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The camp has four raised thatched platforms - one has accommodation for the main instructor and this was over the male & female ablutions and the kitchen. The area under one of the platforms was also where we eat and had our lectures. Our accommodation is in two person tents overlooking a dry Korwonwgi River course - I am sharing with Dion: the local who is aiming to make guiding a career. The walls of the tent are largely of mosquito netting that allows good air flow but flaps to put down when the rains eventually arrive.
Each day quickly falls into a regular pattern:
The lecture programme was:
The course is not what I expected with a heavy emphasis on trees (we need to learn to identify 40 trees with 2/3 uses for each) and 10 grasses. Most of the bush walks are spent going from tree to tree to decide which was what. The lectures are very theory based with none of the expected information/discussions on individual animals and birds.
The highlights and lowlights (you can decide which was which) were:
Sitting at the dinner table surrounded by the black night and having Bush Pig, Elephant or Hyena caught behind in a torch beam. Sitting in the 'bait seat' - this was a small seat welded over the front bumper which meant you hovered over the road and were the first thing an animal sees as you drive up to it. Duties: to continuously scan the sandy road as it wizzes underneath you to identify 'interesting' tracks. This has a major advantage as you inevitably get the best view of any animal you come across - people had massive male lions gazing up into their eyes when they were close enough to kick and hyena pups smelling their boots. The downside was that you got bounced off trees as you speed along - especially by those drivers who seemed intent that they were caught on the other side by thorns or branches. Also when your driver went 'bundu bashing' (driving off road over bushes & small trees) in the search for animals - you got them (inevitably they had thorns) in your face. Lizy who cooked and ran the kitchen with a rod of iron and woe betide anybody who crossed her. At night hearing all kind of squeaks, howls, growls, grunts and rustles outside the tent - usually just as you were about to step out into the black to answer a call of nature. |
Seeing Leopard cubs highlighted in the spotlight as they play stalk each other and share an Impala kill with their mother. Having the camp water supply cut off by Elephants ripping up the pipe or Lions chewing on it. Standing in a pool of light from headlights surrounded by the black night trying to join two pieces of pipe back together and realising that nobody had brought the rifle. As ever in a largish group, sitting back and watching the dynamics - holiday lusts & loves; cliques forming; in-jokes and niggling irritations festering & fizzing into tizzy fits. The insistence of an armed escort for the 200 metre walk back to our tents at the end of the evening but the expectation that the duty students take the same route in the dark at 0500 without an escort. Firing a .375 full bore rifle - firstly a single shot at a 3" target 10 metres away (the accepted minimum distance a guide shoots at a charging animal) - I hit just outside the bull; then two shots at separate targets - the rifle (it's not a gun) isn't an automatic so you have to work the bolt to eject the spent round and load the second - I hit one and missed one bull but managed one of the fastest times. The third element was to get as many shots off at a charging Leopard (a cardboard box being towed towards you) - students only ever get one shot off (Rob managed two) - I managed to hit the box: just! |
Having a massive White Backed Vulture snatching my hat from my head (and almost my scalp) at the Mholoholo Rehabilitation Centre. At the same place, getting close to an impressive Black Eagle, a spitting & snarling Leopard and my first close up look at a Honey Badger. An introduction to the South African breakfast: peanut butter, with bacon & syrup on toast. The stench of the rubbish dump and toilet outlet wafting over the dinner table. Just walking through the bush - a privilege that few other people are able to enjoy. Being told to look up the answer to a question in the books and then finding that they contradict each other. Worse - that the instructors contradict each other. Both leaving the poor student totally confused. Having told everybody in their self-introductions that they were there just to enjoy themselves, the stress and work that other students put themselves through: lights were often burning in some tents late into the night. |
Quietly walking through thick bush as we track White Rhino and Lion. Followed by the thrill of seeing both at close quarters. Having our one and only excursion into the fabled Northern 66% of the reserve at the hottest part of the day on the hottest day of the four weeks - 38oC in the shade. Seeing normally haughty, disdainful and dangerous Bufallo reduced to domestic cattle in the Reserve's fenced off breeding boma. These TB free speciems are worth a lot of Rand - it's very unlikely that they will ever be let loose into the general area to become a very expensive snack for an unappreciative lion. Standing under a warm shower and having it turn icy cold as one of the girls started to also have one and 'steal' the hot water. Hours bouncing around the bush at the mercy of a colleagues ability to avoid the big bumps looking for something (anything) to look at. Waking up in the middle of the night to find a piece of yet another tooth floating around in my mouth. If nothing else, it got me a trip into town to escape from the camp. |
Exchanging looks with a massive dark maned male Lion when we met him on foot.
A Impala dung spitting contest.
Bushbabies bouncing around the trees in front of the tent as the sun sank behind them. |
Attempting to stay awake during lectures during the hottest part of the day.
The final examination was, at the request of most of the students, held a day early so that the last day would be 'free'. A couple of us elected not to sit around camp for this last day and I headed down to Nelspruit to get some shopping done (my boots and one of my pairs of short were falling apart). After four weeks in a dusty hot camp sleeping in a tent, I elected to stay in a cheap(ish) hotel with a good shower and air conditioning.
Then off to Jo'berg to visit a friend before leaving South Africa for Namibia.
Prologue: Just after John send the text for this page the laptop he was using to write the text and save the pictures died. This resulted in a long delay and much muttering both here and in Africa but more of this later.
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