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Hi my first update from South Africa and the first time that I've been vaguely near a computer in two weeks. I'm very close to the Zimbabwe / Botswana border staying and working on the Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve which is 32000 ha reserve owned by De Beers diamond mines. The reserve is at the forefront of many carnivore conservation projects and theer are no actual lodges on the reserve. Eventually the reserve together with its neighbours are working towards bringing down the fences and having a trans frontier conservation area which spans South Africa , Botswana and Zimbabwean borders allowing the wildlife to interact more as it would without man made boundaries. It's still some way off but teh work is very positive. The reseve is approx 100 km from the town of Musina and i managed to get a lift to town on my day off to do a few bits today.
The camp that I'm staying on is practically in the middle of the reserve about 45 mins drive from a tar road. Its on the banks of the Kilope river which only flows about twice a year. There's 12 of us volunteers and 4 staff memebrs. 8 of us are sharing avery cosy room , mixed on bunk beds with one bathroom- but luxury we have a shower and a flushing toilet!
the reserve has lion, leopard cheetah, hyena, rhino, eles, hippos, zebra range of antelope etc. There are approx 28 lions of which 6 are collared. So far we had a great and interesting training week with a mixture of practical work- telemetry and traingulation and then lectures, drives etc. There were several exams at the end of it which fortunately I passed.
The daily routine is either to be allocated a camp duty or to be on a research drive in an open backed 4 wheel drive. The days start at 0530 am and that's leaving camp so it's even earlier to get up! Some days we have to find all the collared animals which not only includes the lions but hyena, jackals and wild dogs. Other days we focus on specific lions. It's completely awesome and have seen some amazing sights already- lots of lions and cubs, eles, rhino, ardwolf etc etc. We monitor the predators movements and also kill frequency, species prefered etc,
When we first arrived at the camp theer was no fence and the lions and leopard were coming very close to the camp at night. We had to have escorts back to the tents for fear of being approached by the wildlife. Fortunately the fence is now up which was a bit of a relief when after lunch yesterday everyone was lazing around before the afternoon drive when two kudu ran across the river bed followed by a lion. As if that asn't enough excitementabout an hour later one lioness was looking for the lion and came round the fence of the camp- now Iknow what it feels like to be in a zoo as the lion was on the outside looking in on us. Similarly party night stopped at 4 am as the lions were ghetting a bit too close tous!
There have been a few other expereiences and I'm sure they'll be plenty more! Digging the vehicles out of sand once they're stuck knowing that theer are lions near by, eles mock charging the vehicles. I git to drive a 4 wheel drive after we had an emergency exercise and casualty evacuation. I was just saying how I would freak if I drove into a herd of eles... so what happened .. yes drove up to a herd. Luckily after some nifty reversing Arno one of teh staff swopped seats and drove us safely through.
Next week I'm up in the Lesheba Wilderness in the Soutspansberg mountains and that will be different from the work I'm currently doing as it involves more walking and maintenance work. All the people on the expedition are great and theres two Aussies, one American and the rest Brits, ranging from 19 years old to mid 40s. Everyone gets on very well and all get involved- you have to living in such close proximity to each other! the weather is hot hot hot and all in all I'm very pleased to have made the decision to come out here and especially this expedition with GVI. As my access to the internet is very limited it maybe a couple of weeks or more before any updates. I have got some stunning photos already but might have to wait a while as don't think the IT can support uploading them. Will be in touch soon.
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