Jenny

"In December 1984, he and Jenny took the family to Mexico, where they had many adventures in an old van driven by a hairy old local the girls dubbed ‘Catweasel’. He also rediscovered the joys of skiing. Warren and Sally Paine were frequent partners in mountain excursions. A typical adventure, in Paine’s memory, started with an exclamation from a wrung-out Gibbs: ‘For heaven’s sake, Jenny, let’s have some fun.’ She’d arrange a ski trip to Aspen in Colorado or Courchevel in France with the Paines and the Reynolds. Gibbs found his release through competition. ‘There was only one speed with Alan,’ says Paine, ‘flat out. Being in front of him was like being in front of a freight train, he was always trying to pass, arms and legs were flying and he was yelling and cursing; it was great fun.’ As it was with business, so it was with entertainment: Gibbs threw himself into whatever he was doing as if the fate of the world hinged on the result and by the end of the day he was spent."

"The pause suited Gibbs well. He took his family on another of their safaris, this time to Ecuador and Peru. With three teenage daughters in tow, Jenny says a factor driving their choice of location was to find places where there would be no nightclubs. To her dismay, her daughters could find a nightclub even in the most out-of-the-way Peruvian villages. The Gibbs pondered the mysteries of natural selection on the Galapagos Islands and the rise and fall of civilisations at the former Inca city of Machu Picchu. In stark contrast to Africa, many of the animals native to Galapagos lived without natural predators and were absolutely tame, allowing the tourists to walk up to birds and swim with sea lions; at Machu Picchu the combination of human enterprise and nature, buildings imposed on the most impossible and dramatic landscape, struck Gibbs as the most beautiful place on earth."