May 24th.
Man, time goes fast here! We got to sleep in, cause we only left at 8
for road clearing. But my silly travel alarm clock isn’t working anymore! The
time is correct, but the alarm won’t set. So, thinking it was on, I slept quite
soundly, til Andrew banged at my door! Oops. I readied quickly, and off we
went. We worked until 11, and boy did it get hot! We did a lot of really great
work along a long stretch of road. I am now excellent at clipping branches and
trees, and getting quite handy with a machete as well. I haven’t quite graduated
to the panga yet though. We returned home and cleaned up thoroughly, after
getting the talk about ticks. Apparently, there are ticks that look just like a
freckle, no bigger then a grain of pepper, and they spread a lovely disease.
Afterwards, I made myself a lovely cup of coffee and headed in to work on my
data. I didn’t have any time yesterday to do so! The days are so packed that I
am not sure where I am going o find time to get all my data sorted through! Sheesh!
For lunch, we had macaroni with veggies, which was a short break, then back to
my data. I worked until 315ish, then prepped for our night monitoring drive.
The bush camp group joined us, and we went out and drove around, finding and
counting the general game herds; we found impala, wildebeest, warthogs, and
giraffe mostly tonight. We saw the same cluster of giraffe as yesterday, with
that cute little baby! We also came across a whole group of dwarf mongoose, and
they were so fun to watch! Then, Lukas took us all to the most breathtaking view
of the reserve you could imagine. It was a ways up a mountain, and then a short
hike up a rocky incline, and we were met with the most amazing overview! We
could see trees below us, far to the horizon, and the Makhutswi River winding
through to the north side. It was spectacular. We sat there in silence for
probably 10 to 15 minutes and watched the sun set over the mountains – amazing.
Then, we headed back out. We took a few little jaunts to some dams to look for
hippo, but they all managed to evade us today. And as the darkness fell, we
realized our spotlight had stopped working somehow. Driving at night without a
spotlight to look for animals isn’t quite the same. We headed toward home,
looking for anything we could see via the moon and the headlights. We came
across some impala, wildebeest, and a hare, but we couldn’t look into thickets
for predators. Since our drive was shortened, I had time to work on my mapping
before dinner! Yay! We had originally planned to go on a sleep out tonight,
since there was a full moon, but Gail and Peter decided they would rather not
go on another one. That would only leave 4 of us to do the night watch shifts
(staying up to look for wild animals coming toward our campsite), and that’s really
difficult to do. Instead, we will do the sleep out next week. In lieu of that,
we decided we would just have a relaxing movie night at camp, since I have been
encouraging a movie night all week! I worked on my mapping until dinner was
ready, around 730. Andrew had made a big traditional braii, which meant
borewors and chicken cooked on open grill, and potatoes, onions, butternut
squash, and pumpkin all cooked over the coals of the fire. It was absolutely
delish. We ended up talking and sitting around the fire, and when we thought
about a movie, it was 9 and we were already getting too tired. So we relaxed a
bit more, then cleaned up and got ready for bed.
Baby wildebeest!
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