No Stopping for Lions by Joanne Glynn Page B

Central Australia. The only accommodation available is in the campsite run by the local community, and this is spread over a large area among the outcrops and gullies. Neil begins to have doubts about the Community Campsite when the man at reception is vague about our site’s facilities. He tells us that there are no showers because either the bad boys in the village have taken the fittings, or there is not enough water in the village to supply all the sites. We later determine that there is just one workable shower with a rusty collapsing tank for the entire grounds, and the en-suite toilets are literally that: a toilet bowl hidden in the rocks, no plumbing or pit attached. Dinner in the restaurant that night? No, because the ladies in the village need time to prepare.
    We find our allotted site number 2 and it’s a wonderful spot, right in the heart of a deep chasm between two towering rock faces. It’s so isolated and the landscape so overwhelming, that it’s all a bit surreal. We pitch the tent where we’ll get the best view, bang in the middle, and over a glass of cheap South African wine and with a CD playing, we wait contentedly for night to descend. It seems like only yesterday that we were sitting in Algeria trying to think of something to fill in this languid time of day, but now alone and under the stars we listen to Maria Callas throw herself off the parapet while we talk animatedly about where we’ve been and where we’re heading.
    Next morning a slight breeze comes up, which turns into a gale whooping down our chasm and dismantling the tent and sending the toilet paper in a ribbon all over the site. It’s dawning on us that you don’t automatically choose the best-looking site to set up camp, you have to consider things like wind flow and weather conditions and seasonal variations. A combination of this realisation and the wind whistling incessantly around my ears makes me irritable and I harp at Neil, who is trying his best to retrieve clothes and utensils scattered all over the place. He points out that we have two options, we either stay or we can leave, and the simplicity of this is enough to diffuse my exasperation. Then clip-clop up our track comes a young boy with his donkey cart to sell us a ride. We settle on three photos for six pens instead and decide that this place isn’t so bad after all.
    Neil negotiates with reception for a move to a cabin and this turns out to be very rudimentary. It’s like an old Australian bush slab hut where sun and wind creep in through the gaps between the slabs, and there is no glass and no secure fastenings over the windows. No wonder the ladies looked confused when we asked for a key to the door. We entertain ourselves by making up stories about the young European woman in the next-door cabin living, so it would seem, in near poverty with a black man. Is this the secret that seems to be hovering over the camp, making the locals guarded and a little standoffish?
    The ladies have been in the kitchen all day preparing our dinner. We are to be the only guests. At seven o’clock we go to the restaurant, order a beer each and are immediately served a plate piled high with packet macaroni cheese and potato salad, and three little chicken wings and one thigh between us. That’s dinner. Over the dregs of the beer we debate the fate of the remaining three thighs and one wing as we take in a month’s supply of carbohydrates. The ladies are very pleased with themselves and have already started preparations for our breakfast.
    The following morning we’re back in the restaurant for breakfast and the ladies are becoming decidedly friendly. We have fried eggs, which come from the kitchen one at a time, and freshly baked bread that’s the best we’ve had to date. Steaming tea comes out in a big aluminium pot, and it’s just as well we take it black because there’s no milk. Well, there was milk — we saw the