June 5th. Today, we
left on our monitoring drive at 6:15. It wasn’t as super freezing out as I
expected, but it was cloudy. We got smart and started bringing blankets to put
on our laps now. :) We headed out to Garonga, like we had tried last night.
After stopping for some general game, we set up the telemetry to find the
elephant herds. Lukas was driving, and Jamie was navigating. Kelsie and I were
in the second row operating the telemetry together. We would take turns
listening to the box and operating the poles. We set it up around 7, and we
drove around according to the signal for about 2 hours and thought we were
completely losing them! But we still had strong signals coming! I was pretty
sure the ellies were just messing with us now, running all around. We finally
cornered them down to a huge block in Makalali East. We circled the block,
confirming that the signals from both Dracula’s herd and Holey Ear’s herd were
coming from within. We had no visual from the road, but we had some audio at a
few spots. Low rumbling, trees breakings, etc. Lukas walked in to get a visual,
but the bush was so thick, and they were so far back, that he didn’t get
anything. Then we drove into the bush a bit, and tried to use the telemetry
from there, but we didn’t get anything stronger than we had earlier. The drive in and out of that area of bush was literally like mowing down trees with the car. I tried to take a video, but my camera memory was full! So sad. We were bouncing/flying out because of the rocky terrain and basically diving under the seats to avoid getting attacked by all the branches we passed. Always a good time, when we offroad in the Landie! At that
point, we called it, because it was 10am and we weren’t going to be able to get
a visual at this point. Along the road, though, we did locate fairly fresh
rhino tracks, which we think may be from a pregnant female that we haven’t seen
lately. We also got leopard tracks along the road, which I recorded for some
recent movements. The sun never broke through the clouds, so we never warmed
up. I’m actually pretty sure it got COLDER as we went. I was very happy for the
lap blankets! We returned home around 10:30-10:45. We didn’t do maintenance
yesterday, so they switched it to today. Luckily, it was still cold. We started
a little after 11, and began shoveling up the grass from the area we had
cleared for the volleyball court. Stewart was a pro shovel-user, whipping up
the grass like a champ. The other shovels were in use, so Andrew told me to
pick up the chunks of grass so they didn’t just get left right on the edge of
the bush, which would just be a fire hazard if a fire broke out. He also told
me to pick up the ellie crap that was sitting near to the volleyball court from
Riff Raff’s visit the other night, because, when it finished drying out, it
would burn really well to start the fire. I looked around for a shovel at
first, then I realized, this is Africa, and the rangers always dig through
herbivore poo. Andrew told me that he and his friends used to play a game
called “Who Flung Dung?”, in which you basically chuck poo at each other. Of
course, he embellished this explanation by chucking ellie dung at me, which
broke all down my shirt. This developed into a rousing game of dodgeball with
dung, and I chased him down across the yard to fling it back to him! It was one
of the strangest things I have ever done, lol! Then, after I pelted him nicely
with dung, we got back to work. I was collecting all the chunks of grass in the
wheelbarrow to dry them out so we can use them to burn later on. The girls and
Stewart and Tom were shoveling all the grass up and clearing the whole area for
the court. Then, since it was still early and cool out, Andrew decided we
should start bringing loads of sand from the river to fill the court with. We
attached the small luggage trailer to the Nissan to go down there. Poor
trailer. It was not built for these roads! We only filled it halfway, cause we
knew it would be too heavy and would scrape on the way home. I was afraid it
wouldn’t make it through the river crossing! We did two loads of sand, and
unloaded them on the court. It’s definitely making progress! That area has
changed a lot in the past few weeks since I have been here! We all started
cleaning up around 1:30, because the afternoon drive was at 3. Everyone took
showers, so that meant everyone took COLD showers! Brrr. At least it was invigorating,
right? Everyone tidied up and had some lunch. I decided to stay back from the
buffalo drive to work on my project. They left at 3ish and I actually got a lot
done. I also got to talk to Mike about my project and what he wanted to see
done, which was awesome! I really needed to make sure we were on the same level
with the project, and that was awesome to catch him tonight, because he is
leaving tomorrow for Europe!! I worked a bit more, and then helped Lukas start
the fire. The gang got home around 7. They had found the buffalo, but not the
new male. They did have a really exciting sighting of an African wildcat
though! They are really small and look like housecats, so it’s pretty uncommon
to see on in the bush clearly! I worked some more, until dinner. Now I have a
lot of work cut out for me, after talking to Mike. Dinner was chicken, potato,
and veggie curry, and it was superb. Much better than my curry two weeks ago!
Haha. Dinner wasn’t ready until past 8, so we didn’t leave the fire til ten,
and then I offered to clean up the kitchen. Late night, but we get to sleep in
tomorrow, not leaving until 7:30 for road clearing!
Baby buffalo that I didn't see today. I stole Stewart's pics.
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