Safari: Part One, Nairobi.

I'm looking forward to 2013 in many ways, but I increasingly find myself looking back through old photo albums and boxes of slides with a big grin on my face.

This week I found a photo album from our African Safari in 1984 and scanned the whole thing into my iMac. What an amazing thing to happen to a 34 year old working class boy like me! On the other hand, it was what I always wanted to do, but didn't believe I ever would.

In the 1960s UK, we used to watch black-and-white re-runs on tiny TVs, of safari programmes by Armand and Michaela Dennis. They admitted us to an amazing world of elegant, millionaire travellers and laid down our knowledge of the great African Plains.  The young Michaela was as easy on the eye as a leopard, and so the tradition of leggy blondes interpreting the natural world to the masses began. I believe it still goes on. And why not?

But for me, I think it all began before that, because my roots lie in a little village, close to the home of the Kearton Brothers who pioneered wildlife photography. I was aware of their books and photos from a very early age and, being totally unaware of class or privilege,  I always assumed it was my right to follow in their footsteps if I so wished but it took me a while to get there. My career led me through school-teaching and so, through a side door, into the world of wildlife conservation at Sir Peter Scott's Wildfowl Trust.

Kist Family Safari

One day, we were sent a young intern from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her time at the Trust was supposed to be a stepping-stone towards working with African primates under Dianne Fossey or Jane Goodall, but I soon put a stop to all that!

I'll spare you the grizzly details of our courtship, but in 1983 Hanna and I were married at the Wildfowl Trust centre in Arundel. We started our honeymoon with Hanna's folks in Chicago and then drove all the way to Seattle and back. That trip is worth a whole book in itself.

Then, in 1984, with half the family in the USA and the rest of us in Europe, Hanna's parents offered to join us for a big holiday, anywhere we liked. Of course Hanna wanted to see East Africa and the rest of us didn't argue.

In those pre-internet days, most people would book with an expensive, top of the range safari company like Kuoni or Abercrombie and Kent and enrol on one of their standard trips. My job was to try and get a tailor-made safari for seven people at a decent price.

I read all the books, travel guides and the itineraries used by the biggest operators and tried to negotiate a trip taking in both Kenya and Northern Tanzania. At that time, that wasn't really possible without having two separate safaris as the border was closed, so I homed in on Kenya and wrote to all the safari companies I could find. Most of them didn't reply, but one of them did and we started corresponding about our ideal trip.

The Norfolk Hotel

In the end, we booked two weeks with Dick Hedges Safaris and then a week on our own with a rented minibus.

The Kist family flew into Nairobi from Chicago, London and Amsterdam and gathered at the prestigious Norfolk Hotel. Hanna and I had a bad start at the airport because the immigration people realised that we didn't have enough money for our trip. We were taken to a room for interrogation and explained that we had no money, but that Hanna's dad, Nico, had money for us at the hotel. Once we explained that we were at the Norfolk, I guess our story made sense. All we needed now was a taxi into town.

The airport taxi arrangement was just like the one in Chicago's O'Hare airport. Kids would accost you and offer to get you a taxi that would inevitably be driven by a relative of theirs. We ended up with an Austin Cambridge estate, driven by a bald man called "Cannonball".  Once we had pushed the car to get it started, I don't think it gave us any problems, but it was a foretaste of things to come.

Emma Hedges

When you stay somewhere like the Norfolk, you begin to think you are special. It is an historic haven of peace and opulence in a bustling African city. The guests all looked like they were movie-stars and the gardens and stream behind the hotel are now well known birding sites. You can see 100 species without walking anywhere.

I can't actually remember the first night; I probably slept like a log, but I certainly recollect the next morning. Dick Hedges sent us his glamorous daughter Emma to be our driver and guide. She looked fabulous in her tanned skin, long braids and neat safari shirt; and her cream-painted, long-wheelbase Toyota-based safari truck was "the business". The outfit looked very competent to me; and so it was. On the other hand, we looked like your average, ignorant tourists; which we were.