Fifty-eight buffalo stampeded his old canvas tent. He nearly drowned while river rafting. A baboon stole critical medication. Unbeknownst to him, he went swimming with crocodiles. He was mugged several times. Soldiers held him and other tour members at gunpoint for smuggling meat. And his tent went floating away during a waist-high flash flood.
If those encounters weren't enough, his bus driver crossed over into oncoming traffic and killed a motorcyclist, only to keep driving before being arrested later that day, tried the next day, and sentenced to 25 years in jail.
Welcome to Sheldon Herman's world, as he lived it in late 2018 and early 2019, when he went on a vacation that was unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.
Herman had just taken medical retirement from the RCMP.
"As a retirement gift to myself, I decided to go on a big trip鈥� I wanted comfort. I didn't want tents or camping," he remembered with a chuckle.
He settled on what he thought would be a perfect alternative. Since his house was under renovation and uninhabitable, he worked with a travel agent to book a 60-day luxury safari in South Africa 鈥� luxury being the key word.
Well, it turned out to be anything but, and that excursion served as fodder for Herman's recently released first book, "The Tortured Traveller: How I Survived the Worst Vacation Ever."
He calls it a comedically written narrative or tongue-in-cheek account of his trip and all that it brought with it.
"You get to laugh at all of my misfortune," Herman said.
"It was an absolute nightmare. It was the worst trip I've ever been on鈥� It was nothing of what I expected," Herman said. But at the same time, he reflected back and said most of the people, the food, and the sights were amazing.
"I arrived in Africa with my two big suitcases鈥� we met with the tour guide鈥�" and from there, Herman said everything went terribly wrong.
"There was always very good parts to the trip, but the downs and the negatives from what I was expecting, and paid for, and what I'd planned for was nothing of what I got," said the 39-year-old author told The News, while making spring rolls for friends at his Osoyoos bookstore.
The worst part, he admitted, came to light just after his trip. He had apparently contracted a deadly strain of malaria in Uganda, while visiting the mountain gorillas during the final days of the safari. With a two-week incubation period, the deadly disease struck once he was home.
He was reportedly the first case in Western Canada in five years, and found himself not only hospitalized, but quarantined, put into an induced coma for a several days, and injected with cocktail of drugs, "20 times more potent than chemotherapy" to kill off that particular version of malaria.
"They killed it, all right. But in doing so, they killed everything else inside of my body," Herman explained. "All my internal organs shut down. So I spent two months in ICU and three months on dialysis, as they nursed my kidneys back."
"You can't make this stuff up," he added, noting some of the incidents were so funny in what he calls a "terrible and dark way."
Admittedly, it took some coaxing by friends, but Herman finally decided in 2022 to put these encounters on paper, and his book was released Nov. 29 online and in some bookstores.
It's been about two years in the making (only about 18 hours of that actually writing the book), Herman noted, but finally his autobiographical adventures in Africa hit the streets and is being considered for a possible television movie.
Now, he's looking forward to sharing this book and his stories with a bunch of complete stranger, but also some friends.
Herman is coming back home to Maple Ridge this week for the official book launch, which is being held today (Friday, Dec. 20) at Black Bond Books in ValleyFair Mall, from 3 to 5 p.m.
"I'm super happy to be coming back into town," he said grateful for a chance to catch up with some friends from his years at Albion Elementary and Garibaldi Secondary, and a chance to visit the recently updated memorial to his dad that's located in the RCMP's Randy Herman Centre for Community Safety (the former courthouse).
Herman, and his younger brother Tyler, grew up in Webster's Corners to community celebrities Randy (late) and Tammy Herman, both RCMP officers well-known for their work on the job and as consummate community volunteers.
Following in his parent's footsteps, at age 22 Herman left Maple Ridge bound for the RCMP training depot in Regina, then he was stationed to Kelowna before being transferred to Osoyoos, where he now lives.
The author and travel lover is no longer on duty. He took that medical retirement five years ago, after a near-death encounter with carbon monoxide poisoning. He dislocated both shoulders and his knee, suffered a stroke, and lost partial sight in one eye, during a 38-minute seizure that ensued.
"There was a lot of injuries," Herman recounted, noting he was off two years recovering before returning to full duty. "But quality of life was very bad, especially sitting in a police car for 12 hours. My body wasn't able to keep up anymore."
Given everything that happened in his travels through South Africa, did he regret taking the trip? Herman paused only briefly before replying.
"Not at all. Wouldn't have a book if I hadn't of gone, wouldn't have seen some of the best sights in the world, and wouldn't have met friends I still talk to weekly," he said.
While he's planning a book tour for "The Tortured Traveller" in the new year, Herman revealed there is a sequel already in the works. This book, he shared, will focus on a two-month trip to South America.
"No one died so that was good. I mean it's pretty hard not to have a trip better than Africa, as long as no one died. It's a pretty low bar to set," he concluded.
