9
A September
Pause
“A life on the road only makes sense in moments like this—when, for one quiet morning, the only journey is from your coffee cup to the sea,
and you finally feel how far you’ve come.”
John Sparks
THE QUIET AFTER
There is a particular silence that follows a long tour.
Not the silence of absence—no engines, no voices—but the softer hush that arrives when the intensity eases and your nervous system realises it no longer has to be everywhere at once.
Twenty‑one days on the road behind me. Three weeks with a family that, by the end, felt less like clients and more like the sort of relatives you wish you’d been born with. Children who climbed into the vehicle in Johannesburg a little cautious and climbed out at
Cape Town airport with hugs that belonged, almost, to my own.
It never felt like work. That’s the part that both comforts and worries me sometimes. Three weeks at this pace takes something out of you, whether you notice it at the time or not.
The logistics were there, of course—flights, transfers, rooming lists, dietary quirks, last‑minute changes—but they slipped into place with the ease that only comes when you’re doing, every day, what your life has trained you to do. I like organising things. Routes, timings, restaurant bookings, surprise stops, small upgrades no one asked for. That part of my brain hums contentedly when it’s busy.
With this family, it wasn’t just efficient. It was light. I caught myself laughing more than usual on game drives, staying a little longer around the fire at night, lingering on the stoep after they’d gone to bed, just to sit with how good it felt.
And now, for the first time in three weeks, the day is mine.
CAMPS BAY
I’m sitting at a small table on the pavement in Camps Bay, a cappuccino cooling slowly in front of me. The cup leaves a faint ring on the saucer every time I pick it up and put it down. My chair is a little wobbly on the paving; I nudge it until it settles.
The sea is a hundred metres away, beyond the low wall and strip of sand, flat as a thought that hasn’t yet decided what it wants to become. The Twelve Apostles rise behind me, stacked against the sky like vertebrae.
It’s another beautiful spring day—clear, still, the kind of air that makes colours sharper. The tourists haven’t yet arrived in full madness, but the promise is there. Locals in running gear pad past; someone walks an elderly dog with the confidence of a creature that has seen many springs and is willing to grant this one its charm.
I’ve done the laundry run. Answered the urgent emails. Sent the “safe home?” message to the family who left yesterday, even though
I know the plane is still somewhere over the Atlantic and they won’t see it for hours. I picture them folded into those narrow seats, heads tipped back, the boys already half asleep with headphones on.
My phone lies face‑down on the table. For once, I allow myself the luxury of not being on call for the next transfer, the next check‑in, the next unexpected customs form.
It is quiet. Not completely—Camps Bay never is—but quiet enough inside my own head. I notice my shoulders properly for the first time today and realise they’ve dropped.
This is what a pause looks like for me: coffee on a sidewalk, a notebook half open, a towel in a bag for a swim later, and the knowledge that, just for a few hours, nobody needs me to decide anything.
Part of me misses the low‑level buzz of them in the back seat already.
A HOLIDAY WITHIN A HOLIDAY
I think back over the last twenty‑one days.
The winelands laughter. Hermanus whales. West Coast flowers. Lions and leopards and late‑night fires. The way those boys leaned forward in their seats when a tracker raised a hand in silence. The way their mother fell in love with a particular piece of coastline and went quiet in a way I recognised as gratitude. The way James’s handshake changed between Day 1 and Day 20—from polite professionalism to something closer to brotherhood.
A small detail floats up: the younger boy asleep in the vehicle after a long game drive, head against the window, mouth open, completely surrendered to tiredness, his camera still looped around his wrist. I remember glancing back at him in the rear‑view mirror and thinking, he’s safe, he’s full, he’ll remember this without knowing why.
Guiding is often described as work. It is. It can be exhausting, relentless, full of responsibility. You carry people’s safety, expectations, anxieties, and dreams simultaneously. You are driver, translator, safety net, storyteller, negotiator, mediator, sometimes therapist, sometimes comedian.
But with the right people, it becomes something else.
Those three weeks were like walking inside a perfectly tuned piece of music. Every day had its own notes, but the theme was consistent: ease. No drama. No entitlement. Just a family willing to be where they were, with whomever they were with, and let the country do its work on them.
It was, honestly, a holiday within a holiday—for them, and, quietly, for me. I rested in their company even while I was working.
PREPARING THE NEXT CHAPTER
Tomorrow, it starts again.
Another ten‑day trip. Another set of names on a manifest. A couple, arriving with their own luggage of hopes and histories. I’ll meet them at an arrivals gate with the same quiet smile and the same sense of curiosity: Who are you? How will this land change you? How will you change me?
This afternoon I’ll open the laptop and look over the bespoke itinerary I did months ago for them with fresh eyes. Check the flight times. Confirm the lodge transfers. Read weather forecasts for the places we’re headed. Confirm all the small surprises I’ve built in—an unscheduled stop at a viewpoint; a lunch under a tree that isn’t on any official plan; a detour through a village that tells them more about South Africa than any museum brochure.
But not yet.
For now, I am just a man on a sidewalk, watching the light move across a bay that has anchored my own life for decades. I think briefly of a swim—the water will be cold, always is on this side, but my body has learned to convert shock into awakening. Maybe I’ll go in later. Maybe I’ll simply sit and let the sound of waves and traffic and stray laughter wash over me.
I take another sip of coffee. It’s lukewarm now, but I don’t mind. It tastes like time that is finally my own.
A pause is not the absence of movement. It is the deliberate choice to feel where you are before you move again.