May 22.
This morning, we had a rhino walk scheduled. We were meeting up with
Toko and the three that went to bush camp. I opted to sleep in a bit, and then
work on my mapping work instead of looking for rhino. I was going to get up
around 730, but accidentally woke at 830. Oops. I made myself some breakfast
and coffee, and headed into the data room to begin wading through the plethora
of sightings I have to organize. I spent the morning working on trees and
properly organizing the prides and the lions in each since 2009. The crew got
back around 11, and we had some leftovers for lunch a little bit later. Four
nyala hung out in the garden all afternoon. There was the cutest young male
with them and he was hopping all around the yard! Then I worked on my lion trees
until we did some maintenance outside on the volleyball court. We are expanding
it, which consisted of cutting down and digging out trees to widen the cleared
area for sand. That became me using a pick-axe to loosen the ground around my
stumps to dig them up. Never knew I could do that! Then, Andrew taught me to
change a tire, because the rhino walk gang got a flat that morning. Woohoo,
becoming accomplished here! Then, after the work, I got all cleaned up and
ready for the afternoon drive. Lukas led it. We visited a few dams in the
southwest region of the reserve, looking for ingala tracks, of course :) It’s
always lion time for me! We joined a Makalali truck at Simbane Dam with two
mufuzis and one madoda ingala (two females and a male) and tried to ID them for
a bit. Lukas and I were in discussion about who the subadult male was, when the
Makalali ranger told us we had a flat! The tire we had patched and put on that afternoon!
Sheeesh! Like, pancake flat. And there were three lions on the other side of
some trees! We drove a short distance, out of visual of lions, and the boys put
the spare BACK on, for the second time that day! It also looked a little low,
so we didn’t want to be out too long. We went to a nearby pan, and were greeted
by two adult female white rhino and a baby! So great to see them, cause there
are so few left because of poaching! We watched them for a while and talked
about differences between white and black rhinos, amongst other animal facts.
Then we decided to head home, because we didn’t trust the tire. We saw very
little general game today, only one group of impala after dark. Lukas had to
take the bush camp group back over there, so Wolfgang and I hopped out at home.
I worked on my trees for a while before dinner. The set meal on the schedule
for tonight was macaroni cheese (not macaroni AND cheese, mind you), but I am
pretty pasta-ed out by now. Lots of spaghetti/macaroni, rice, and potatoes. So
I asked if it was okay to make an omelette with some yellow pepper and onion.
Quite yummy. We sat around the fire until a little after 9, then cleaned up the
kitchen and off to bed. Unluckily, the frying pan I used for my omelette wasn’t
Teflon. I left it soaking in the sink. That’s going to be fun tomorrow :(
Subadult male at the dam tonight. His face is muddy from drinking.
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