Changing of the Guard

Day six of the SUMMER experience is a team down-day, which sees the members scatter across the resort in search of R&R. Some revert back to childhood on the water slides at the Valley Of The Waves, others sip very adult strawberry daiquiris by the heated pool at the Cascades. There are a couple of heavy-ish post-Silhouette heads being nursed back to hydration but in general, the Saturday-night damage seems minimal.

Today is also the day we say goodbye to Avril, Dean and Mignonne and welcome Daniel, Jenna, Mala and Good Hope FM’s Suga to our COSMO family. Jenna and Mala jet in straight from Fashion Week and immediately intimidate me – these girls are TALL, and Mala’s legs especially seem to stretch well into next month. Daniel is beautiful (no, really – see for yourselves!) and speaks almost no English – but he speaks Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, and has an apartment on Copa Cabana. Swoon.

Monday’s shoots are all scheduled for the Royal Baths, which is just as well because the rest of the Valley is being taken over by (insert your chosen alcohol distributor here). The organised chaos of 600-plus conference members checking into the hotel simultaneously leads to one unnecessarily long trip in the elevator and one unavoidably long wait for transport. The afternoon delay results in my first experience of ‘chasing the light’. It’s exactly as it sounds – as the sun dips behind the Palace, Jenna and Mala literally hop from light patch to light patch and pillar to post, while Anthony tries to squeeze an hour’s work into two minutes.

The sun wins and sets; the crew packs up the gear and calls it a day. I skip supper (!) and make full use of my bed and the DSTV in my room, falling asleep to the sweet sounds of Monday night football…

Author: Ania Rokita