Today I woke up at 0600 had breakfast and then at 0700 it was time for camp clean up. Basically in our duty groups we just had to do our duty because no one had for a week. We were on kitchen duty so just scrubbed the work surfaces, sinks and tables and checked the fridges were ok. It didn’t take too long really.
At 0830 we had our first lecture of semester two, arthropods. It was really interesting but it’s such a huge topic and there’s just so much to learn. We had brunch about 1130 (the lecture overran), today we had a chicken and pasta salad. There wasn’t a huge amount and not quite enough for everyone to be full (the food delivery didn’t arrive until after brunch)!
After brunch I went for a walk with Jess, Tanza and Rachel, it was a bit too hot really but it was nice anyway. I spent the next couple of hours filling in my workbook and looking back over my lecture notes.
At 1600 it was time for our first Game Drive of semester two, and I got to drive. The first half of the drive was quite quiet, we saw a lappet faced vulture, a few giraffe, zebra and wildebeest. We stopped for phuza and as normal checked to see that it was safe. We looked at quite a few tracks and then a couple of other vehicles drove past us. They stopped about 100m away from where we were. We packed up and then drove to see what they were looking at. It was the cheetah and her one year old cub, they had been so close to us and we had no idea they were there! It was a stunning sighting with an elephant in the background and we spent quite a long time there, we only left so that other cars could have a look. I couldn’t get over how little time the other cars spent there, they literally took a couple of photos and moved on!
We carried on driving and spotted a lioness in the riverbed, I had to drive down there using low range (the same route as on the sleep out). There was also a beautiful male lion there too. It was after sunset and the light wasn’t great but it was a beautiful sighting nonetheless. I had to drive back out the river bed in the dark, but it wasn’t too bad.
We drove back to the main gate stopping on the way at quite a big herd of zebra crossing the road. We couldn’t shine the spotlight on them as they are diurnal animals, so we turned the spotlight and engine off and just let them cross and listened to the sounds of nature. It was really cool to hear them on the right hand side of the car, we could also hear branches breaking on the right, an elephant feeding. It was quite daunting to know such a massive animal was so close but not be able to see it. I love listening to the sounds of nature whilst looking at a sky full of stars.
We arrived back at camp to a lovely dinner of shepherd’s pie and salad. I had a shower and then went to bed, after an epic day.