do years of research and write up their PHD and then we just Ste it into a punchline you know keep the tourist happy um but it is the importance of that role or the way that I've always seen it is we're actually trying to get them to go from a good guide isn't just there saying look at this amazing place I live in a good guide is like a Matchmaker he's trying to get these tourists who might be from Southern Africa they might be from anywhere in the world yes and make them fall in love with the place because it's only once they've fallen in love with it that they'll want to protect it um you know I mean I don't go around trying to save ballet because I give zero poops about it um well your your daughters might say something quite different to that uh no my my my daughter's a thug she she's three and a half now and um she spends most of the day beating me up bless her I'm I'm not even letting her win oh she's she's mastered the nutshot um but anyway back to the um whatever the hell I was talking about what was I talking about oh geez uh traveling Oh Rangers the difference between yes in terms of the role is is to get people enthused about the environment and then when you're talking about conservation there's so much bad news out of there and conservations like medicine everybody knows it's good for them but nobody wants to undergo a surgical procedure or whatever it might be so to get people to take medicine you got to coat it in a lot of honey youve got to got to sweeten that pill so I always found that as a guide if I could entertain the people you get them laughing and it's it wasn't dumbing it down at all there's a lot of Science in what we talk about but if they're enjoying themselves and they're actually having a true holiday vacation whatever word you prefer then they kind of say that's a place I want to go back to and every time they come back every time somebody spends money going on Safari that's telling a government that the land is worth has value as it is land has value with wild animals living in it because our competitors are not other Safari operators uh that's that's on the smallest level the real competitors uh Agriculture and Mining you know they want the same land that we're on yes and and so the more value we can give to that land and and the value is not just the revenue it generates it's employing from rural communities yeah that's that's the thing that isn't spoken about employment's spoken about but that you employ from rural communities who otherwise those people would be sucked into the City and looking for work there and we all know that that leads to higher crime rates in the in the cities it leads to Greater desperation and poverty and uh disease even because they're in crowded on sanitary conditions so these places in the bush that are actually employing from these rural communities are actually having a huge positive social impact as well yeah very true yeah I know I mean it's very true yeah um so that's you know the the I do it's it's I'm not saying that Safari going on Safari immediately qualifies you to enter through the Pearly Gates or whatever it might be but it's you're an immediate philanthropist just by visiting any place and it doesn't matter what budget you go in there when you visit a n a national park and you drive into mamy National Park or you go into some of these namibian national parks that get 10 visitors a year yeah you're you're you're now 10% of the reason that that place stays in National Park yeah and that's that's a really important role so the the people listening to this that love um their their 4X fouring they are huge a huge huge part I mean they so often Pioneer these areas that later on the luxury lodges come into um they play a huge part in conservation just by visiting these places by showing interest in them um so thank you to all of you listeners it's a you know it's such a big deal and and you're right there's always a big pull in a big Drive between Industries and the tourism industry plays a massive role because people that come and have a good um experience with or without you know you for example um they they they really they go back and they tell their friends and then then there's you know there's another 10 possibilities of those people coming to travel towards um that same country and have those same um experiences and it just go such a long way I'm I'm busy doing a a bit of a project with a company called choose choose Africa and uh the launch is actually tonight funny enough at 5:30 South African time you can go on my channels and you'll see it and uh and you guys are involved in it I don't know if you know about it um uh Peter but it's it's basically telling tourists when you come on a tour Safari the money doesn't go towards um only towards The Lodgers it goes towards all these other initiatives and that's exactly what you're talking about it goes towards the support for antio poaching the guys like myself that do humanitarian work that um you know the people in in villages and in these rural areas that make little beads and do grass work um it goes towards them and that's what The Lodgers um should be known for more going to view a line is fantastic but supporting the local community is more important and and and I think that is something that you really draw people into which is why this chat is so exciting to me because those stories that you have are not forgotten I mean I'm I can I can I've never spoken to anyone that's been on a tour with you but I can pretty much sure if I phone them and say do you remember this guy can you tell me a story they'll waffle or F you know and I think I think that is more important is the memory that they tell everybody yeah and it's it's also getting them out I mean the there's been a strange shift in the Safari industry and it's a regrettable one um and it might actually change after this whole Co thing is done um where everybody started pursuing and again if we go back to 94 when I started South Africa was emerging from being an international Pariah so foreign tourists hadn't visited in any great numbers um and South Africans had this great way of doing things which was was unique to themselves they've been in isolation for so long um and people arrived and they' they'd be given a Rusk in the morning and they'd go what's this and they'd be looked at blankly so what a Rusk what do you do with it you know is that how you pronounce Rock here where put it yeah and of course he there blank stairs yet again and it's what I call the Rodriguez effect which is South Africans who who think that something that's common to them is common to everybody else in the world yeah and obviously it's it's allit gone now yeah but it was this thing of course you know what a Rusk is um I clearly don't because I'm queering it um but so so there was this wonderful moment that great South African sense of humor and I mean I love some of the Africans descriptions of things um and and that was all unique and people were having great fun but then everybody started chasing they thought that luxury was bling yes they started competing on bling instead of the real reason nobody's flown halfway around the world for a chandelier they've come because they don't have Elephants or even warthogs wandering by in their backyard that's the luxury and the luxury is space and um that's what people are pursuing and and so and then it also got really roote you know it's a game Drive in the morning game Drive in the afternoon and the you spoke about people's memories remembering stories their own stories are the most treasured things and they don't get that if they sit in a four-wheel drive the whole time with somebody showing them things they got to get out they got to touch things smell and taste um and then you know once they've had their own moments if you see a herd of elephants going get people out of the vehicle they there they're within touching distance of it yeah but they're out of the vehicle and when you spoke about an elephant being bigger than me an elephant's bigger than you in a land when you're a Land Rover when you're standing there and elephant is enormous they get they grow that much they grow really fast the moment you step onto the ground and then you look you are huge and that's the response is to make people feel alive to to you their nostrils flaring twice the size they've ever been before yeah it's that moment you have the that adrenaline dump it's it's roller coasters for grown-ups um and it's also yeah again that's the moment they get back they say that was it extraord that was amazing I've got to tell my friends to come here you've just won you've just won you've just saved an animal's life because more people going to come and visit as I say to we I now work for company called natural selection that you've referenced we helped support some of your endeavors and we have a reservations team and I always say to them every time you don't close the booking a baby imp power dies oh I hope you don't slip to tonight I'll even sometimes go to them it's like no they didn't confirm that book like why do you hate baby and that poor baby hippo like what do you oh you poor person that's [Laughter] gnly oh shame man that's that's pretty hectic but [Laughter] I oh hope you night pizza really no I've got two tods no oh that's also true it's called payback maybe you know your stuff are going lovely I everybody else join me in sleeplessness you know you know I grew up in the in the in the dkb in the mountains and uh um my my wife family believes I was brought up in the bush by wolves um and and we were caught not caught my where we were my daughter and I she loves this overlanding thing with me and and uh we were supposed to do another humanitarian trip below Tuli block um uh and I we were supposed to leave the day of the lockdown actually and I pulled out I I postponed I didn't pull out I I postponed it um until you know until things chill I would imagine it's going to be September August September side um time of the year but she was she was just as GED as I was and we were sitting outside um on the on the stop um about two three months ago and we were we were picking up these little things and putting them in our mouths and um um my wife comes out she goes what are you two doing and my daughter picks one up she goes look Mommy we're eating ants do you want one and she puts it in her mouth and and my wife just like I can't you know you two really and she just storms inside and just you know and just you know those are the type of things that it's it's it's good to do it's okay to eat ants you know they they're like M worms it's just a lot less protein and and to a restaurant in Colombia that serves nothing but ads I was in Colombia at the end of August I was actually north of Columbia I wasn't in botar I was in Baron Kia sorry at the end of uh January so if I I would have tried to get there that's for sure yeah I'd have to look up which town it was in I went to many but uh yeah so yeah I mean they they actually say that it's a thing called inagi is the eating of insects yes uh and that that is one of the the ways forward for Humanity to stop us stripping the world of so many resources we know there's a locust play up in East Africa right now that's right that is protein that's protein right there that's abundant protein and if you know if we could convince certain rapacious Nations to go in there with Nets instead of trolling the oceans um that would save a lot of animals lives and possibly ours I mean I think it's talking about conservation it should be on everybody's mind right now if you consider that all of these lockdowns we're going through all of this massive spike in unemployment globally is because somebody needed a bowl of bat soup or or persecuted a pangalan yeah we exactly sure it does seem to be related to pangin and bats um and they they they they're trying to prove but I mean if you and I'm sorry to in interrupt I was chatting with uh my cousin yesterday and what they're saying is that a virus from a bat mixed with a pig at the right time was transferred Corona virus to a human in a fish market in Wuhan China now that that sentence in itself is what do you say I mean and Ang really so you don't have to be you don't have to love animals to have an interest in conservation and it's actually there's a a talk that I give which is conservation for people who hate animals um and of course it's never attended by people who hate who hate animals but it's about the importance of expressing to those that are just disinterested in Wildlife or think that conservation is a Folly how important it is no matter who you are so I'm now in a an urban part of the UK thank you South African home Affairs yeah and um and looking around and this couldn't be more removed from megap fora uh I mean the last bear in the UK was I think they know the data was killed of the 1500s or something sure the larest carnivore still here is the Badger um in the whole of the British Isles so you know wolves are long gone so there's no not even living memory there's not generational memory of of life with animals but everybody here should be deeply invested in the continued existence of elephants and the reason I say I'm I'm grabbing elephants they're charismatic but there was an amazing realization back in the 1960s by a biologist uh with the unfortunate surname of Pito or ped I don't know how you say it yeah Dr Richard Pito um that giant animals whales Elephants or whatever their cells are no bigger than ours but their the number of cells in their body is therefore enormous yet when they when a whale washes up on a beach it's not riddled with tumors in fact you don't find them and similarly elephants through Zoo anecdote they're like elephants die of everything but cancer how are they avoiding it yeah and until 200 17 no so it's 2018 we didn't really have a clue and it was actually as is often the case of great discoveries made by somebody operating out of their field and it was not a zoologist that figured out but a a Mormon pediatric oncologist out of Salt Lake City in Utah which read about this Mormons yeah and he he read about this and he went to a a traveling circus his name is Dr Joshua schiffman and he said do you mind if I draw blood from one of your elephants and they I don't know if they even checked his credentials but they left and he took it back to lab and he researched it and there's a protein called p53 and we have two varieties of it in our blood and we know that when tumors form as they do all day every day in our in our bodies p-53 attacks them and a number of them and it's it's quite successful uccessful yeah so we got the two varieties he looked at the elephant blood and at this point he's found more than 30 varieties and County and off the back of that somebody out of Santa Fe in New Mexico looked at another aspect of their blood and found that they have a completely unrelated compound that tackles leukemia as it develops so it's not that elephants don't get cancer yes in fact getting Cancer all day every day every elephant right now is developing a tumor but to evolve the great size they have they have to have really efficient ways of fighting it because there's so many cells in their body yeah yeah the interesting thing is off the back of that research somebody looked at dassies hyraxes that we know shared an ancestor with elephants and they don't have these compounds so the compounds came with size and we Now understand and people are looking more interestedly at Wales is how are they doing it they must have extraordinary ways of tackling cancers because there's so many different varieties and we Now understand that to get gr size you need to have extraordinary ways of defeating cancer and these things have all evolved separately hippos rhinos whales great white sharks don't get cancer and this it's it's extraordinary all of these animals out there that we seem intent on wiping out have got the curers that we are so desperate for there's there won't be a single person listening to this that hasn't been affect ected by cancer sure that doesn't know somebody um hopefully hasn't lost anybody directly or in in indirectly you're right yeah and if you consider that that just over a hundred years ago more people in World War I died from infections than died from bullets so let's say modern medicine's a little over a hundred years old pen medicine that was uh bottled yeah um so so life on Earth has been experim experimenting for 3.2 billion years give will take one or two give or take a decord or so um every species we lose has there's there's been experimentation and failure experimentation and failure experimentation and failure and we're not looking at end results we're looking at an ongoing experiment with every species we observe but we are pegging our 100 years of work against their 3.2 billion years every species we lose is like burning down a laboratory that's been going for billions of years before you've received the results that's what we're losing so whether you care about animals you should care about them carrying on and living in the wild as they do it's completely true and I I I'm you know it's I've obviously experienced elephants um and there's a massive difference between experiencing elephants behind a cage and in the open um and I believe that there's two types of elephants um in the in the setic region uh I know the batswana is having a a massive Challenge from from elephants and they're very clever um and elephants play a massive role to me I'm I'm probably changing the logo on my uh for my work um to an elephant logo because of the respect I have for elephants and in fact and for bobab trees I mean they're completely random but they huge long huge big um part of the of the of the African environment and they've been around for for for plenty plenty years and and they've LED and they they've they've coped by the way um elephants don't eat meat so I'm just letting I'm just letting you know leaving that with you that you know Elephants or or or also vegan you know I'm sure your wife may may enjoy that yes oh yeah yeah she she's a big fan of the vegetarian animals I'm sure listen Peter I'm going to I'm going to we can carry on doing this for another three hours I think we both have a day to start and I really want to um I really want to thank you for the time and effort that you've put into this um we can carry on doing this for a lot longer and there are so many stories between the two of us and I I really respect the work that you've done um I honor you as a writer and bringing life back to uh um an environment that is is known for glamping um in your industry the people that come to yours and the of Lodgers or or people that we need and uh I really respect the fact that you try and drive them to support you guys and in turn support to people like myself on and and the human intering work that I do no no Well we I'm a huge fan of the work you do I should have expressed that earlier um really inspired by what you do and and the genuine passion you take it and um and also you spoke about the bone rattling things when you set off on that trip I just saw the obstacles and you just saw the opportunities which is a fantastic attitude you take into the the really important work you do so I salute you sir I really appreciate it thank you and I'm I'm trying to do more and uh I'm I'm I'm hoping to work with um with you guys again I'm sure there is another opportunity in another region to help some more kids and um I just I wish to see you back in Cape Town without our our nonsense government playing games and uh um you know thinking of themselves and uh I I I wish you in your and and your girls and your wife um good good health and happiness in in the UK thanks Anton and we will speak again soon absolutely have a blessed day cheers
2024-08-13 07:08
