The bar is comfortable and the burger and fries is substantial enough to set aside any worries of me fading away from the lack of a breakfast. I choose to stick with a soft drink and Evan seems quite content to do the same.

I have to remain quiet for a minute while he takes a video of his club sandwich and comments about the look and aroma. We eat in silence, the only sounds being the continual beeps and chirps of several gaming machines along the far wall and their constant cries for attention. I recognise a couple of the software stacks and smile to myself.

Evan keeps glancing over in their direction, almost as if he needs to answer their insistent and ever-beckoning call. Once we have finished eating I can tell that the urge is getting the better of him.

“Please, Evan, indulge your craving if you need to. I certainly won’t mind if you need to lose a few pounds to the gods of chance.”

“You are so sure I’ll lose?”

“Go and try to win. I’ll explain when you return.”

“Okay, but order me another drink, please?”

“Sure.”

I wave to the barman as Evan saunters over to the machines, reaching into his pocket for some change. He chooses a machine that I recognise and seems to be enjoying himself for a few minutes. It doesn’t seem to last very long though. When he slaps the machine and saunters back to our table, I can’t help but smile.

“What’s so funny?”

“I don’t often get to watch people who are actually paying my wages. It’s quite entertaining and now I’d recommend it to anyone.”

“Paying your wages?”

“Well, the machine you were on, and the one to the left of it are familiar. I audited the software stack on both of them. It’s likely that I did the random number generator stacks on all the machines on the ship, but I don’t recognise them all.”

“So, you know that they cheat and you still encouraged me to play?”

“No. Actually, I know that they are totally fair. I probably know that better than almost anyone else in the world. I’m the one the designers come to when they need somebody to check them out in order to get approval by the regulators. They are fair. 100% completely fair and equitable.”

“But I almost always lose.”

“Yes. They are fair, but the house always wins. In the long run, there’s a built-in bias in every game that favours the house a small percentage. It isn’t down to unfairness, exactly, the games are designed from the very outset to work that way. There are exceptions – poker for example – but in general, casino-style games, roulette and anything with a dice, favour the house by about four percent.”

“So, I’m never going to win? I’m wasting my time trying?”

“Not exactly. There are winners, it’s just that overall, the machine comes out ahead. There are still jackpots and you could still be lucky.”

“You’ve shattered my dreams of being a winner,” Evan moans with a big grin on his face.

“How can I ever make it up to you?”

“Show me some African photos?”

“Sure. I’ll pop and get my laptop.”

It only takes me a couple of minutes to go back to my cabin and grab my laptop. Luckily, I’d remembered to put it on charge before I left earlier. Evan has cleared the table when I return and moved the two chairs to be on the same side.

“Do you have a preference for location or species?” I ask as I sit down and open the photo app.

“No, I’m happy for you to choose. Do you have a preference yourself?”

“Well, Zambia was the latest trip and the newest camera with this lens.” I tap the bag that’s still beside my chair. “There are leopards, painted dogs, elephants, lions, giraffes, zebras. Basically, everything except rhinoceros.”

Evan watches the screen as I slowly flick through a few hundred of the best photos from South Luangwa. I like to keep a curated list of the ones I like the best, as a quick way to remind myself of how good a safari I had. There are a few gasps and murmurs of appreciation as we skip through them slowly.

“You make it look so easy,” Evan tells me after a few minutes. “I don’t suppose that it is though?”

“No, you have to have patience and be prepared to be disappointed. You also need to be very lucky. Sometimes the animals are simply not there. Occasionally, I wish I could step back from the lens and just enjoy the experience, but I rarely do so. I’m simply not brave enough to leave the camera behind, even for a single session. I’m always afraid that I’ll miss something spectacular if it do.”

“Yes, I get that same feeling when I’m working on another episode of my vlog. I have to see everything through the lens and everything has to be recorded by the camera.”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. Sometimes, when on a safari, I feel the pressure to go out on every single session, take every opportunity, even though it tires you out and stops being enjoyable sometimes. I’m slowly learning to step back occasionally. Making it a longer trip helps to ease the pressure a bit as well.”

“I think I can understand that. If other people came back for lunch with a great tale about watching lions kill or something and you’d just been sitting on your veranda, it would feel pretty devastating.”

“Yes, it hasn’t happened to me to quite that degree, but I sometimes feel that it might.”

“Wow, that’s the best so far. That’s incredible.”

“In my defence, he is just yawning, but there is something about that look with the teeth bared, isn’t there. It’s not often that you see leopards so relaxed, but there they are like it all the time.”

“You are right about leopards, though. They do have a certain presence. You capture their characters very well. It’s actually pretty clear that it is just a yawn and that level of disdain for humans who are watching is almost palpable.”

 

“They really don’t give a shit. They know that they could be in the vehicle and you could be dead in a couple of seconds and, more importantly, they know that you know. In Tanzania, with the camera turned off, I watched one haul a wildebeest carcase into a tree. Probably 500 pounds of dead weight.”

“I never thought they were so powerful.”

“Have you ever tried to hold onto a kitten that wants you to let it go?”

“Yes. They’re pretty strong; all claws and teeth.”

“That’s it. Now imagine one that weighs just about the same as you do, with the same pound-for-pound power as that little kitten. They’re a force of nature that isn’t to be argued with.”

“Aren’t you afraid. I mean, you’re pretty close to them, aren’t you?”

“Yes, that shot was with the big zoom lens, but still only about forty feet. That’s about two seconds or so at enraged leopard speeds and we’re in a totally open Land Cruiser. But afraid, no. Maybe a little pumped up on adrenaline, but not actually scared to be there. More thrilled I guess.”

“I think I’d be terrified.”

“Well, it’s not all big cats and fangs. Sometimes it’s just spending a few minutes watching an elephant browse or, even more fascinating, watching a giraffe eat an acacia.”

“I think I’d still be terrified. Elephants charge – I’ve seen the videos on YouTube – and giraffes are simply weird and huge.”

“You might surprise yourself. You really should give it a try. There are group tours for people travelling on their own.”

“What about you? How do you travel when you go.”

“Well, the first time I went with my friends, but the other two trips I’ve organised and travelled on my own. My boyfriend didn’t want to go and, honestly, I didn’t want to pay for him to do so. My friends did help with the planning though. It’s sadly vastly more expensive, but I like that I can stop for as long as I like and wait for that perfect shot.

“Also, I’m not a bird-watcher and wouldn’t want to end up in a vehicle with a rabid one. Three hours looking at a cisticola would drive me to murder.”

“What the hell is a cisticola?”

“A nondescript little brown warbler-type bird. There are about fifty different species and they can often only be told apart by the sounds they make. Bird-watchers always want to complete their lists and will try their hardest to get a positive identification. As the old saying goes; I’ve been there, done that, and strangled myself with the t-shirt!”

“So, no birds then?”

“Well, some are worth a look, but I don’t go out of my way. Eagles, hawks, kingfishers, bee-eaters, sunbirds; there are spectacular ones to be seen and I don’t mind when there’s nothing else. Bird-watchers though; they’ll pull you away from an elephant at the merest hint of a sparrow.”

“Any other pet hates in the safari community?”

“Well, only the obsession with lions. They spend 90% of the time asleep or having sex. They may be big and impressive, but again, I can take them or leave them. Leopards or cheetahs are so much more interesting. Don’t even get me started on the smaller cats.”

“Smaller ones?”

“Caracal, serval, golden cat, even the African wildcat is more interesting than a lion!”

“Oh, now I can see why they call them painted dogs. That really does look like it’s been smeared with a paintbrush. Or even a collection of different paintbrushes.”

“Yes. They are really quite spectacular and every single one is different.”

“What’s it playing with?”

“The head of an impala. We missed the kill by about a minute and there wasn’t much left. There were more than twenty dogs in the pack and an impala was really little more than a snack.”

 

“You’re very passionate about it, aren’t you?”

“I suppose. I can’t wait to go back. I want to see Namibia, or return to Kenya again. Namibia has plenty of animals to be seen, but the scenery is so out-of-this-world that I have to go at some point. Oceans of sand, rocky wildernesses, vast salt pans, the variety from desert to forests and marshes. You normally self-drive there though and I don’t drive.”

“You could learn?”

“I suppose, but I’ve never really been interested in getting behind the wheel. Frankly, it would be better if I could find someone who wants to go with me and who can drive.”

Our conversation is interrupted by a ship-wide announcement that we are approaching the coast of Skye. I had completely lost all track of time.

We’re not the only ones to scramble, but I have to put my laptop away and get my camera out. “I’ll see you at dinner, Evan. You go on while I organise myself.”

“Sure, Adam. See you later.”