I can't believe its June already!! We started the day off with some
good old bush clearing. We were set to leave at 7:15, and for some reason, I
woke up at 6:54, luckily! I rushed to ready myself and get out to the kitchen
area. We worked in the same area as we have the past few weeks, and since there
are so many of us, we are running out of tools. I prefer the clippers, cause
they take the least skill. But since last week, I have mixed it up a bit.
Yesterday, I became a pro with the hand-saw, but today, I got stuck with either
a machete or a panga. The machetes don’t do much good against some of these trees,
but pangas kinda intimidate me. Those things are beastly. So Lukas gave me a
quick panga-operation lesson, and I set out to conquer the forest! I started
getting the hang of it, and now I feel pretty hardcore. :D We worked until a
little before 10, and then we called it a day. We returned home, but then Lukas
announced that he was going to go see some lions, and we could join if we
wanted. Um, duh. So most of us piled into the truck AGAIN to go find some
pretty ingala. It was the Tembe sister, laying lazily on the side of the road.
We sat with them for an hour and just watched them sleep. They occasionally
would hear or smell something, and lift their pretty heads to check it out, but
they were very calm and didn’t feel any threats nearby. A couple time,
Nkosikasi would look straight at the car with her piercing, yet gorgeous,
yellowish-tan eyes, and as she was within 2 meters of the vehicle, it was a
little intimidating. We watched the sisters for about an hour in almost
silence, just soaking them in and enjoying them. Then, when we got home again,
it was not even 11, and we still had a nice long afternoon ahead of us. The
girls and Stewart and I swept and washed the Nissan (remember its pronounce
NISS-san) and the older people made lunch for us. We had leftover macaroni bol
and some French toast. Lunches are usually a hodge-podge of leftovers and new
food. Then, I did my data entry for predators for the week, as well as the
weekly report for the week, and then showered up and cleaned up a little. Ahh,
felt like a real human again, with shorts and flip flops and my hair down and
mascara. It’s the little pleasures, really. :) Then I spent the rest of the
afternoon working on my research. The bush camp gang is moving back into Twines
for tonight and tomorrow night, which means Kelsie is going to be my roomie for
a few days! :) She and I relaxed in the lounge for a while, working on our own
research. Then, we left around 330 for our afternoon drive. Andrew took the
Twines group to go look for some leopard and hyena, and although we found fresh
tracks for a male leopard, the dang thing keeps evading us. We saw some general
game, birds, and mammals as we went along. We did, however, get to see some
rhinos. There were two large adult females and a small male who was probably a
year old. We hung out with them for a while and watched them dine on some
delectable grasses. I IDed one of the females, and we just watched them
interact and chatted about the poaching problem they face. Then, on the way
home, we took some roads that were near the river to look for leopard. We did
see a civet in the grass at dusk, which is a cool black and white, cat-like,
omnivorous small mammal. It got really cold all the sudden when the sun went
down, and I’m pretty sure my face went numb while we were driving around! We
got home about 6:15 and had 30 minutes to clean ourselves up before leaving for
dinner. Since there were 7 of us from Twines, 3 from bush camp, and 2 rangers,
we got to take the BUS! Instead of the bush vehicles. It was such a luxury to
get to take a closed and WARM vehicle down to dinner. It was really busy
inside, as it was a going away party for a few well-known people who are finishing
their time there. It was pretty fun, and it was definitely nice to have the
other American girls to hang out with! We left around 10 because everyone was
starting to get tired. We get to sleep in tomorrow, which is always a plus!
Gorgeous Nkosikasi <3
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