Thursday 22 November 2012
Thursday 15 November 2012
First of all we would like to apologise to those of you still checking this blog in the vain hope that we might have put something on it! Wifi in South Africa was pretty much non existent and it seems the only way to get free wifi in Australia is in Macdonalds, and you all know how I feel about that. I have taken to walking through the drive in, posting brief facebook entries!
South Africa was absolutely fantastic, we met some really lovely people who are completely dedicated to animal conservation, particularly to the extremely endangered wild dogs that we were monitoring twice a day, we would start the first monitoring session at 4am and finish at around 10am, the middle of the day is for data entry and relaxing but it was obvious from the start that Cole, our monitor, could do with some help around the camp he inherited a couple of months ago and Andy was the man to do it, we were meant to move to a new reserve after 2 weeks but decided to stay for the whole month. During that time Andy, with help from me, Danny, Jon, Carmen, Lisa and Cole managed to put in a new drainage system, install a rain collecting system, laid a patio, build a massive cupboard and generally sorted the camp! Needless to say we have had an email inviting us back at a reduced rate.
One thing I wasn't expecting was the weather, it pretty much rained torrentially and we saw some pretty spectacular lightning storms, usually from the back of the open land cruiser whilst trying to use telemetry (a big metal ariel, or lightning attractor). As you can see from some of the photo's this led to some interesting bin bag fashion, anything to keep your knickers dry! Because of the rain and because we were generally off road, we managed to get stuck in mud on numerous occasions, 2 particularly stick in my mind. The first was with Kevin our relief monitor, we got caught in a downpour and a piece of road that had been passable on our way out became so boggy we got very stuck, in fact we were up to mid thigh digging and pushing, it took us about 2 hours to get free, only to be held up on the way home by a bull elephant who was reluctant to get out of the way! The second time was just me and Cole and after a fairly foolish decision on both our parts we tried to get past a tricky looking piece of road because we saw the eyeshine of what we thought were the dogs, they were in fact Hyaena and we ended up having to dig the truck out by hand because we couldn't shift the clay with a spade, this experience was added to as we knew that we had a fresh kill on either side of us. We did eventually get free and we have added the photo of us when we finally got back to camp.
The best thing, without a doubt were the animals, because it was so important that we found the dogs each day, because of the huge snaring problem Mkuze reserve has, we travelled on the non tourist routes which meant that we had much closer interactions with the animals. The dogs were beautiful and we could learn a lot about the way they treat one another, watching them wake up and greet each other was amazing, they always feed babies and sick members of the pack first and the whole pack look after the puppies. My god they stunk though. We were mock charged by elephant and rhino, we saw black and white rhino and went on a suspected rhino poaching exercise with the anti poaching unit, lovely men with scary machetes and machine guns. We saw Cape buffalo, 2 leopard, jennet, zebra, baboons and vervet monkeys, 4 cheetah at a kill, water and rock monitor lizards, green mamba, african rock python and the absolute best of all were the giraffe. The birds we saw were too numerous to mention but the vultures were fantastic.
It was very sad to leave South Africa and particularly Wildlife Act, if you have a look on their website, Andy's amazing carved pumpkin features, as well as a pretty cringe photo of us with tools. I would recommend this experience to anyone who is prepared to work hard in quite extreme conditions, but will gain a very unique experience of front line conservation.
South Africa was absolutely fantastic, we met some really lovely people who are completely dedicated to animal conservation, particularly to the extremely endangered wild dogs that we were monitoring twice a day, we would start the first monitoring session at 4am and finish at around 10am, the middle of the day is for data entry and relaxing but it was obvious from the start that Cole, our monitor, could do with some help around the camp he inherited a couple of months ago and Andy was the man to do it, we were meant to move to a new reserve after 2 weeks but decided to stay for the whole month. During that time Andy, with help from me, Danny, Jon, Carmen, Lisa and Cole managed to put in a new drainage system, install a rain collecting system, laid a patio, build a massive cupboard and generally sorted the camp! Needless to say we have had an email inviting us back at a reduced rate.
One thing I wasn't expecting was the weather, it pretty much rained torrentially and we saw some pretty spectacular lightning storms, usually from the back of the open land cruiser whilst trying to use telemetry (a big metal ariel, or lightning attractor). As you can see from some of the photo's this led to some interesting bin bag fashion, anything to keep your knickers dry! Because of the rain and because we were generally off road, we managed to get stuck in mud on numerous occasions, 2 particularly stick in my mind. The first was with Kevin our relief monitor, we got caught in a downpour and a piece of road that had been passable on our way out became so boggy we got very stuck, in fact we were up to mid thigh digging and pushing, it took us about 2 hours to get free, only to be held up on the way home by a bull elephant who was reluctant to get out of the way! The second time was just me and Cole and after a fairly foolish decision on both our parts we tried to get past a tricky looking piece of road because we saw the eyeshine of what we thought were the dogs, they were in fact Hyaena and we ended up having to dig the truck out by hand because we couldn't shift the clay with a spade, this experience was added to as we knew that we had a fresh kill on either side of us. We did eventually get free and we have added the photo of us when we finally got back to camp.
The best thing, without a doubt were the animals, because it was so important that we found the dogs each day, because of the huge snaring problem Mkuze reserve has, we travelled on the non tourist routes which meant that we had much closer interactions with the animals. The dogs were beautiful and we could learn a lot about the way they treat one another, watching them wake up and greet each other was amazing, they always feed babies and sick members of the pack first and the whole pack look after the puppies. My god they stunk though. We were mock charged by elephant and rhino, we saw black and white rhino and went on a suspected rhino poaching exercise with the anti poaching unit, lovely men with scary machetes and machine guns. We saw Cape buffalo, 2 leopard, jennet, zebra, baboons and vervet monkeys, 4 cheetah at a kill, water and rock monitor lizards, green mamba, african rock python and the absolute best of all were the giraffe. The birds we saw were too numerous to mention but the vultures were fantastic.
It was very sad to leave South Africa and particularly Wildlife Act, if you have a look on their website, Andy's amazing carved pumpkin features, as well as a pretty cringe photo of us with tools. I would recommend this experience to anyone who is prepared to work hard in quite extreme conditions, but will gain a very unique experience of front line conservation.
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