Foreword by Denis Beckett, Author and TV Trekker
The rules of writing nature guides specify that: your reader will have your book in one hand and binoculars in the other, standing at the spot you’re writing about (this is a Guide, after all); criticism is unpatriotic if not slightly treasonable (foreigners might see!); humour is not properly reverential and must be applied with caution (conservation is not funny, hey).
Roxanne must have missed class that day. She has written a book that you can read from start to finish like a novel; tells it like it is, warts as well as beauty-spots; and requires stomach-muscle exercise, to protect against laugh-ache.
She covers more nature parks than most of us have heard of, let alone been to, and they come alive through her words. Partly, they come alive because she isn’t into worshipfulness. There are real people in here. Tracker Andrew, say, the Hercule Poirot of the desert, his little grey cells always revving, dangling lizards by their teeth from his ears. Or the dreary, sour trail-guide who has more time for his cellphone than his clientele. That guy doesn’t usually get written up. Roxanne writes him up. Thereby she (a) gives us the yep-a-truth-I-know feeling, (b) usefully kicks ass, (c) makes her compliments to the Tracker Andrews ring of truth and not of cliché.
This two-fisted approach works for me, and so does Roxanne’s turn of phrase. Did you know that the spotted eagle-owl walks with a wet-nappy waddle? I didn’t. I’m not sure I would have cared, in the normal context, which is the back of a tiered, cold Land Rover while the guide switches off to take up time downloading History and Characteristics of the Spotted Eagle-owl. But the wet nappy is a vivid image, and pithy, and it drew me in.
Vultures, too; those undertakers of the veld, in need of a spin doctor to get their innate hygiene across to a misled public. These pages contain a unique guide for vulture restaurateurs. Why your choice of location must allow for design deficiencies in the customers’ landing gear. Why your menu planning must allow ample time for baby-making pursuits. Why farmers are amending the practice of slipping strychnine into the hors d’oeuvres. Any ‘specials’ to recommend? Roadkill reedbuck and careless cow.
You’ll go way beyond zoology, too. Into why Olive Schreiner’s kitchen walls are a startling deep turquoise, why Addo had a tortoise called Domkrag, and why jokes about John Wayne’s horse-shaped legs aren’t funny any more. Plus how to prove the Free State isn’t flat, where to find caves that Boer women and children hid in during the South African War, and why you’d better explore Oom Kowie’s Pass before you ‘have to settle for boring old sanity’.
This is a delicious book. It evokes things we love about the country around us. It conjures up places that soothe the soul. Its huge fault is that ... well, people are going to read it. And then where will all our best-kept secrets be? Huh?
Endorsement by Glenn Phillips, Managing Executive: Tourism Development and Marketing, South African National Parks
www.sanparks.org
Be warned! In your hands you’re holding a book that will unleash the adventurer in you. After reading this interesting, funny, but well -researched book, you’ll want to do nothing but start planning your own adventure … Enjoy and go WILD.