Tracking

I could have done with more sleep last night. We discovered rats in the house before bed yesterday and I could here them moving about in the night. Not the nicest thing about being in the middle of nowhere. I thought Fernando the Spider we have in the shower was bad enough!

Anyway, due to lack of sleep I had three cups of tea this morning which was needed as our first part of the day was spent in the office with Liam, learning about tracking skills, and the different types of animal track markings. For example, cloven and uncloven hoof tracks. Uncloven being cow or horse, cloven being warthog or impala. Then we got in the Hilux, which we have all said we will miss when we ghet home. I love standing up in the back, holding on to the cage bars for balance, no seatbelts. It's just great! Anyway we went to the other part of the reserve. I thought this side was pretty enough, but this side was stunning. The pictures do not do it justice. I need to work out how to do a video on my camera, or at least a panaromic view. It is a lot more green and lush. We found a few tracks like Kudu, Impala, Mongoose, Warthog, and Porcupine, even Cow and Horse (apparently they have a rogue horse on the reserve). We found some dens that were occupied. Aardvarks dig these and then mamals like Warthog and Porcupine take over and adapt them. They also time share, so the Warthog sleep in them at night and the Porcupine sleep in there in the day. Warthog back into these dens to fend off possible preditors, were as Porcupine back out of them as their spikes are their weapons.

Liam then showed us how to make rope using the bark from a sweet thorn acacia which was amazing. It's really strong. You can also eat it. We did taste it but eating it was another story. He also showed us berries and other plants that we could eat like bull rush and prickly pear cactus which he cooked by making a fire. We had to peel the skin off and eat the insides of the leaf. It was okay, a cross between melon and cucumber. It was a bit slimy. We also tried a leaf called black jack, which apparently makes good tea.

We went to the place where Liam and his family went on Christmas Day to have champagne and open their presents. It was a beautiful donga with lots of weaver bird nests dotted about on the banks branches. We then wadded through three meter grass before stopping to have lunch. This was the fun part as we got taught some first aide on how to treat snake bites. Both me and Leanne had to act out being bitten. Luckily I escaped the girls putting me in the recovery position, however, Leanne didn't. Poor girl. Nicole and Christina had their first bush wee whilst Liam went looking for more strange leaves to eat. We also tried to do chin ups on a fallen tree. Nic was the only one who could do it. Note to self, must get fitter!

We then went off to Leopards Gorge. It was amazing and I can believe how pretty it was, and what we trekked through. We set up a camera trap to see if we can capture the leopard that roams that side of the reserve. Fingers crossed!

On the way back we saw one of the rhino mothers with her calf. A great finish to another great day on the reserve.

Dinner tonight was chicken curry which me and Leanne made up as we went along. Not sure I'd do the same thing again but Leanne's attempt at naan bread was good.

Porcupine print.

 

The rope Liam made out of bark.

The donga we stopped at.

Liam getting us to eat bull rush.

Cooking the Prickly Pear.

Yeah, we had to get up that!

Half way through Leopards George.

Leanne, Nic, Christina and me in the gorge.

No introduction needed.

 

Finally a request from Mum: This a picture of Fernando the rain spider that lives in the other shower. He is the size of my hand!

 

Camera Trapping - Aardvark Survey

Today we were all ready by 8:00am, which for us girls is good going. And today was the day I had been looking forward to: Camera trapping.

So after we had our demo with Liam on how to use the camera's we set out with our GPS devices to locate the existing nine that had been set up a month ago to capture aardvark's. Initially, it was really cloudy, but by the time we left the cloud had almost cleared from the hill tops. It looked really pretty. Anyway, we each took turns to use the GPS to find the camera's that had been loaded as Waypoints. Rachel came with us as it is a public holiday over here. Liam seemed really impressed with us, apparently there are some people that come here and have no interest in getting involved at all. We managed to get back by nine and set another two camera's. I was responsible for looking after the SD cards we collected from the camera's. The first trap was to capture jackals so we set it up in open scrub-land and put meat down to lure the jackals to it. We used twigs and small branches to create an L shape so that the jackal would have to go in front of the camera. We covered the meat with some acacia leaves. The second trap we set in a donga, this is like a dried up river bed, it's like a small gorge. We set the camera up so it pointed to a large branch that had fallen down and wrapped some chicken to it. We are hoping to capture Genet's and Otters on this by next week. Me and the girls climbed a tree and Rachel took our picture. Christina scored our names into it.

We spent the afternnon looking through all nine SD cards a tallied up the number of different species we saw. We had only eight pictures of aardvark in total but loads of others. Impala got a bit boring after a while.......can't believe I am saying this!

Anyway, tonight was fun. I left the girls cooking dinner, bangers and mash. There was lots of mickey taking going on in the kitching. Christina nearly forgot to drain the potatoes before mashing them. The banter reminded me of me, Nay, Janna and Debs. It was very nice. We also had rum and raisin ice cream while watching devil wears prada. Proper girlie night!

This mornings view.

Nic with our first camera trap.

The jackals bait.

Liam, Rachel, Leanne, Christina and Nicole in a donga.

Nicole and Christina on the tree.

Our names carved in the tree.

 

Highlights of the camera traps

Baby zebra.

 

Blesbok.

Rhino.

Waterbuck.

Ostrich.

Nyala male.

Impala sticking her tongue out after the 1000th one.

Today was our day of rest. Boy was I grateful for it too. I woke up at 10:30 SA time after going to bed at about quarter to one. So much for the early night and making sure I was the first pesron to wish Tim a happy birthday! While Nic and Leanne helped Liam with the veggie patch me and Christina lazed about. I skyped Tim and Mum and then we all got ready for our trip out with Liam and Rachel to visit their friends Sorel and Monet. After the awful pictures of me from the last few days I decided make-up was in order and something to keep my hair in place whilst on the truck would be a good idea. Christina came up with the idea of using scarves as bandana's which worked although we didn't need them in the end as we went in the other car. We drove out towards the Drakensburg mountains for about half an hour, turned off the road to a beautiful little small holding where we were greeted by chickens, peacocks, geese, ducks, cats and dogs. Monet came out to meet us and we had a look around all the fruit trees and vegetable rows. It was amazing. The dogs looked like some kind of terrier, they were so cute and reminded me of Jess. Sorel came out to meet us and ushered us inside. the house was fantastic, very rustic and is Sorel's family home. It sounded like they were doing a lot of work on it but it was fantastic, lots of African figurines and a proper colonial tea set. Monet had made us fresh lemonade which was amazing (the girls and I might try that one) then we went out for a walk where Sorel took us to their favourite picnic spot. A natural spring which was beautiful. Sorel's little girl Augustine came with us. At the age of 1 year and nine months she was running around bare feet and not scared of anything. A proper bush baby. She was lovely. When we got back we had afternoon tea, Monet had made us the South African version of scones which we had with butter and Sorel's nan's homemade jam. It was all amazing and little Augustine was picking her way through the biscuits and then putting them back down again. Had a really lovely day today. The hospitality round here is fantastic. Everyone is so friendly.

Christina and me as Pirates (actually it was to keep our hair in place).

Nicole and Christina.

Leanne, Christina and Nicole with the Blue Agave Plant (used to make tequila).

Us girls together at the spring.

Augustine chillin'

Proper little bush baby.

The Spring.

Rachel and Augustine.

Sorel, Monet, Rachel, Augustine and Liam.

Me!

Us and the locust.

 Leanne and Nicole trying to hold a fossillised tree.

What a sunset.

One of Sorel and Monet's peacocks.

The little terrier dogs.

So today was our first day off. However, we were still up and out by nine so that we could collect firewood for our evening braai. We got to use a machete to hack away at the branches which was fun. However, I have two blisters on my hand, which means I need to toughen up (or as Josh would say MTFU)! On the way back from our firewood collecting we came across a mother rhino and her calf which was typical as I didn't have my camera.

After a bit of a chil we then went into Colenso with Liam and Rachel to get our meat for the Braai and a few luxury items like chocolate. Over here you can by coke in a 1.5l glass bottle and it costs less than a £1. You can also take the glass bottle back to the shop and get it recycled and you get 50cents back.

Then we got back, had some lunch and we went for a walk, just us four girls. We got about 5 meters away from a giraffe and about 20 meters away from a herd of Zebra. Amazingly the giraffe started to come closer to us as we pretended to eat the acacia tree. It was fab.

Then it was braai time with Liam and Rachel which was fantastic. We made up the fire pit and then Liam used the burnt firewood to make coals for the braai (bbq). The noises of the frogs and the jackal calls were our background music. Then Michael, the head game keeper, came to tell us the the rhino were at the back of the house. We managed to get about 15 meters away from them which was incredible. Spike nearly blew our cover though bless him. Then we ate our Kudu steaks and Ostrich burgers. The kudo steak was amazing, the ostrich burgers.......well.... they were different. Liam also passed the girls conversation about the difference between men and women, poor guy.

Once again, another lovely day. Beginning to get more settled now.

Sitting round the fire pit.

Check out the flames.

Spike chillin' with us.

I want one of these at home!

I like this picture, might have it blown up when I get home.

Here are the rhino. Check out Spike in the foreground.

Us around the braai.

Turning the ostrich burgers.

And the Kudu steaks which were amazing.