It's not until you see something that is right infront of you, that you fully experience it!

An 8 oclock start, cleaning the elephants enclosures, becoming a routine. Once complete, helping to pick up the branches round about outside as seen in the picture! They get burned and the bigger bits kept used for fire wood. Nothing better than just hopping in the back of the truck and of we go, load up with branches and sit on top of them as we go to unload!

Feeding time....... 4 bits of horse....4 cheetah, it was a case of just picking it up and throughing it over the fence, the sink to wash my hands....the sand on the ground and the towel to dry my hands one of the bushes! (that was until i got back to an actually sink!)

This afternoon, we helped to concrete a big poste into the ground, this has a lick block on the top and we put sticks into the post to allow branches to be hung on them.....this is for the giraff. The lick block is basically there medicine, contains a large amount of different minerals and they love the taste of it. The tools they use they call them sugar water; becuase after youve finished the job and using them you want sugar water!

I was going to ask do they replant any areas of land; before i could.... hein told us the next job was to plant some cuttings where they had desturbed the ground building a previous bridge. Now i cant remember the name of the plant... it has very small suculent leaves and its more of a bushy plant. (i will find out)

Finally mashetty time!!! :)! First needed to pick up a trailer with the rubbish from the lodge.....we were going to the rubbish dump first! I was in the back of the truck with jabby....we drove to the town abertinia,so on the main road....very windy! This is where my first sentence of this blog comes to! Driving through the town, some very poor areas, you can see this on the tv numerous times but when your seeing it with your own eyes! Going to the rubbish dump.....well offcourse the smell of rotting rubbish and burning rubbish.....but people walking up to look through your rubbish as you through it onto the heap! I wanted to include it on my blog as its a very important part of my trip seeing and experiencing very different lives!

Collecting the bon jackson for the elephants; this was my first trip to get it, monza ad jabby had done it on the monday and tuesday before i arrived. I loved using the mashetty takes a bit of practice however but a very handy tool if you knwo how to use it! I ment to ask if collecting it was free becuase its a pest species i think the place we got it from wants to get rid of it. We just drove in and collected it and they do this every day.

We drove back to the reserve, left the branches for the elephants, and scatered some out side for them. Finally putting some on the giraf poste, and that was another day done!

Today has been full of very different experiences, the cultural side and wildlife as the sun set i felt very reflective it certainly gets you thinking!