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.
My phone is heavy with images—dozens of attempts to pin down what the heart understood the moment I stepped onto the path.
Our vehicle meets us at the estate gate, and a short drive later we are back at the villa, the mountain now a dark shoulder behind the house.