TRAVELLING internationally sounds glamorous and there can be some great days but it’s mixed with tiredness, jetlag, delays and frustrations as well.

Over 30 years, there’s been some real highlights and I thought I’d share a couple as we approach the end of another year.

Probably the most amazing sight I’ve seen is Victoria Falls, on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia, on the mighty Zambezi. A mile wide and about 100m high, it’s awesome and is unusual in that there’s a dry season when virtually no water comes over and then the spectacle that is full flow in March, three months after the rains in the headwaters. The spray is so intense you get soaked, but who cares.

I was there in the early 1980s, just after Zimbabwe’s independence. I was working for a client and they had a house in a mining town, Hwange, only an hour’s drive from Vic Falls. Naturally, we buzzed through regularly and first stop was usually a sunset cruise on the Zambezi, where you bought a ticket and got free beers.

Analysing this, we realised the ticket was worth four beers so any more was a true freebie. On one occasion, we were pulling into the dock when we managed to persuade the steward to give us the bonus beer. Brucy Bonus!

On the Monday drive to the workcamp, about three hours away, there was some great sights available - carmine-breasted bee eaters on telephone wires, elephants usually near the camp and once, unbelievably, the most beautiful of antelopes, a sable, leaping across the road right in front of me.

I was lucky to get a bit squiffy in the bar at the Bulawayo Archery Club, where, as far as I could see, darts were the only arrows around.

There was quite a lot of getting squiffy in those days, I was young, including a stunning fishing camp on the Zambezi, run by a lady from Wigan, and the bar of the Gwaai River hotel, surrounded by hundreds of banknotes from all over the world.

A lovely country with lovely people and some of the best scenery in Africa.