I bumped into my friend and fellow safari guide, Vic – a tall, gaunt, phlegmatic, and bearded man, in a campsite pub in Rundu, a small town on the Kavango river in northern Namibia. I was near the start of a three-week safari through Namibia with four English folk. A carefully planned and exciting itinerary ahead of us.  Vic, on the other hand had a large group of Italians who were also travelling through Namibia but with no fixed itinerary.  He was under instruction to drive them wherever they asked to go. The twelve clients had brought their own camping equipment, maps and seemingly differing opinions about every possible topic, but certainly about the best route to take. The Italians met up with my clients who cheerfully gave them a copy of our itinerary, with the result that they designed their tour to match ours. It has been a luxury for me to have spent the bulk of my time in the remote areas of Botswana and Namibia, in a real estate the combined size of France and Germany that harbours a combined population that numbered half the population of Paris alone. To be inflicted, at every turn and at every stop, with the constant squabbling of twelve volatile Italians led me to consider genocide on a small scale. No matter how far we drove on empty roads when we pulled up at a remote, magnificent baobab, far from the tourist routes, the Italians would arrive within ten minutes, pile out of the vehicle and begin to auction something at the tops of their voices. When we stopped to see a stainless-steel meteorite nestled in waving grassland the Italians noisily pulled in and started to hack metallic pieces off this national monument with their Swiss Army knives.

My Brits soon rued their generous and full disclosure of our itinerary so I spoke to Vic and asked him if we could not part ways. He looked hurt. We were his only recourse to sanity as no more than two of his group could speak any English and the only time they spoke to him was to command him where to take them. Anyway, I had to accept his argument that he had no say over the itinerary.

That evening the Italian snoop came to me and said in a classic Italian accent, ‘We wanta to see the naked women’ as he juggled imaginary boobs in my face. ‘You tella me where they are, huh?’

I finally guessed that he was referring to the Himba tribe, a primitive and traditional people, who lived in the remote Kaokoveld and covered their bodies with an oily red ochre paste, so I directed him to the local ‘red-light’ district in Windhoek. He glared at me as though I was stupid.

After a week of being dogged at every step my clients conspired to lose them and told them that from the town of Korixas we were going straight to Swakopmund, when actually we planned to drive to the Skeleton Coast first before heading for that bustling coastal town. This they figured would see the end of the Italians. Poor Vic had been cut loose. So, the next morning he set off in his forward-control Chevvy truck which had a top speed of seventy kilometres per hour. He drove south all day, finally reaching Swakopmund in the dark.

We, meanwhile, drove a few hours from Korixas over beautiful, stark country down the escarpment and onto the flat sandy plain that leads to the awe-inspiring, if bleak, Skeleton Coast. It is a featureless landscape, sparsely vegetated with ground-hugging hardy plants, where the mists roll in from the cold ocean current and cause temperatures to plummet to at least half that of the mid to high 30 degrees centigrade that prevails inland. This gives the traveller the impression that he has driven into a different hemisphere, and moved from summer to winter within an hour, while a sensation of surreally featureless terrain prevails.

We camped that night with icy winds howling around us, throwing salty sands against the flimsy shelter of the flapping tents. Sleep was hard to come by so early the next morning we headed off down the bleak road to Swakopmund – happy for the experience but looking forward to the comforts of the bungalows that awaited us. Halfway down this long, misty road, the headlights of a slow moving and familiar vehicle trundled towards us. Vic was on his way north having gone south all day the previous day. The Italians had frantically scoured Swakopmund for us, concluded that we had gone to the Skeleton Coast and so they decided to catch up with us. Instead of having the day to replenish his supplies, check his vehicle and catch his breath while his clients explored the picturesque town, Vic had to rise in the early mists, refuel, restock, sort out national park permits and drive most of the day. He was understandably losing his sense of humour at a faster rate than he could coax his tired old vehicle on, but the Italians did not look too jolly either, huddled under blankets in the back of the open vehicle.

We cheerily said goodbye and headed off to our appointment with warm showers while Vic lumbered northwards to the campsite we had just left, which he reached at dusk with a sigh of relief.

‘Right here we are. Put up your tents,’ he announced.

The Italians looked around them in dismay. The place looked like something out of a grim science fiction movie. Sea, mist and sand all of them grey and hard to tell which is which. The wind howled off the cold ocean and they felt frozen and miserable. Without budging from the truck, they held a quick conference and for once were in total accord. They were not staying there. The spokesperson called to Vic and said: ‘We go back now, huh.’

Vic was speechless. He had driven south all day the day before and back north all day today at their insistence. Now they wanted him to drive all night back to where they had started that very morning.

“No,” he managed to splutter.

‘Yes,’ they insisted in unison.

‘No, I won’t,‘ Vic was adamant.

So were the Italians. They were not staying another minute and they instructed their representative to say to Vic, ‘Don’ta forgeta we pay you, huh?’

In response, Vic reached inside the cab, removed the keys from the ignition, walked ten paces towards the desert, and with all his might hurled them into the gloom.

‘Now you stay,’ he said flatly and stalked off to the sea where he sat on a rock and watched the ocean roll in. When it was dark, he finally made his way back to the truck. The tents were up, food was bubbling on the gas stove and the keys were back in the ignition.

Our Italian friends apparently tried frantically to catch up with us again but Vic managed to just miss us each time. The beers were on me when we next caught up.