Bush dinner and study

The time has been flying by, with lots of study being done in preperation for our final exams which are looming

Monday was spend cleaning up the camp after our week off, and then we were taken out on a "Guest" game drive by our trainers to give us an idea on how to run ours for our assessments. We spent quite a while watching dung beetles rolling their dung balls around, then found the elephants and had a lovely time watching them and being surrounded by them. As we were heading home we then found 4 young lions attempting to hunt, and followed them around for quite a while-one of the best game drives I have been on!

Tuesday was spend studying in the morning as and then we hosted Team A in a bush dinner. Considering what we have available to us, it was absolutely beautiful and they really enjoyed it.

Wednesday I headed out on a bush walk with two of the trainers and another student, and we were blessed with finding some elephants again, and getting to watch them for about 45 minutes on foot, but from high up on the river bank as well as up close as we crossed the river. We also tracked and tried to find a lioness on foot but to no avail, but did see th remains of a kill. The afternoon was then spent on a game drive, not a lot was seen this time, but it was great to practice what we are going to have to do on our assessments.

Thursday I again headed out on a morning game drive, where we saw a lot of birds, and I got a much better idea on where I would like to go on my assessment, now I just need to be able to navigate it without getting lost-that should be fun particularly once it gets dark! The afternoon was then spent studying, in preperation for our birding test we had on Saturday.

Friday was a long day of study of birds, ID's and Calls, we have a list of 160 birds we need to be able to ID by sight, and 100 to ID by sound, so it was a cramp session trying to learn as many bird calls as possible ready for our test.

Saturday morning was spent doing bird IDing the visual ID wasnt too bad, but the calls all just sound the same, so didnt go so well. Being just before Halloween we then dressed up (or at least the girls did) and we all headed up to the local bar at the neighbouring reserve to have some fun. A lot of people had dressed up and we all had a great night.

Today it is back to the books, in preperation for my big final exam on Friday

Bush Dinner

Watching Elephants

Watching Elephants

Elephants

Bush Dinner

Dung Beetle

Rifle exams

This week consised of a lot of game drives and our ARH (Advanced Rifle Handling) assessments.

Monday was a game drive in the morning. It was a fairly quiet drive, but we did get a fantastic close viewing of a big male Lion, who was just chilling under a tree. The afternoon we again had placement talks, to check what we were interested in doing.

Tuesday we started our ARH, our group was up in the morning, where I managed to both drop a bullet in my first part of the assessment, pass the second part and completely miss the targets in the third part-unfortunately I didnt manage to get my basic Rifle Handling, let along my ARH. The afternoon was spent on another game drive, where we saw the Rhinos at night, we had been tracking them most of the afternoon and only managed to bump into them on the way home in the dark-lovely to see nontheless.

Wednesday we had another game drive in the morning, where we again didnt see much, but are getting some good practice at identifying trees and getting our basics down for our assessment drives. In the afternoon we had another go at getting our ARH, and this time I managed to do even worse, passed the first part, but then couldnt hit the target with my third bullet in the second part-again I missed out on my ARH.

Thursday we had game drives in the morning, doing more tree ID, and basics. Once again, not a whole lot was seen. The afternoon we chose not to go on our game drive, but instead study as we were had to go to town on Friday to apply for our PDP's and therefore would miss out on a lot of our study.

Friday was spent entirely in town, arriving about 8.30 and sitting at the traffic centre all day, finally getting out about 3.30, and racing round to do our shopping for the week off, before heading back to camp, getting back about 6.

After the test on Saturday we started our week off, the rest of the Saturday was spent being lazy, and then Sunday I started doing some work to finish my workbook off and begin my revision for our final FGASA exam, practical assessment drive and Birding exam.

Monday, Tuesday and today have also been spent as lazy mornings and study in the afternoon and often late into the night-as will the rest of the week, not the most enjoyable week off I have had, but neccissary.

A moth decided my leg was the best place to sit, and it was huge so we wanted photos of it

Beautiful Male lion

Some of the smaller animals-Dungbeetle

Cats Cats and Rifles

It has been an interesting week.

Monday we had conservation all day, a lecture in the morning on conservation and reserve management, and then a DVD in the afternoon on the history of conservation in South Africa-it is very interesting, but I am not sure that I would want to take on the responsibility.

Tuesday we had our last lecture of the course, History and Culture. To make it more interesting (learning about the stone age and iron age just doesnt grab me the same way as mammals, or reptiles etc do) we had a waterbuck sprint straight past the lecture room. We thought it was a bit strange, but didnt think anymore about it, until 2 cheetah followed the waterbuck stopping just outside the classroom-that really did distract us from the lecture. As good prospective guides, we all headed outside to have a look at the cheetah which had decided that they were tired and wanted a lie down under the trees. We got a fantastic sighting of them, managing to get about 10m away. The rest of the lecture was a little more difficult to concentrate in after that, and not quite so interesting.

We then headed out on our sleepout for the semester in the afternoon. We went to a new spot, a small drainage line. It was a pleasent time, and then at 2am the people on watch found a lion with the spotlight only about 4 meters from where we were sleeping-that certainly got us up, we had to wake the rest of the group up and get into the cars where we would be safe until the lions moved off. Needless to say after 2 very cold hours in the vehicles, we headed back to bed at about 4am, but as I was on watch at 5, there was no sleep that night-it was all worth it though.

Wednesday afternoon we had our last rifle dry runs before we got to shoot our first rounds on the Thursday, just to check we were capable to do our AHR (Advanced Rifle Handling) next week.

Thursday we had a game drive in the morning, where although we didnt see much was good, and managed to find a few new road, and learn some more about the trees and animals. The afternoon was rifles which I found quite fun, never thought I would say that about guns. I managed to do quite well, didnt really feel the kickback from the rifle but clearly dont have enough muscles to hold the rifle up for long, I started out quite well and then my shots all started to go low-my best effort was getting two bullets through the same hole, so I thought I had missed with the second on!

Friday was another long day of study, ready for our test on Saturday.

On Saturday a couple of us headed into town where we had organised to do some rifle practice, to see if we improve our aim. Afterwards it was back to camp for our test and then a lazy afternoon in my room watching movies.

Vulture

Cheetah near lecture room

Sleepout

Birds Birds Birds

This week was our birding week, a whole week of nothing but learning about birds, and trying to identify them.

Monday and Tuesday were both spent in lectures learning about birds, their beak structues, how they eat, their feathers-who knew there was so much to learn about birds!! We also spent quite a lot of time trying to identify birds from slides-some were easy, some were quite difficult=especially when you dont know what species you are actually looking for let alone what the bird is called.

Wednesday and Thursday were both spent out in the field doing game drives trying to identify as many different species of birds as we could-needless to say there was a challeng put out as to which team could identify the most birds, Team A or Team B.

We both did really well on both days, Team A ended up with 76 birds on the Wednesday while Team B ended up with 74.

Thursday we cleared the slate, so we started our counts again, this time Team B ended up with 91 birds, while Team A only had 88. (As I am on Team B, Thursday is the only day that really counts for us. Especially considering we had a slight mishap with our car breaking down, so had to tow it back to camp and get another one, thus losing us valuable searching time)

Zorbing at Rocking 4 Rhinos-so much fun!

Drivers test!!!!

This week has felt very long, and while I am glad that it is over, tomorrow we are going to the Rocking for Rhino's festival (a festival to raise awareness and funds to help fight rhino poaching which is a massive problem here at the moment) to run a kids stall. I am on face painting which should prove to be quite hilarious!

Monday we started off with a camp clean up after our week off, and then I headed into town to drop off the car and pick up supplies for the next month. The afternoon was spend in an weather and climate lecture, which made absolutely no sense at all, and as a result I spent the rest of the week attempting to understand what warm and cold fronts are, anabatic and katabatic and berg winds, the summer and winter weather patterns of South Africa, all the different cloud types and what type of weather they bring, wind, the coriolus effect, high and low pressure systems. By Friday morning I had give up and resorted to rote learning!

Tuesday was a game drive in the morning where we saw the two cheetahs 100m from the gate and got a fantastic sighing of them for about 45 minutes. we then got a brief sighting of a large herd of elephants towards the end of the drive-perhaps our luck is changing and we are going to start seeing some stuff! The afternoon was spent doing rifle dry runs again, this time we moved onto another couple of the tests we are going to do-it is hard to practice loading and aiming and shooting (slightly difficult due to the lack of bullets, our dry run turned into more of a "imagine you are putting a bullet in here" and air and pretend to pull the trigger run, but was still good to get some idea of what we need to do, and the time we have to do it in)

Wednesday was game drives all day again, as half the group were off doing their drivers tests. We didnt see much in the morning but as we were heading back from the afternoon game drive we saw some lions again, and got quite a nice sighting of them resting and playing in the grass.

Thursday sarted with our Biomes lecture, which was quite simple, but has a lot of information to remember (9 biomes with species, climate, vegetation type, geography, location). As our test had to be bought forward to Friday we got the afternoon to study.

Friday I had my drivers test, which involved a nice long day, leaving camp at 5.30, sitting at the driving centre all day studying, doing the test (which only took 30 minutes) more sitting and studying at the driving centre as the rest of the group did their test, then getting back to camp at 4.30 in time for the weekly test at 5! The positive was that I passed my drivers test (got told off for speeding as I was doing 30km which is apparently the speed limit, not the 60km that our instructor told us, and certainly not between 2 and 3 on the rev counter in third we were told to stick to as the speedometer didnt work in the truck. Mind you that didnt help me much as the steering wheel was so out of alignment I couldnt actually see the rev counter or speedometer anyway!)

Today we have off as half the group has gone to help at the Rocking for Rhinos festival, while the rest of us will go tomorrow.

Two cheetah brothers

Cheetah walk

Kruger

4 of us decided that rather than hanging around camp for our week off we would head to Kruger for 5 days and spend some time going round. It was a lovely week, we started off in the North where there are less animals but the scenery is beautiful, and worked our way south to where there are more animals.

Although we were spending long hours in the day (about 10 a day) it didnt feel like, it and we got to see some amazing things. Over 150 elephants, 18 Rhino, 5 Ground Hornbills, Lions, a Leopard, Buffalo, the Big 5 on our last day, too many birds to count, mongoose, kudu, impala, sable, waterbuck, hyena as well as an adorable hyena cub! The time flew by, all too soon it was time to head bakc to head back to camp.

Friday a couple of us headed in to Hoedspruit to do a lion walk, which actually turned out to be a cheetah walk, but considering cheetahs are my favourite animal, im not going to complain about that! It involved another early morning (leaving at 4.30am) but was well worth it.

Today and tomorrow some serious study needs to be done, in preperation for Bioms and Weather and Climate lectures next week.

Photos when the net decides to play nice

Pied Kingfisher

Lilic Breasted Roller

Buffalo

Impala

Impala

Rhino

Purple Roller

Ground Hornbill

Waterbuck

Elephant

Vulture

Where does the time go?

Clearly time has been speeding up, not too sure where the last two weeks have gone, but they have certainly disappeared quickly.

We started the last week of semester with a reptile orientation at a local reptile park-where I hope to be able to do my reptile handling course sometime soonish. The course was more of an onientation and not so much on learning, but we had a bit of a lecture then go to hold a large python, a lizard and feed some monkeys-life is so hard here :P

Then the hard work started for the week, we had lectures on fish and arthropods, which not being my favourite subjects so far, I found slightly more challenging than some of the others-there is also an amazing amount to learn on arthropods, that was always going to be along week-the chapter in the book just kept going and going!

The weather deteriated during the second half of the week so by Wednesday it was cold (15 degrees) and raining, which when you are prepared for summer is not terribly pleasant. We had another rifle dry run, and an aborted game drive, the positive being that we got some extra study time!

Thursday we braved the wet and headed out on a game drive, getting soaked and frozen in the process, and seeing nothing more exciting than our first Leopard Tortoise. The afternoon game drive was again cancelled as we were not going to see anything in the raina and everyone was cold and wet.

Friday was still pretty miserable but we headed into town to pick up our hire car for the week off-4 of us were heading to kruger for 5 days. We had been expecting something like a Corolla, but somehow ended up with a BMW-who can say no to that!

Saturday finally bought some better weather, it had stopped raining and was beginning to get a bit warmer, although still overcast. After the test the rest of the day was spent relaxing, by the end of the semester all we want to do is relax we are so tired!

Tracking

So the last week was all about tracks, how to identify them, learning about poo-who would have thought it could be so interesting and tell you so much!!! It has been a very long week, leaving at 6 every morning, and getting back at 11, to head out again at 2 and back again about 6.30, with a lot of it out in the heat and sun, but it has been very well worth it.

We started off with just the basics on how to look at tracks, what to look for to identify them, not to look at just one track etc. and then spent each day out looking at tracks and getting some experience on how they look different to each other, how to judge the animals size by their walk.

Wednesday night we then headed out on another sleep out, where my roomie and I got the first watch this time. While it was good as it meant we could then go to sleep and not have to get up in the middle of the night, it did mean we ended up doing a 3 hour watch instead of a one hour watch as everyone headed to bed early.

The positive of this was that when a hyena crossed the riverbed 50 meters from where we were sleeping, we were the only ones who got to see it, despite our calls almost no-one woke up! After that it was easy to stay oup for the rest of our shift, as we were excited from our viewing!

Friday we started our assessment for our track and sign certificates-we had to identify 51 tracks and signs (poo and tree rubbings etc) over Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. While I felt I was doing well (we went through the tracks afterwards so we all knew what they were and if we didnt get them go through the caracteristics that identify them) I was surprised when we got our results back and I got 93% (I got 57 out of 51 right), the second highest out of the group, beaten only by one trainer and one of the guys who both got 94%.

Hyena

Porcupine

Our trainer-always prepared :D

Trying to make fire-we got smoke but no flames

Learning tracks

Leopard!!

The last week has been a long and at time trying week, but ended on a fantastic high on Thursday with a sighting of a leopard in a tree.

We started the week with a rifle handling lecture, where we learnt more about a rifle than I ever thought I would know-now I just need to learn to shoot one with accuracy and speed and I wll be all set! We then headed off on a game drive in the afternoon where as seems to be the way lately we didnt really see anything at all. I did get to drive again though so still thoroughly enjoyed it!

Tuesday was spent trying to book in for our drivers test-a long and very trying/boring day! We left camp about 6 so as to get to the centre just before it opened at 7, and then spent the rest of the day waiting in a queue outside in the sun until we gave up on that idea and went and sat in the shade, then we went inside to wait in another queue, then were kicked back out into the sun to wait a bit more, then were allowed back into wait inside again, finally after being there about 8 hours we finally went though to do our eye tests again, and by that time we had had more than enough, so after waiting in another queue for about half an hour we gave up and didnt actually end up booking out test at all. By the time we got back to camp it was late and after a quick rifle dry run, we had all had enough and called it a day.

Wednesday was much more productive, we again headed into town, this time to do our rifle competancy test. Luckily we didnt really have any waiting around, but spent most of the day doing tests and then actually shooting the rifle-we had to shoot the target at 15 meters and hit it to pass-nice and easy and I even managed to get three bulls eyes!!!!

Thursday turned out to be the highlight of the week, where we started with a game drive, and saw two Spotted Hyena early on, and after following them for a little bit, saw one of them chase a warthog. We didnt get to see what the result was, but was nice to see proof that Hyenas do actually hunt, and dont just eat carrion. While on our drinks break we got a call that the other group had spotted a Leopard in a tree, so we rushed down to see if we could get there in time-luckily we did and got to sit and watch the leopard for about half an hour. She didnt look very comfortable, and we were hoping we were going to get to see a kill when a waterbuck walked close an she became very interested, but it didnt come close enough and the leopard just lay down and went back to sleep.

Friday I headed down to a local animal orphanage/education centre, with a couple of the others, as we are doing some education there every couple of weeks, trying to educate the local kids on the wildlife. After that it was back to camp and study for the rest of the day ready for rifle and animal behaviour tests tomorrow. I am not confident on these two, rifles I dont know much about, and animal behaviour is such a big topic, and we only covered it on Thursday that there hasnt been enough time for it all to sink in.

We also got our tests back that we wrote on amphibians and reptiles last week-thought I had completely stuffed the reptiles one up, and done not badly on the amphibians. Ended up getting 93% on amphibians, and 100% on reptiles-clearly I didnt stuff it up!!!!

A long week

This week has felt like a long week, I am glad it is over. Maybe it was the break we had that got me out of the habit.

We only had lectures on reptiles and amphibians but it seemed like we had so much to learn in those two topics. At the same time as trying to study for them, I was also studying for my learners theory test which I had on Friday morning-effectively removing the day that I do the majority of my study in.

Luckily I passed my learners, so I am now allowed to "learn" how to drive-feels weird to be back to being a learner though :) Saturday the rest of the group who didnt sit their learners on Friday sat their tests, then came back and we all did the weekly test-it was much better than anticipated, a nice surprise!

Not a lot of game drives this week, and those that we have been on all the animals seemed to be hiding from us-however it did give us a nice opportunity to do some tracking, learn a few more birds and try to identify some trees. It doesnt seem to matter what we see on a game drive they are always enjoyable!

We have some nice weather today after it being clowdy and cold the last couple of days I am not used to wearing jumpers and scarves in the middle of the day here, so am going to spend the rest of my day out in the sun enjoying it and trying to make a head start on my readings for next week.