Flights were an absolute luxury back in the 70s, and I didn't travel outside New Zealand till I was 18. My first trip overseas was to Japan for a month in the 1980s. I spoke very little Japanese, I had just $1000, a rail pass, a youth hostel pass and no real plans. Back in those days, hostels were run by families and the rule was you could only stay for two nights. I remember being with one family in the south, in Kyushu and they'd invite all their family over for these big meals. I'd been there five days and they kept saying, "don't leave, stay longer". It was such a beautiful way to travel and it really opened up my eyes to the world. When I came home, I knew I wanted to work in travel so I could continue to travel.
I went to Africa for the first time in 1995. A friend was going to Zimbabwe and Botswana, and asked if I'd come too. Something about Africa got into my soul and I just keep going back. Back then I was working for a retail travel agent, but Africa become such a passion I decided I wanted to sell Africa only, so I bought into an agency called Africa Travel Centre. Africa totally changed my life.
One amazing experience I had was with my husband; we did a canoe safari down the Zambezi River, sleeping on sand islands in little pop-up dome tents. At night, hippos would come out of the water, and the smell was incredible. They were twice the size of our tents, and they could easily have sat on us, but they'd just munch around, then go back in the water. As we carried on down the river, we'd come to these hippo chicanes. We'd go around massive pods of hippos, dodging them, while our guide yelled: "Back paddle, back paddle! Go to the left!" He had no weapons and we were inexperienced, but we just followed his instructions and paddled around the hippos.
In Botswana, you fly in quite small aircraft and a lot of the runways are just grass in the middle of nowhere. Often there's wildlife on the landing strips, so a safari vehicle will wait beside the runway and drive up and down to scare the zebras and giraffes off. These are tiny planes, four people plus the pilot, and sometimes we'd come in to land, then all of a sudden there's a giraffe standing there and we're taking off again. That's a regular occurrence but people don't believe it till they actually see it.
I was on a walking safari in Hwange in Zimbabwe National Park. There were six of us and an armed guard who told these great stories. When we came across a massive herd of buffalo, he made us all sit down. He told us we needed to get behind the buffalos without them smelling us. At first, we thought he was joking, but we still dropped to our bums. Here's us, sitting on the ground with our legs out in front, bum shuffling around the back of the buffalo and the adrenaline was pumping, because a massive herd could've tramped us to death. But our guide was extremely experienced, he knew which way the wind was blowing, we got around safely and the buffalo were none the wiser.
