Wow.... So this is it! This is really it. I'm leaving Africa in 2 days time, and other than Monday morning project (which I can manage to go on thanks to having an evening flight booked!) I am officially finished with volunteering for the year. My final project was Kids Club which was very nice, and good fun with my favourite kid (but of course we don't have favourites!) doing her favourite thing of running around me roaring that she's a lion and she's going to eat me! SO CUTE!

So how's my week gone? Hectic, fun, and sad pretty much sums it up! I can't help but be upset that I'm leaving which is stupid because I haven't left yet so I might as well enjoy it, but no... Every time I see anything, a little voice in my head goes "That might be your last one." which generally just makes me sad rather than enjoying seeing it! The best thing is that on Monday morning I'll get the chance to do one last bit of elephant research, so I'll be ending on my favourite project.

Sunday night I went out on night drive, and while there were no hyenas, I got a new sighting! SERVAL! It was a terrible view, and no photos, but it's the only sighting I've had. It was so much smaller than I expected, and so pretty. Beautiful little animal.

SURPRISE ATTACK!

Monday projects were the usual Bird Survey and Game Count. Bird survey we went to Chamabondo (no cheetahs!) and added to the data from the previous Friday. I've already decided that when I get home I'm going to try and get more into my birds there. I really enjoy bird surveys here, and certainly they're the fastest way to improve my knowledge - there's a reason I'm one of the best at identifying the birds here, and it's simply because I've done the most bird surveys! Game Count was less exciting, as we were back on Chamabondo (no cheetahs!) and it's just not a great area for wildlife in the afternoons at this time of year! We recorded warthog, zebra, impala and kudu which was a pretty good number in comparison to sometimes, but still doesn't make for the most exciting game drive.... Wow I sound spoiled! Wouldn't be complaining if I "only" saw warthogs next week!

Giraffes on the Hill

Tuesday was Elephants and Giraffes in the morning, then Elephant ID Training of the new local intern in the afternoon. It was also my BIRTHDAY! :D I was starting to get scared when we were over halfway through our session and I still hadn't seen any eles, but then 12 showed their faces and so I did get to see them. Unfortunately, the reason there were only 12 is because there was a herd of minimum 80 in Zambia, so clearly they'd arranged the Birthday Party, but got the wrong location...! The afternoon I was teaching the new elephant researchers how to do the IDs, and I'll admit that thinking back to when I started doing them does make me nervous... I wasn't allowed to do it alone for over a month after I arrived, and even then only because the Zambian researcher was off to get married - I'm leaving them to it after 2 hours training each! Eek! We went out to In-Da-Belly restaurant (for those who didn't get the pun, the local language here is Ndebele) for dinner that night, where I had Kudu steak (I'm a really great vegetarian aren't I?!) and chips which was fantastic! They had a local dance group in performing while we ate, and they dragged me up first to dance with them, and then so they dance around me singing a Happy Birthday song which started off lovely, but then changed to "How old are you now? So old now. You are old now. You are old now."..... Thanks.....! Dinner was followed by far too much cake (birthday necessity!) and then home. Such a wild 21st party - I was in bed, totally sober at 9:30pm!

Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation

Wednesday started off with sunrise shoot (the main reason I was in bed quite so early!) down by the river and it was just beautiful. Not the true dry season sunrise that is steadily making it's way back, but a really bright sun over the water, straight downriver from where we were. Also found a baby crocodile who managed to be both very cute and very menacing simultaneously! Went to Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation Survey for the last time after sunrise, once more checking cameras and lights at the 9 homesteads where they are set up. As usual, the lights seem to be doing their job effectively, so no lion visits, but one guy did point out where 2 lions had killed a hyena on his property midweek! We got back earlier than expected, so my already long day became even longer when I went to join what I thought would be my last session of Kids Club at the Rose of Charity Orphanage in town. We took some big "21st" balloons with us which they found great fun, and I spent one more afternoon playing volleyball with the kids, and then some football. We left a bit early as 2 of the volunteers were going to join in with a local football training. Rather than just sitting around watching them for 2 hours, we were welcomed into a netball match with a whole load of local women. Now I haven't played netball since I was at school, and I've done pretty much no real exercise all year.... These women train for an hour every day! They're so good! I think we provided as much entertainment at our uselessness as we provided any show of possible skill or athleticism, but they seemed to like having us there and invited us back again! A very enjoyable afternoon all round, apart from the fact that between 9 of us running on sand in the afternoon African sun, we had half a bottle of water.... Whoops! All in the pool when we got back!

Sunrise over the Zambezi

Thursday was supposed to be Hyena Tracking in the morning but the hyenas have left the park again, so while the other researchers stayed behind and did admin stuff, I used the time to go and do my last lion walk with Lekker and Lala. They were pretty lazy, but that meant lots of handsome photos of Lekker. He's such a beautiful lion! We came back to their enclosure and gave them the grass ostrich that the volunteers made the previous day. As usual, they did the token "What's this? Oh I pushed it over." and then ignored it again. The afternoon we had another elephant and giraffe session, and as this should have been my last one, I was again getting worried for most of the session that there was no elephants to be seen, and that my last ever elephant research would be a no-show, but then right as we were starting to speed up in order to get home on time, we saw them. It was a big herd - minimum of 32 individuals - but they were so far back in the bushes we didn't get a great view of them. Never mind, they were there.

Lions trying out veganism

Beautiful Lekker <3

Lala. I love catching lions just as they finish yawning - they look so angry!

Friday (really starting to get scarily close to the end of the week!) was supposed to be Occupancy Survey but there's a problem at the ranger station and we were FORCED to do another Elephant and Giraffe Research session.... How unfortunate! What really was unfortunate was that the Game Viewer was broken and spent the morning getting fixed, so we had to take the big Hyundai instead, which isn't great at rough roads. Thanks to this, we didn't get to go to Chamabondo as we'd hoped to, and we later found out that there was not 1, but 2 leopards seen there while we were out on Zambezi Drive instead! NO! However, we did find some elephants (actually not in the park, but just on the way in the morning) and giraffes so it was a good morning. The afternoon was my last Game Count, again on Zambezi Drive, and we totalled 5 species (giraffe, waterbuck, warthog, impala, hippo) so it was a nice drive. Party in the evening as a joint birthday-and-last-night-out celebration for me and our volunteer coordinator, which was really fun.

Zebra-de-doo-dah, Zebra-de-ay!

And now for today! We were supposed to have a litter pick today competition today, but yesterday there was a big fire at the dump site so we would have nowhere to put the litter we collected other than just leaving it nicely bagged back where we found it! It was pretty horrible yesterday - the whole of town and the park was just choked with smelly thick white smoke that will have been a combination of rubber, tar, plastic, asbestos, and many other delightful things that should definitely not be inhaled... This is Africa! Instead of the litter pick we went to Kids Club and had one more morning of playing with the children. I spent most of the time painting the kids' fingernails, and reading books with them which was very sweet, and a lovely ending to my volunteering stay. Following that, I've spent the afternoon packing (NO!) and will head to the Falls for one last visit tomorrow.

And that's it! That's all I have to say. If you have any questions about how to get involved yourself then feel free to contact me, or go to the ALERT website (www.lionalert.org) or the African Impact Website (www.africanimpact.com) for more information. I highly recommend volunteering out here (bearing in mind we've had volunteers from age 14 to 76 so no excuses there!), and African Impact offer so many amazing projects all over the continent working on several different species, and in many communities. The work being done is vitally important to the lives of these people, and volunteers are a huge part of that. Similarly, if you don't have the time or money to travel, but would still like to help, then every donation helps and is hugely important to the continuation of the work. To donate to the projects that I have been on, then this can be done through the ALERT website, for others go to the African Impact website and search the projects. The 2 major charities that African Impact support are ALERT and The Happy Africa Foundation, which is a more community-based one. Thank you to everyone for all of the support that I have received this year, and I promise you now that I'll let you know WHEN I'm coming back (because it's definitely not an if!).

Until next time, This Was Africa <3

ANOTHER 2 WEEKS GONE! I still can't get my head around the idea of this being my last week in Africa.... It seems like so long since I was home, but equally like barely any time has passed at all. Honestly I'm sure it will really sink in that I'm leaving until I'm home and there aren't elephants and warthogs wandering around the roads, and I can just take the dog out for a walk without having to keep an eye out for lions and snakes!

World Ranger's Day march

So what's been happening? Quite a lot this time actually! Started off my fortnight with a celebration for World Ranger's Day on 31st July. There was a march through the centre of town with rangers from here, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia, to show support for the work done by rangers all over the world for the protection of people and wildlife, and the constant sacrifices and risks they take in order to do their jobs. For those of us with decent cameras however, our job was not marching, but rather being photographers and spreading the word to the people on the streets. We were stopping them as they went and getting them to take a photo with a sign saying "I STAND WITH THE WORLD'S RANGERS" which was quite fun! We then had to photograph the actual march and that was just knackering... It was definitely more of a run than a march, and we were having the sprint to get ahead of it, stop for 30 seconds to photograph them as they all ran past, then sprint ahead again! Not easy in African heat! We went out on Game Count that afternoon though so more relaxed - sitting on a car counting animals may be mentally challenging sometimes, but we'd already done our exercise for the day! 

The stars while camping

As for research we've done pretty well these past couple of weeks. The hyenas entered the park again for a bit so we've been hyena tracking for the first time in a while; we've done one of our two planned occupancy surveys (we were unable to get a ranger for the other one); we've done 3 bird surveys and 5 elephant and giraffe research sessions; and 4 game counts too. Busy busy busy! Hyena tracking was a particularly fun one as, although we found no hyenas or carcasses, we did find lots of spoor at the site, and it was an area of the park totally new to me which was fun. We were planning on going camping at Chamabondo as we have a few times before, but after we saw the Kalisosa platform during hyena tracking we switched and went there instead! Camping was FREEZING and we had some trouble getting onto the platform which had been locked but no one knew who had the keys, but we saw so many elephants and heard a hyena super-close so it was definitely worth it. As well as hyena tracking, we also went out on our first night drive that we've done in ages and we saw 3 hyenas, 2 elephants and a rabbit (the last one amused us!) so that was good fun. As for Bird Survey, while nothing can beat Elephant Research in my book, the birds are coming up a close second. It's just so interesting to drive through the park and see what's around. It's also something of a game (helps to satisfy the insanely competitive streak that runs through my family!) that you play against yourself, trying to see how many you can identify on the spot, how many you can do with the bird book, and how many you have to just give up and take a photo for identification later. I'm getting pretty good (if I do say so myself) at recognising them, and it seems such a shame to go home and forget them all by the time I next come out! (Yes, I'm certain there will DEFINITELY be a next time!)

Hyena on Night Drive

Elephants at the Kalisosa waterhole

Giraffe peeping through the trees

Baby off for a walk!

BEING ATTACKED!! Happy World Lion Day! (10th August)

CHEETAH!!!! I am the first person to photograph a Zambezi
National Park cheetah in over a decade!

When it comes to wildlife August has been a very good month so far. Morning Elephant and Giraffe research has been brilliant in terms of sightings. In the past 2 weeks we've had 2 separate lion sightings, the first on 1st August, the second on the 10th. The first one was exciting as it was 2 that we have definitely seen before - an adult female and a sub-adult male, in the same bush that we last saw them in when we saw a group of 4 walking down the road ahead of us a few weeks back. The second one was exciting for 3 reasons: 1) I had literally just finished saying how the previous would almost certainly be my last wild lions in this trip, 2) There were 4 adults (2 males and 2 females) and the males were fighting over the females, and 3) One of the males decided that we were in the way and he ran at our car roaring and snarling, coming straight at me! Thankfully he changed his mind when our driver revved the engine and lay back down.... otherwise I may have been mauled to death by him! It was such a cool sighting with him and the other (triumphant) male battling in the bushes. Unfortunately we couldn't really see the fight because of the trees, but if anything I think that made it more exciting! We drove on through the park looking for a different spot for breakfast (since our planned spot was occupied by 4 angry lions!) and were again foiled, this time by elephants! We eventually went to a spot where none of us have ever seen so much as a bird and had breakfast there.... Continued on through the park and approximately 2 hours after we saw the lions, we saw another 1... or rather we thought we did.... We saw a big cat cross the road ahead of us and then slink through the long grass, and while we thought she seemed to be moving oddly, we just assumed she was stalking the kudu up ahead, so we stopped the car and waited to see what would happen.... what happened is that we pulled up next to the bush she'd vanished into, and a few minutes later, the cat came out and walked away into another bush. NOT a female lion! At first when we saw it was spotty we just automatically assumed leopard? But a quick look at the shape told us that was wrong too. CHEETAH! Almost at exactly the same time as we were watching it in Chamabondo, 2 of the Lion Encounter staff were talking to the parks authority and being told that there hasn't been a definite confirmed cheetah sighting in this park for over 10 years, and there we were getting photographic evidence that they are indeed still here! WOW! Could not stop smiling all day, and I still grin every time I think of it! I'm not sure I'll ever get over how awesome that morning was! I honestly couldn't breathe properly for a good couple of hours after seeing it, and I'd be lying if I said no tears escaped on the way home... Absolutely incredible sighting, and when combined with fighting male lions too?! BEST RESEARCH SESSION EVER! Last Thursday was actually one of the best days of my life....

Elephant saying hello! Happy World Elephant Day! (12th August)

Our first wild lions of the fortnight

Actually not my only cheetah sighting of the past 2 weeks however! Over the weekend in the middle (and this is why I didn't do an update last week), a group of us went to Hwange National Park which is the largest National Park in Zimbabwe and only about 2 hours down the road from Victoria Falls. Unfortunately the company that we booked with turned out to be utterly useless at organisation and I think we probably did miss out on some stuff having gone with them, but it was still very good and we saw several species which were brand new to me, including Roan antelope, Blue duiker, Bat-eared Fox (definitely a highlight, they're SO CUTE!) and of course, the cheetah. We also saw elephants, giraffes, hippos, waterbuck, warthogs, impala, a pride of 12 lions with 8 cubs (big highlight!), wildebeest, crocodiles, baboons, ostrich, kudu, zebra, vultures, marabou stork and crowned cranes, to name only a few! Still no painted dogs though.... I've given up now - the chances of seeing them in my last week are so minute that I'm not hoping to see them anymore. What a shame, it just means I'll HAVE to come back to Africa!

First Cheetah I ever saw!

Southern Yellow-Billed Hornbill

AAH! A BEE!

Crowned Crane, photo taken for my Gran who helped inspire
my bird love, and who loves these birds most of al!

Wartypig! 

Sunrise at Hwange. Unfortunately I missed the photo
where it was giraffes not people!

Male Steenbok, or as we call them, Rabbit-antelopes! 

Vine snake in the road. These will kill you within 1 hour of biting
by causing you to bleed out, and their venom has no antidote....

Ostriches!

Giraffe yoga... 

Elephants wallowing at the waterhole 

LION CUBS!!

Sunset at Hwange

And now for my final week in Africa, soon to be thrown back to reality.... Very much looking forward to being home, very much dreading having to leave!

3 weeks left! Every week seems to go faster, and equally feels like much more than just a week... Having said that, it's again going to be quite a short entry since we again barely saw anything!

It's been another quite frustrating week in terms of animal sightings. We've had one significant elephant sighting which was this morning, and there were about 30 or 40 of them, but all hidden in amongst the bushes while another one ran at us as soon as we tried to get closer... Wasn't the greatest ever sighting... Elephant research has been extremely annoying this week - we've spent 13 hours in the park and no elephants in that time! Saw a couple of sightings outside of research time, but then it's not research time so I can't research them! Getting worried now - I was promised that August there are herds of 250 elephants on Chamabondo vlei, so Iwas hoping to get one of those during the elephant research session that will happen on my 21st Birthday - that would be a pretty amazing present from the park - but we've barely seen any at all over there recently. There's hardly been any giraffes either. Bird Survey was more successful, counting over 30 species during our drive. 2 Game counts this week also didn't turn up much except for impala and warthogs, though recently we've been seeing more and more waterbucks to the point that we must be approaching some kind of record!

Really the big news this week is that our 2 local research interns (from the University of Zimbabwe and the National University of Science and Technology) are leaving and being replaced by 2 new ones. We spent this week with all 4 of them, helping to train the new people in the different activities, and then saying goodbye to the old interns. We had our differences (sometimes bigger differences than others!) but I'll still miss those 2.

And that really honestly is it! I basically spent the whole week either doing IDs or in the park, and since we didn't see much in the park at all, there's not really much exciting to say! Will upload pictures of the stuff we did see when I manage to get them onto my laptop. Other than that, talk to you next week!

Week 48, and it's going faster with every week! In precisely 1 month (and 5 hours!) I'll be landing back at Heathrow airport after a full 24 hours of travelling and then it's just the long drive home. This has been a very enjoyable week, and we've got a lot done, but I'm afraid to say that when typing it up it sounds very unproductive and quite tedious! We just didn't see much! Also sorry for the lack of pictures again, I'm really struggling with getting photos off my camera!

My week started with Bird Survey on Zambezi Drive and Minefields Drive. We got some pretty cool species including kingfishers, doves, francolins, babblers, tchagras, swallows, buntings, bee-eaters, hornbills, vultures, storks and lapwings. We counted a total of 29 species in our session, then went off looking for giraffes and elephants but we didn't find any. That fairly well sums up our attempts at finding elephants this week!All 3 of our elephant and giraffe sessions only produced a couple of giraffes and no eles. Afternoon Game Count was fun but it was pretty much entirely warthogs and impala. Never mind - I may complain about them now, but not much longer that I'll have them everywhere! That happened with both of our game counts, seeing only a couple of giraffes and kudu during each.

Thursday morning we went out for a Snare Sweep at the golf course at Elephant Hills hotel. The hotel puts out salt licks and obviously the grass and vegetation is constantly watered so it's very attractive to animals. This makes it a lovely course, but unfortunately also very attractive to poachers too. Having said that, we found no snares! Had a nice walk though!

Did more community work than normal this week, going to Monde School to teach volleyball as well as doing seedling project and litter pick. When we arrived at the school there were about 200 children waiting for us and getting very excited as we climbed out of the car! Trying to organise them was something of a nightmare, particularly since there was a whole lot of shouting and they were all trying to ambush those of us carrying equipment so they could go off and play. We eventually managed to divide into football, rugby, volleyball and then the small ones just playing simpler games and running around. I took the grade 4 and 5 girls for volleyball, and we quickly got the net set up and split the group into 4 teams, 2 with me and 2 with another volunteer. Since we only had one net, we swapped which groups were using it about halfway through. Only being there for 2 hours meant we had to jump through skills pretty quickly, but I got them to do catch-push volleys decently, some not bad digging, and then passing to each other with 3 touches on either side of the net. Unfortunately they couldn't seem to understand that the ball didn't have to go in the same order every time, or that they were playing against each other! It was more of a nice game of catch between 6 of them while the others stood back and watched. When I tried to get them to mix it up, the other 6 passed it very nicely 1-2-3-over between them and the first 6 stood back and watched! Trying to teach children who don't speak great English and aren't confident enough to say when they don't understand, is not the easiest thing I've had to do here! They were starting to get bored (unsurprising when there was no apparent element of competition to their throw and catch game!) so I decided to give them a go at hitting, first just at the ground, then over the net. This actually went quite well, particularly aided by 2 teachers who seemed to know what they were doing and spoke Ndebele, and we did quite well until we tried to bring in blocking and even the teachers couldn't explain that they had to stand at the net and try to stop the ball coming over by jumping with their hands in the air! We then swapped off the net and spent the rest of the time either practicing volleying and digging more, having some fun serving against a wall, and generally playing a game of How Long Can We Keep The Ball Off The Floor. They seemed to really enjoy it, and found it hilarious that I decided (considering the sand was sodden it was effectively beach volleyball) to join them playing bare foot! They sang us songs before we left, then it was home for an afternoon of elephant IDs. 

A very cute family!

Got your nose!

Week 46 has been another elephanty week, with 3 ID sessions and 1 full day of identification, along with 3 sessions in the park out looking for them and the giraffes. Our first drive (Tuesday morning) was less than successful, with no sign of any elephants or giraffes anywhere, but that is actually fairly expected during morning sessions these days. It's too cold - the animals don't want to come out of hiding until later in the day. Similarly with the birds on bird survey, we only counted 1 new species to add to last Friday's list. Friday's morning session was slightly more successful, catching a glimpse of 2 adult males, but unfortunately they were right at the part of the road that we couldn't follow them as the sand became too deep for our car! Stupid wildlife.... Why can't they just come out in the open and pose nicely for photos?! We then got a flat tyre halfway back, still stuck on the tiny side road that no one else comes down, with a car jack that wasn't big enough for the car! We spent quite a while collecting rocks to sit the jack on, so that it would be big enough to lift the car up! The rest of the waiting time we spent amusing ourselves by watching an ant-lion attempting to kill a tiny beetle, and the beetle trying to get out of the ant-lion's pitfall trap... Wasn't quite so exciting but good enough to keep us occupied until our driver had fixed the car! Thursday had the best elephant and giraffe research session of all. We started out as normal and quickly found lots of fresh elephant tracks, but all heading back in the direction that we had come, so clearly they had already got to the accessible areas of the park and moved on through. Eventually we found a set of tracks heading up the hill to "Elephant Baobab" so we tried following them. We got to the top of the hill and drove around to no avail, but from the top we were able to spot a group of about 5 giraffes down where we had previously been! We raced back down and counted a total of 18 in one herd which was awesome. We spent a long time with them, before heading on further up Zambezi Drive. We drove on and on, and were close to reaching our time limit so asked the driver to turn around. He decided to go around the corner to turn around, and there they were! A herd of 13! Lucky timing! There were 4 little calves that were unbelievably cute, all playing together. Their mothers were slightly less cute considering that they were really not especially happy to see us...!

Mummy and Baby

Other research activities this week only consisted of Game Count and Hyena Den Monitoring. Den monitoring is definitely not as exciting as it was previously.... This was the second session in a row with no sign of the hyenas! We've now obscured all the tracks around the den and in a few weeks, if we still haven't seen them again, we'll go and have a look and see if there are any new ones. Game Count was not especially productive, but was good for Elephant and Giraffe Research! We went down a road that we don't use much, and found 2 herds of eles, and a herd of giraffes. Other than that there were 3 warthogs at the main park gate and nothing else! To do a Game Count and not record a single impala is impressive...! There was the cutest little tiny baby with the second group!

And now for Saturday. First thing to say is happy birthday and congratulations to my sister for graduating vet school today after 5 years of hard work! Woo! I'm celebrating her birthday with a litter pick, then a lion walk with Lila and Liuwa, an afternoon of relaxation (and maybe some elephant IDs if I can be bothered though I'll probably spend all day tomorrow doing them so that's my 6th work day of the week!), and then tonight we're having a 4-days-late 4th July party for the American volunteers! Spending a significant amount of time this afternoon making punch, sangria and peach cobbler! Looking forward to dinner of burgers....

African Road Crossing!

Lila and Liuwa taking a drink

47 weeks down, 5 to go!

This has been another slightly crazy week with 4 days of work, and then 2 days of touristing at Antelope Park with another intern. Antelope Park in Gweru is the third place that ALERT has projects and we both wanted to go and visit before we leave.

U61, now named Bon Jovi!

Monday was an early start as usual, this time for Occupancy Survey in Chamabondo. For the second time in a row we had fresh leopard prints! No sign of the leopard though... We saw elephants while on the road which we hoped meant that the big herds would have returned to the vlei, but there was no sign of them. On the way to breakfast afterwards I spotted our FIRST lion of the week, really close to the road but it took me so long to point her out to everyone that she was gone before I got the photo! Not making THAT mistake again! Game Count in the afternoon we saw warthogs, giraffes, waterbuck, elephants, kudu, impala and zebra. We saw so many elephants!

Giraffes crossing the road

Tuesday started with elephant IDs, and then we headed out in the afternoon on elephant and giraffe research during which the animals were being extremely helpful - one small group of waterbuck, one small group of kudu, a few warthog and impala, and other than that nothing but elephants and giraffes! Just alternating between species sightings! A good session! 

Wednesday was Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation first, visiting all of the homesteads and checking the lights and cameras. It's a very long drive and normally can be quite dull, but thanks to the new BirdLasser app that I downloaded for bird survey, I had some more fun than usual because I was able to practice my bird knowledge and also was able to do some research mapping. We got back quite early, and I spent my afternoon doing elephant IDs and then trying to sort out my camera. Not a problem with it in terms of actual function, but my memory card is full, as is my laptop, so I have no way to empty the card! HELP!

Lions on the Road in front of us

Thursday was a very interesting morning when we went out on elephants and giraffes. No actual elephants and giraffes, and only a couple of sightings each of impala and warthogs.... and 2 separate lion sightings?! The very first animals we saw when we entered the park were a group of 4 lions (3 adult females and 1 sub adult male) just walking down the road ahead of us. We'd been watching their tracks as we went along and knew they were fresh, but hadn't dared to hope they were THAT fresh! We went way up along Zambezi Drive, then turned back and came along Chamabondo too, and there we saw another adult female (much further away this time) walking away from the waterhole. By the time we reached the end of the drive I didn't know whether I should be extremely happy for the volunteers that they saw so much, or disappointed for them that they saw so little! In the afternoon I stayed back to do IDs, and get as many of my remaining photos off my camera as possible! We got on the bus and headed to Antelope Park after dinner, leaving Chinotimba bus terminus at 9pm, and not arriving until 5:45am... OUCH!

Sub-adult male lion in the park

Baby Zebra!

Sunset over Zambezi National Park

Baby Shaka!

Meeting Jeche at Antelope Park

Antelope Park is extremely different from the other 2 ALERT projects. There are far more lion, and many more activities to do there, but very little environmental research since it's a game park not a national park. Personally the research is obviously my favourite part, so I'm glad I'm not based there, but I can see that as a lions volunteer or a tourist it's a great place to be. The accommodation they gave us was great! A big tent by the river that was more like a canvas chalet than a tent! Unfortunately, Gweru is SO much colder than here that even with the heater on and 2 blankets on my bed, I still ended up sleeping in my thick walking socks and jumper! Also with 114 lions on the property, you tend to wake up to a lot of roaring which does sound awesome. The first day we went out on an Elephant walk, helping to move them from their nighttime boma to their daytime one. Maybe it's just that I'm normally always in a car, but I swear that all 4 of those eles were HUGE in comparison to the ones here! Jeche is the male, and I swear we could've just walked underneath him without bending if we'd wanted to! After breakfast we went to join in with meat prep for the 3 oldest cubs. Having been told that we weren't going to be doing any meat prep, we didn't have gloves with us so didn't join in, but that meant we were able to watch as the cubs ate it. The meat was all put in the trees for them to jump up and pull it out. 2 of them were up for it, but there was 1 that couldn't deal with the effort and just waited for the others to get it out and eat their fill so she could go in and finish up the leftovers! Lunchtime was followed by a walk with Shaka, their 6 month old cub. He's SO CUTE! He just comes running over and bounces on you: ATTACK OF THE FLUFFBALL! He thankfully hasn't yet worked out claws or teeth, so it's just a headset in the calves by a fluffy mass. He's just the sweetest little thing. In the afternoon we went out to the release site and we got our first view of the Ngamo Pride. 

AS5

They are a seriously impressive bunch of lions! AS5, the oldest male of the lions born in the site, is just stunning! He's enormous! We went out again the next morning where they were playing about in the long grass before it got too hot. We did activity budgets each time to see what they were doing and to observe their interactions with another. We headed back to camp for a full English breakfast, then we were off to do a horseback safari through the game park. It's been a long time since I got on a horse, and I was far from a good rider before! The instant I got on the horse it was clear I was the least experienced... They all rode off and it took me a minute to even make "Carly" move! Even as they were riding away my horse was trying to turn back and go back to the paddock. Eventually once we were further away from the stables she was ok and while slow, we kept plodding along. Unfortunately we only saw wildebeest and impala, desperately looking for the giraffes but we couldn't find them. We finished with a swim, riding the horses into the water. Again, Carly was determined not to go in so only my feet got wet, but honestly with how freezing the water was I can't complain! Heading back she suddenly sped up - I really don't think that horse wanted to go out! Lunchtime we had no activity planned so we took the canoes out on the river and had a laugh about how useless we were at going in the right direction! We were supposed to be going on a cub sit with Shaka in the afternoon but unfortunately that was cancelled so we headed out to the Ngamo Pride for the third time in 2 days. Third time lucky! We finally were able to get photos of them without the release site fence in the background, and they did a big pride roar which was amazing even without them being all together when they did it! Back for dinner and a chat with the volunteers there, before coming back to the bus station and time for another 8-hour bus journey home. Got back at 5:30am and went straight to bed!

Out for a walk with Shaka

In the Ngamo Release Site

Week 45 - what's happening?! This week seemed to be going by slower than usual, but it still seems like only yesterday I was finding my best photos for last week's post...! More importantly, it's 1st July...  I GO HOME NEXT MONTH?!!

The Team out on Occupancy Survey

Zebras that decided we were a terrifying predator!

Monday was a very exciting morning. We started off with occupancy survey along Minesfield Drive, which is a road through the park that we frequently use but rarely see anything on: a few giraffe, some wildebeest, buffalo a couple of times, and on one occasion lions. Clearly we should be using it at night! We found tracks for lion, hyena, painted dog (which I still haven't seen... a group went to Chobe last week and saw a pack of them take down a kudu then fight off a BROWN hyena! AAAAHHHH!!), and leopard! Why do we never see the actual animals?! We then went around and collected the trail cameras that we set up a couple of weeks ago (with the necessary cartwheels and stupid faces to set off the cameras one last time before we collected them of course!) and they had caught some awesome stuff! (Since it's not my data I can't say what, but there were several species that none of us had ever seen on there!). Afternoon was Game Count on which we saw 6 species: giraffe, elephant, warthog, impala, bushbuck and waterbuck. Game Count has somewhat been the bane of my life this week - there was a whole lot of data input that needed doing, and since I needed that data for elephant research, I ended up first inputting it all, and then going through analysing it too! Took me hours.... The problem with the elephant data, was that it turned out that the GPS format converter I was using was completely useless! Was just giving me random locations that weren't always even in Zimbabwe when it came to plotting them on the map of the park, so I had to go back through and find every entry that I had taken from Game Count and reconvert them, as well as going through and checking every other GPS point to make sure they came out in the right place. After almost an entire day on this, I finally got it all figured out... Phew! There's still some wrinkles that need smoothing out with the elephants, but in general we seem to be on track. I'm still over 2 months behind on my IDs, but I'm currently blaming that on the fact that every ID session I've tried to do this week I've ended up doing Game Count data work instead! 

Kenny the Elephant peering through the branches at us

2 sessions of elephants and giraffes this week - Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning. The elephants are apparently not in a friendly mood, and have decided to hide away in the areas of the park that we can't reach rather than coming out to let me count them... We saw none... We did however find 4 on the way back from Friday's Bird Survey, and they were seen on both Game Counts (the second of which I skipped to do another ID session) so they are definitely still here somewhere! Seen quite a few giraffes this week though so still good sessions. Bird Survey on Friday was a bit different for 2 reasons. Firstly we went to Chamabondo this time, so there was a different selection of birds than we normally get. We still saw the standards: Cape Turtle Dove, Grey Go-Away Bird, Emerald-Spotted Wood-Dove and others similar, but we got several that we couldn't identify on sight, and have had to photograph and bring back to identify. We saw a Lizard Buzzard which was exciting, and 2 Cinnamon breasted buntings that were particularly nice sightings. The second reason it was different was because we were using a new system - SABAP2 (the South African Bird Atlassing Project 2) has an app for writing down bird locations, so as well as our old pencil-and-paper system, I was inputting data directly into their database. This allows far more information to be collected quickly, including recording behavioural information, locations of nests, numbers of individuals, and information on population dynamics. It's both very interesting, and quite scary - it feels a lot more official! Good fun though, and I like the birds. I'm definitely going to be putting in a lot more effort on my birding (and plants, and insects, and reptiles, and mammals....) knowledge when I get home. 

Southern Red-Billed Hornbill eating a seed

Lilac Breasted Roller in flight

Buffalo blocking our path

Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation on Wednesday was quite fun, particularly at the homestead with tiny puppies that come and jump all over you and lick every hand they can reach! We've found a new route to get to the communities, so it's a bit shorter and a much more scenic drive, and the roads have to be driven more slowly which makes it more comfortable too. Definitely a nicer way to go.... There were several reports of lions from the homesteaders this week, though they all said the lions simply walked around and moved on to somewhere else - a good sign that the lights are still doing their job! 

Last activity of the week was Kids Club on Saturday morning. This was both very nice, and slightly frustrating - we were there for about an hour playing with the children and that was good fun (if exhausting and somewhat painful at times!) but then another group turned up with donations to the orphanage. Of course this is fantastic, and the children were all delighted with their new rucksacks full of presents, but it did rather put a stop to our games! One little girl spoke no English, and it took us a long time to make her understand that while we were happy to keep pushing her swing, she'd get a bag if she went over with everyone else. It was really heartwarming to see how much donations make a difference.