Hello and Happy Easter!

Monarch butterfly on a Mexican Daisy

WILD female lion!

I've had the best 3 weeks since I last wrote. Started off with a few days of work at the office here, doing normal work things. I did a session of insect collection one morning which I couldn't decide if I enjoyed or not. It was very interesting to see what all the different species present were, and the actual catching of the butterflies, swinging the net around, was good fun, but once I caught the butterfly I then had to kill it, and that was horrible... Not sure I could be an entomologist! We did also see a family of waterbuck on the golf course while catching them so that was fun. Came back to do some insect pinning and that was quite fun, once I knew that it was already dead! I did a couple of lion walks in that week, and spent Wednesday afternoon doing Behavioural Enrichment, building a giraffe (called Sammy!) for Liuwa to destroy! We saw some wild lions too! It was during an Elephant and Giraffe Research session, which simply meant that we didn't get a lot of work done... There was a pride of 7, including a collared female which is being tracked by another research team from Hwange National Park. The particularly exciting part was that they were lying in the long grass right next to a waterhole, completely oblivious of the herd of buffalo that were steadily making their way to the waterhole for a drink. We watched them for a while, but then the buffalo never quite came to the water, and the lions wandered off before they detected the herd! Never mind lions, better luck next time! Wednesday morning was also good fun, doing some more community work this time. We went to the Old People's Home, and went and chatted to them all, and ended up having a kick about with one old man who speaks only Portuguese, but loves football. He has a ball in his room that Lion Encounter gave him a few weeks ago, and he just appeared with it with a huge grin on his face. So sweet! 

Elephants playing the water

Victoria Falls

Ostriches!

After that half week of work, life changed! My family came out to visit me for 2 weeks and we had a wonderful time together. Thursday afternoon I met up with them in town and we went to the falls on the Zimbabwe side - the first time I've seen this side, and the first time my sister has ever seen them! We got utterly drenched, but had a lovely afternoon and saw so many rainbows in the spray which were just stunning. We even saw one rainbow which made the complete circle! That was awesome... Friday they joined me at work for the day, so we did a couple of lion walks, a lesson in tracking and finding your way in the bush, and then finished up with a hyena night drive, on which we unfortunately saw no hyenas, but did see a big wildebeest which ran along ahead of us for ages! During our lunch break we also went to check the trail camera at the safari lodge and got lots of photos of hyenas, and saw the vulture feed which was as awesome as ever. Saturday it was time to hit Botswana! In the 2 weeks we went to Nxai Pan, then the Okavango Delta, then Moremi, Savuti and Chobe. It was an amazing safari, and we all loved it. Nxai Pan was stunning - huge wide open area where you could see for miles and miles, counting about 5 different herds of elephants and giraffes all at once. The elephants there are enormous! The adult females are as big as the biggest bulls we have here! Such an awesome sight.

A Family Walk!

Sunset over Nxai Pan

Being poled

Next was the Okavango Delta which was absolutely beautiful, and the exact opposite of the wide dry salt flats. It's just the most peaceful place I've ever had the privilege of visiting. We were poled around in makoros (like wooden canoes that are controlled like a punt) so there are no engines, no human sounds apart from the occasional sound of a poler from another boat, and the only real sound is the water lapping against the side of your boat, and the reeds rustling as you push through them. At night it gets a lot louder with the bell frogs starting up their calling - aptly named as they really do just sound like thousands of tiny bells ringing all around you. It's so beautiful there, with lush vegetation, calm blue water, and so many birds. There are less large animals than other places, but it makes for it with the beauty of the landscape, and we still saw hippos, elephants and lots of zebras. We also did a couple of walking safaris which were great, and had a go at poling the makoros ourselves which was just hilarious since we were utterly useless! We've significantly widened their channels through the reeds by weaving our way among them and flattening them more and more!

The Water lilies

The makoros at sunrise

A Delta Sunset

Zebras during a walking safari

BABY LION!

The rest of the safari went through Moremi, Savuti, and Chobe National Parks, and this was just fantastic. We saw so many lions, jackals, and a leopard too! Not to mention a crazy number of wildebeest, buffalo, zebra, giraffe, elephants (including one that can only have been a couple of weeks old!), impala, tsessebe, ostriches, baboons, vervet monkeys, warthogs, kudu, hyenas, a genet, a springhare, and probably others that I've forgotten! We got SO excited about the big cats and for good reason - we saw 3 lion hunts, a lion cub who was only about 3 months old, 2 big male lions, and a leopard! The lion cub was unbelievably cute - I cannot get over how adorable she was, and playing with her Mum was so lovely to see. Quite scary too though, since it was at the one time in the park that we got stuck! Mummy-lion had just launched herself at Daddy-lion with a roar positioning us, stuck, between angry Mummy-lion and her cub.... and then she walked back around and lay down to put us, still stuck, between angry Mummy-lion and any Daddy-lion... Yikes! Eventually we were tugged out by another car, who attached the tow rope by lying on his bonnet! We eventually moved off from them after watching the cub play by our car for about an hour, but were stopped by a herd of elephants on the road.... at which point we turned around to see Mummy-lion following us, with the cub bouncing along next to her! SO cute <3 She then tried to go hunting a kudu, but with little leaping all over her she didn't manage to catch it. Got pretty close though! We also saw 2 females hunting a herd of zebra, and another 3 hunting a group of wildebeest (we were just watching the rest of the pride and didn't even see them until the herd went into a panic charge!) which were both extremely close, but didn't quite succeed. Lucky zebra and wildebeest! The leopard was just stunning. A lot smaller than I was expecting her (?) to be - it was smaller than the lion cubs that we walk with! I actually thought it was a lion when we first saw it - in the fading light you could barely see the spots at a distance, but then she came steadily closer until at one point she was only about 15 m from the car. So beautiful, and graceful as she moved through the long grass. She was actually about to hunt a herd of zebra too, but unfortunately because of the time and the fading light, we had to leave her to it... probably made her more likely to succeed to be honest! The landscapes and animals right the way through the safari were unbelievable, and I loved it all so much. As I'm typing this, I haven't yet worked out which of my several thousand (literally!) photos I'm going to include, but I'll apologise now for how many I will undoubtedly fail to resist! The camping part was fun too - we had hyenas, a honey badger, and elephants come right through our camp, a hippo in the Okavango go around our tents, a vervet monkey stealing toast off the fire, and lions roaring very close by. Only problem was it made needing the toilet after dark a very scary experience! Our guides were fantastic too. They were so friendly, and extremely knowledgable, able to tell us about everything from animals, insects, plants and trees, to the stars over our heads, and they could certainly cook too! Fresh bread cooked in a metal pot over the fire? Wow! If anyone is considering going on safari any time soon, I would absolutely recommend Bushways Safaris! 

Leopard

Male lion 

Lion cub <3

Impala

Zebras being chased by a lion!

Zebra kisses

Black backed jackal

Owlet

Tsessebe with an ostrich friend!

Hmm.... let me think about that....

BABY ELEPHANT!!

Giraffe :) 

Male buffalo enjoying the river
protecting him from biting flies!

Hippo yawn

Ground hornbill

Zebra

Baby giraffe

Beautiful LE1

Zulu of the Dambwa Pride

We finished up our safari back in my African home - Livingstone, Zambia. I hadn't realised how much I'd missed the place and everyone there until I went back for the day. I dropped in on the Friday afternoon for only a few minutes just to make sure it was ok for me to go back for the Saturday, so was able to surprise them there which was good fun. I got the most wonderful welcome, and it really just feel like going home. Don't get me wrong, I love everything about Victoria Falls and my work in Zimbabwe, apart from the fact that it's just not Zambia! We spent the rest of Friday afternoon at the falls in Livingstone, and again got totally drenched, which was brilliant fun, and then my best friend and supervisor from Livingstone came to dinner with us with his wife and I had a fantastic time with them and my family all together. A wonderful end to a brilliant holiday <3 Spent the entire next morning with him doing elephant IDs as well, before going to see the lions on Saturday afternoon - I've missed the Dambwa pride! RS2 looks as handsome as ever, Zulu is gorgeous, and they are all just as lazy as ever! They've got a new lions intern who's doing playback research, so it was fun to see their reaction to the sound of unknown lions in their territory! Coming back from Dambwa was very sad, as this time I know it really is the last time I'll see them, and the same for leaving the office and the guys there. I love you all! I spent the evening at Serenity, spending some extra time with our volunteer coordinator and lions researcher, and playing with the kids there who all came and gave me big hugs and wanted to see my photos of the lion cub! Eventually it was time to go back to Zimbabwe, so after lots of hugs I crossed the border and made it home. I had the best time in the last 2 weeks, so thank you to everyone who made it brilliant - my Livingstone friends, our safari group and guides, all the animals which co-operated so beautifully, and of course my amazing family <3 

ELEPHANTS!

Young Impala

And now for this week which has been fairly exciting, with 2 volunteer birthdays, an unplanned (almost!) jump off a cliff, and one engagement party between 2 of our volunteers under the full moon by the Zambezi gorge! Wow! We've also been camping on Friday night in the National Park (because I haven't done enough of that in the last 2 weeks!) which was awesome, as the platform we were sleeping on is right next to waterhole, at which we saw about 7 springhares, and a total of 61 elephants! My elephant ID job is about to get fun with a tonne of blurry, dark sightings... I also did a game count and a hyena night drive which were possibly the quietest I've ever been on, barely seeing anything, elephant IDs we've seen a total of 22+ elephants in the park, and 2 sessions of hyena tracking yielded nothing but a couple of spoors. Friday morning I was supposed to be going out on another Game Count, but we had a change of plan for Good Friday, and instead went to the Old People's Home where we made them a big breakfast of scrambled egg, fried mushrooms and tomatoes, bacon, bread, and a hot cross bun. I did most of the cooking, which was fine and I've cooked over fire a few times before, but I've never done it inside! Oh my gosh the smoke was awful - I have a huge new respect for the people who cook over indoor fires all the time... I could barely see half the time, my eyes were burning, and several times I ended up outside choking in fresh air! Having said that, it was great fun, and it was wonderful to see how happy they all were with the food that we gave them. Saturday morning I did some more community stuff, going to the Rose of Charity orphanage for Kids Club. We just played with them for about 2 hours, and I was finally able to play some more volleyball! They're pretty good here, having played a bit before, but they've never had the right equipment so it's great to see them improve, and be really enjoying learning new skills. We also did some colouring and played (or rather I watched them play and still have no clue of the rules!) card games. Saturday afternoon was a totally unexpected afternoon of fun - one of the volunteers was ill so I, right at the last minute, took her place on the Gorge Swing. This is a jump off the edge of the gorge, with a freefall that lasts maybe 3 seconds (but more like forever!) and then you swing through the bottom of the gorge. I did it tandem, so between the 2 of us we screamed loud enough for the entire gorge to hear! Was freefalling upside down for a moment - that was quite scary! It was so much fun, and finished off with a milkshake overlooking the gorge we'd just jumped into, and seeing other people doing the swing and wondering quite how insane we are to have actually thrown ourselves off that platform! All in all, a very good week. 

Young elephant

About to jump!

The view from the swing at the bottom of the gorge

The gorge at night

Pied Kingfisher

Ok so that's it for the past 3 weeks - I hope I didn't babble on for too long!

Lilac Breasted Roller

Another busy week, and now for the last post in a while - going to be 3 weeks before you get another update!

The Big Tree!

Week started with Large Predator Occupancy Survey on Monday morning. We saw loads of lion tracks, and one very old hyena one, but as usual no sign of the animals who left them there! We finished up with breakfast by the river in the park - possibly one of the most beautiful breakfast spots I've ever been to - then came home via "The Big Tree". This is a Zimbabwean National landmark, which is a 18 m round, 23 m tall baobab of 1000-1500 years old! The afternoon was really great doing game count in the park, giving us some particularly great giraffe sightings. 

Young giraffe

Tuesday we had hyena tracking round one, followed by Giraffe and Elephant research. Hyena tracking was fun, but very long and didn't get us all that far. We got off the car at the closest point to the GPS location they'd last been recorded at, but that was still over 4 km from the further point! We had to walk a full hour and a half, and when we got there there was absolutely nothing to see! Oops.... Ah well, it's still useful to get an impression of vaguely how close they are and how much they're moving around. Afternoon we headed back out into the park for a research session, but no elephants... 

Zebra!

3 species in 1 photo!

Wednesday was a very long day, but it was great! We started off by joining the photography volunteers on their sunrise shoot, which was awesome - the sunrise was gorgeous, and the spray from the falls was beautifully tinged pink. The baboons only ruined it slightly by being extremely overconfident with us, leaping all through the trees above us and screaming. They got so close we were really quite scared for the safety of our cameras! Being Wednesday, most of the day we spent doing Human-Wildlife Conflict Mitigation survey. Having had no rain at all this week, the roads have dried out a bit so we were able to get to 2 of the 3 homesteads that we've been missing out. We got back early, so went to the dump to set up a trail camera looking for hyenas, before going out at 7:30 pm for our early night drive. We saw 5 hyenas, but all on the way back - we drove for a full hour and saw absolutely nothing! Lots more identification work to do!

Dragonfly at sunrise

Sunrise over the Zambezi

Sunrise over the Pink Spray from the Falls

Stunning sunrise 

Elephant on Chamabondo

Thursday was both frustrating and awesome. Started off with a research session, where we tried to go to the Chamabondo Flay - a new area of the park for me - but thanks to wet roads we couldn't make it. We headed back into the normal park and saw some giraffes and a herd of zebra, but no elephants. This was the frustrating part.... The afternoon we went out on hyena tracking again, but the hyena had moved to Chamabondo so we headed back onto the flay using a different route.... and we found about 50 elephants and some giraffes! It was so brilliant to see, but as I wasn't doing elephant research at the time I had to just let them go. SO ANNOYING! Even more annoying, is that due to the elephants being there, we couldn't do the research anyway since there was no way we could get out the car and walk up to the GPS point! Oh dear.... The point is, it was a totally awesome day, and even if I couldn't do any research I still saw some awesome stuff! Finished off with sunset drinks at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, where we saw a squirrel, 7 elephants, and a hyena! May not get anything when we're doing research, but we certainly get stuff when we aren't!

Purple Roller

Grey Backed Camaroptera

Friday was another fun day. Started off with bird survey, on which we saw 15 species, including one brand new one - the Grey Backed Camaroptera. We saw a huge number of zebras too, and a big male adult hippo on the road! I really enjoy bird survey - only way to quickly improve my bird knowledge, a beautiful drive through the park, and we see some great stuff. Came back from bird survey, and we went out looking for more birds - back to the vulture feeding, where we saw hooded and white backed vultures. A particularly awesome feed, and afterwards we were able to get a camera set up so that next time the hyenas show up we'll know who they are! I tried to check it this afternoon, but thanks to my camera malfunctioning, I know that 1 of the 75 pictures on there is indeed a hyena, but that's all I could see. Ah well - we'll find out next week! 

Hooded Vulture in flight

White backed vulture

Today has been a good morning - we had seedling project first, followed by a lion walk. Seedling project we go out into the town (and also the park but not on this occasion) and plant trees along the side of the road. We planted about 50 trees, slashing the area all around and then digging and watering the Zambezi Teak seedlings in. It was good fun, though insanely hot! Headed straight to Masuwe afterwards, where we took Lekker and Liuwa for their walk. It was good fun, but less exciting than normal - the lions were fed yesterday, and again it was really hot so they were just pretty inactive. 

Slashing on Seedling Project

Lekker

One of these weeks I'll manage a short post.... Not this time though! And next time will be covering 3 weeks so that's going to be even longer than normal!