June 18th. I woke up today at like 6:11, and we were supposed to leave
at 6:30. Oops! I scrambled to get ready, and ran out to meet the others at the
truck. We were all sleepy and cold. We bundled up in our blankets, and set out
for our Set Route drive. It was Set Route 3, which was the first drive I ever
did here! It seems so long ago, when I had my first drive, and yet it feels
like yesterday! It was really cool, because I haven’t been to some of those
roads since that first drive, so it was cool to see them again. It started out
pretty quietly. We stopped for a lot of different bird species, because Leon
was driving us, and he loves birds. We saw a few general game animals, just in
groups of one or two. We also saw a black-backed jackal, running across a
clearing. All the sudden, we rounded a corner and saw a lion in the road! It
was Masana, the handsome dominant male that I love. As we got closer, we saw he
was with the two Tembe females, Nkosikasi and Nandi, as well as his partner in
crime, Xinpoko. Yes, the same Xinpoko that was mating with Lady Balfour just a
week ago! The boy gets around!! We had a really awesome sighting with them.
Nandi and Masana were lying right on the road, very calmly, and let us get lots
of pictures of them. Then, Nandi walked off to meet up with her sister and
Xinpoko, through the bushes. There was a little bit of roaring at each other,
and some rustling around, so we weren’t sure if they were going to be mating or
not. In a few minutes, the ladies came out of the bush straight towards us.
Nandi walked back to Masana, batted him around with her paws, and walked off,
as if to tell him, “Come hither.” Of course, Masana got up and followed! Smart
man! The Tembe sisters met up at the back of the truck and continued down the
road. Masana stopped at the bush line to sniff and scent mark, and at that
time, Xinpoko came out of the bush for the first time, straight to us. He went
up to Masana, and the two of them rubbed on each other and then passed by.
Xinpoko followed the girls, and Masana went back into the thicket. There was
some calling amongst them, which was beautiful! We followed the girls and
Xinpoko, and he sprayed multiple bushes as he walked down, establishing his
control over the area. They all stopped at the end of the road for a bit,
before crossing the t-junction and moving into a thick block. Masana came
strolling up from behind us, apparently satisfied with his patrol, and trailed
them into the bush. Definitely a beautiful sighting so early in the morning! It’s
definitely awesome to see lion on a set route drive! We wanted to call it in
for the Makalali rangers, but we had forgotten a radio! Jamie was hoping to
establish good connections with them, by telling them about the sighting, so
they would begin to build a respectful and sharing relationship. But we had no
way to contact anyone! As we continued on, we saw a lot of zebra and wildebeest.
We went to a lot of dams, and did some more birding. Jamie spotted a really
cool skull on the road, from a nyala. It had one horn with the keratin sheath
removed, so you could see the bone underneath, and one horn still perfect. It
was really cool. I wish I could take it home, but idk if I can get that through
security! I brought it back to camp, and I will definitely get pictures! Eventually,
we got back to Weaver’s Nest Dam, with the cute baby hippos. It also had some
zebra and wildebeest, and an old male giraffe. We had only seen one impala the
whole drive, so far. When we got to Xinkanka Clearing, there were a few impala,
another giraffe, and a big group of zebra. This group had two wittle fresh
babies! One of them looked like it had gotten attacked by a hyena though :( We
also saw matabele ants, which are these huge and really fierce ants. They
ravage termite pounds and travel in huge hunting parties, and if you kill one,
it releases a special pheromone as it dies. That causes all the other ants in
the colony to come to where the dead one is, and they will attack people, with
apparently a very nasty sting! We also saw a group of white backed vultures
circling an area, which was probably a nice predator’s lunch or dinner
yesterday. The drive was pretty long, and our bums were getting sore. Also, the
sun never came out, so we were still cold. It was nearly 11, and we still had
one and a half typed lines of roads to go through, out of a 4 and a half line
set route list. We stopped to pick up a piece of barbed wire that was left on
the road, and we couldn’t restart the car! Apparently, some wire had gotten
loose. We collected firewood as they tried to fix it, but we had to push start
the car. Even that didn’t work! We had no radio, a car that wouldn’t start, and
no cell phone service. Phil and Jamie walked up the road to try to find cell
service, and Jon and Leon tried to fix the car. Finally, they got it started,
so we decided to head straight home and not push our luck. Not two minutes
later, it died out again, but we had learned how to make it start. We
successfully got almost all the way home before it shut off, on a hill too! We
finally made it home, whew! We were all hungry and tired, and while we were
waiting for the car to be fixed, we had started talking about pancakes. So
Justine, Judith, and I made pancakes for everyone. While they were frying the
pancakes, I ran to take a quick shower, which was only lukewarm, because the
day was so cloudy :( But then, we finished up preparing the food and had an
absolute FEAST! We all had peanut butter, nutella, bananas, jam, cinnamon,
sugar, butter, and syrup on delicious homemade crepes. We made enough so
everyone could eat 3 or 4, and we all seriously chowed down! It was soooo good!
:D Then, we cleaned up and relaxed. I helped Judith with learning how to use
QGIS for her lion prey selection project, and then folded and put away my laundry.
We had our afternoon drive at 3:30 with Lukas and Leon, to find elephant for
Justine’s research. I was in charge of the telemetry, so I guided Lukas to
where I was receiving signal. It took probably an hour to get a good signal and
then track it, but eventually, we found two herds together along the river. We
observed them for a while and took notes for Justine about the feeding
behaviors. She wants to record and analyze what plants they are eating, how
much, how they are removing the plant material, etc. We watched the herds for a
while, and then a single male who didn’t move with them. He got really close to
me, like walked 2 meters from my face. It was so crazy. He was perfectly calm,
chewing on some leaves, but he could have reached out and touched me with his
trunk. Or perhaps, pulled my body out of the truck! Most of the time, when
ellies have been that close, they have been either in the dark or in front of/
behind the truck. I have never had one standing so close to me as I was sitting
right on the edge. It was so cool to look into his eyes and see him flap his
huge ears at us and sniff us all well. We moved on along with him, then left to
go find the herds again. We couldn’t locate them again, so we drove around a
while to see what we could find. We headed out to Xinkanka Clearing, where we
saw impala, wildebeest, and birds mostly. I was hoping to see some eye shine
from some hyena that were looking for dinner. We did see a small cute steenbok lying
in the grass though. The night had gotten pretty cold, but it wasn’t so harsh
because it had been cloudy all day. We returned home with nothing else too out
of the ordinary. I went to work on entering my data from the last drive last
week and then from today. I am on general game this week, because Judith is on
predators. General is so rough though; I literally had 20 separate entries to
make just from today, instead of maybe one or two. Sheeesh. Oh well. Dinner was
ready around 730, which was potato and chicken curry. It was really
scrumptious, and we sat around the fire to eat and relax. Everyone started
turning in around 830, which was pretty early for us. I know that everyone’s
been a little tired, and we have a walk first thing in the morning as well.
One of my favorite ladies, Miss Nkosikasi!
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