3rd March, 2006

I havn't regaled you with many stories recently. Well I suppose I havn't been here very much to do so, but I'm around for the foreseeable future and I thought I would tell you about my riding safari in Kenya I did last week. Our guide was an unbelievably good looking 25 year old Argentinian bloke whose business card describes his job title as "Exclusive Adrenaline Engineering". How sad to recall my excitement at replacing "Pan European Research Sales" with "Asian Equity Sales". Anyway, he wasn't joking. Though I doubt it was pre-arranged, within minutes of arriving at our first camp-site a 12 foot hippo charged one of our party with unfortunate consequences....for the hippo....sadly. Late night game drives, ele-baiting, bull buffalos, galloping alongside giraffes, wildebeast and zebra all got the juices running. But at the risk of blowing up your inbox with mega-bites (sic) I am attaching a photograph of a scene that says it all. OK, so I'm the cowardly one at the back of the group in a pink shirt ( appropriately ), but in my defence I had been given a 6 year old horse and this was only its second safari. Previously Dream Day had been a polo pony and I assume he didn't meet too many elephants, buffalo or even spring hares during the course of a couple of chukkas on the polo pitch. Frankly, I ended up doing rodeo-impressions whenever he saw an ant-hill, never mind a lion.