Peter Allison - How to Walk a Puma

Tarli Young for saving me from a planned life of luxury and comfort in Costa Rica, and inadvertently sending me to Bolivia and Inti Wara Yassi instead.

Ben and Kate Loxton for insisting I waste some time in debauchery and laugh myself silly while doing so. And Yahtzee too.

Diana Balcazar for expert guiding while filming in Colombia.

Matt Mitchell and Jonny Hall at Hostel Revolution, Quito.

John Purcell and Tamsin Steel for putting me up—and putting up with me—when I was recently single and a moping dullard.

Louis, Hoens and Jan Louis Nortje who gave me somewhere to stay during the main editing phase of this book, far from South America in Namibia.

And finally, thanks to the team at Allen & Unwin—Louise Thurtell, Clara Finlay and Angela Handley.

Peter Allison has led safaris in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. It was his love of animals that first led him to Africa at the age of 19, and by the late 1990s he’d graduated from being a safari guide himself to leading the training of guides for the region’s largest safari operator. Peter has led safaris that have featured in such magazines as Vogue and Conde Nast Traveller . He has also assisted National Geographic photographers and appeared on television shows such as Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures . In between globetrotting the world as a marketeer for Africa’s leading safari company, he divides his time between Sydney and Cape Town.

First published in the UK by Nicholas Brealey Publishing in 2012