My first week in Zimbabwe! I can't get over the idea that I'm not in Zambia any more, though that could be because I'm less than 6 km from where I used to live! I miss everyone over that side so much, but the people here are just lovely too. Not to mention we have puppies here!

ATTACK!!

My first week hasn't included a huge amount of work, but has been great fun. I spent Tuesday morning starting with my Temporary Employment Permit application, which here means everything from 1000 forms to fill out, to getting a chest x-ray to prove I don't have TB! The afternoon was somewhat more interesting - we went out on my first session of hyaena tracking in the Zambezi National Park. Didn't see any hyaenas, but it was fun to see how it all works. 2 of the hyaenas, 1 from each local clan, are collared with GPS trackers which give out a signal every 6 hours. We drive as close as we can, then walk to the point where they were last detected, taking the telemetry with us to detect which way they went from there. We also set up a couple of camera traps, which we were able to check later in the week. Got some photos of hyaenas on them!

The nap attacked.... and won....

Wednesday was a new activity - Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation survey. We go to each residence around where there are camera traps set up, and flashing lights on the bomas where they keep livestock to deter predators, and check the traps and make sure everything is working. It was really interesting, and good fun, though a lot of driving for very little time off the car! One of those activities that I'll enjoy more as I get used to it and understand better what I'm doing.

Thursday was my best day of the week. Due to a vehicle situation, we had no car to go on projects with in the morning, so we went to the Snake Pit instead - a place in town with loads of snakes in tanks and information on the different species. Held 3 of them too: Burmese python was my favourite, but also the corn 

Me with the Burmese Python!

snake and the tiny little egg-eater snake. They had so many toxic ones...! Puff adders, green mambas (neurotoxic), black mambas (neurotoxic), vine snakes (haemotoxic - they cause the blood not to clot), gaboon vipers, and SO many cobras! There was one really grumpy Egyptian Cobra that hated anyone passing by, and struck at the glass so many times, kept making us jump. We also saw a boa constrictor being fed - not pleasant watching rats get suffocated! The afternoon was back to work, but this meant my first Lion Walk! It was so much fun! The lions are beautiful and so small compared to the 

Boa Constrictor

ones I'm used to in Livingstone. The weather was quite cool and cloudy, so the lions were really active, jumping around all over the place! I was walking Lila and Liuwa, 2 females both 15 months old, and Lila was especially jumpy - kept leaping on Liuwa for no reason! So much fun to watch!

Lila!

Cuddles with Lila!

And also with Liuwa!

The first elephants I saw in Zimbabwe!

Friday we had another awesome day - essentially lots of game driving! First game drive was just that - we were given a free drive by a local Big 5 game park in return for letting them take loads of photos of us for their advertising. We saw giraffes, kudu, impalas (of course), a tortoise, a male black rhino which was awesome, and most importantly, a LEOPARD! It was the worst sighting of one ever - about 200 m away, and only for like 2 seconds - but there was a leopard!!!! I was so happy, and it was beautiful. Made my day! We got back from the game drive with literally about a minute to spare which meant I was able to jump in the car on game count too.We do game count twice a week in the park, recording everything that we see in order to determine an approximation of the exact species in the park. The most exciting thing we found was lion footprints, but no lion. We also saw impalas, giraffe, baboons, vervet monkeys, and warthogs. We have to also put in a breakdown of all the ages of animals we saw. We had to do that on elephant, buffalo and bushbuck research too, but that was only 3 species, and only elephants did we do a full breakdown of calf/juvenile/pubescent/adult rather than just young and adult. It's going to take me a long time to get to the point where I can tell the breakdown for every species! Life is awesome! Unfortunately Saturday was a slightly different story - we were supposed to have another game drive but when I woke up I was so dizzy I couldn't walk in a straight line, and that lasted until nearly lunchtime... Moving car was not a good plan! Serves me right for not drinking enough really! The good news though is that the cold I've had all week may finally be on its way out! Yay! Fingers crossed for next week...