You guessed it – Monday morning started with tests. Unfortunately, this week we all felt like we struggled with the sights and sounds test where we have to identify different species, but at least we know what we have to work on for next week. Thankfully, we only have two subjects to learn this week so hopefully we can redeem ourselves next Monday.
The main focus this week has been astronomy, however Mother Nature is definitely having a bit of a joke with us at the moment as it started raining from the first day of our astronomy practicals. As you all know, rain = cloud = no stars, unfortunately meaning our practical tests will be delayed until next week. It did, however, mean that those of us who don’t get up at 4am got a bit more of a lie in, always a bonus!
On Tuesday afternoon, Ryan was supposed to do another practice drive, but as the thunderstorms hadn’t stopped all day, we did a “virtual drive” in the classroom. The trainers put up photos of animals and plants that we may encounter in the bush and the guides had to discuss them with questions from the rest of the group and trainers providing extra information. I actually thought this was a really good exercise and found myself learning a lot of new information about some of the rarer animals that we don’t often see, or that run away quickly. Hopefully this will all come in useful when we’re doing our assessments and in our future careers.
Wednesday again was rainy, which made the drives a bit wet! We did however make it out and saw a fair few animals who were making the most of the rains and cooler weather. I think these might be the last few rains of summer as we’re now moving towards winter which is much drier and doesn’t usually see rains. For this reason, we’re all grateful for the storms and hope that they will see us through the winter without too many struggles!
Thursday morning was my turn to drive and we were extremely lucky with our sightings. Within the first hour we’d seen zebra, waterbuck, impala, giraffe, and spotted hyena. The giraffe was a particular highlight as we caught a male just as he went down to the dam to drink. They are particularly fussy drinkers and will often take a long time to ensure that the area is safe. This is because they aren’t particularly quick or nimble if they are ambushed and need to get away quickly. We didn’t have to wait too long, however, as he slowly got used to us watching him and went down for a drink – what a sight it was! The light was just perfect for us photographers for a very rare sighting. We moved on and had a great rest of the drive, even seeing Cape vultures which we hadn’t seen before. Lequisha the Landy was obviously not enjoying the drive as much as the rest of us though because as soon as we got to the gate to come home I lost all steering – one of the bolts on the steering rod had fallen out and the rod had detached at one end. This meant we had to retrace our steps and sure enough found the bolt and washers just before I lost steering. Thankfully Christiaan and Ed (our new superguide) put Lequisha back together and we trundled back to camp steadily where we could tighten the bolt properly. At least we were lucky enough for it to happen at the gate and not in the middle of the reserve!
After fixing Lequisha, we packed up the essentials and headed back out into the reserve for a quick drive before our second sleep out. As we approached our camping spot we were driving next to a spotted hyena heading the same direction. It was obviously very confused as it kept walking up to camp and trying to work out what we were doing. This was a sign of things to come it seems, as throughout the night we had a lot of curious hyenas trying to sneak their way closer to see what was happening and if there were any toasted marshmallows left! We also had lots of lions roaring throughout the night and Trevor even heard a leopard calling! Sadly, when we tried to look for them on our drive back to camp in the morning we came up empty handed. Maybe next time!
I was one of the lucky ones who got sleep whilst camping, others didn’t sleep at all due to the unbelievable snoring some people do, I’ve never heard such strange noises! No wonder the hyenas came to investigate. Our amazing trainers therefore decided we could take the afternoon off on Friday and use it to study on our own time. This was really useful for me to catch up on a lot of things I haven’t had time to do in the last few weeks, as well as revise of course!
Saturday and Sunday were relatively quiet days with a lot of focus on studying for Monday’s tests. There’s a lot of knowledge we’ve gained and are tested on now, but there's much more to learn next week!
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