Lions!! Finally...

Out of the bush onto the road right in front of us.

This was a large pride of females and young.

She was the rear guard...

Until she heard a call from behind, got up and walked off into the bush.

Bush chicken and nuggets.

A ground squirrel sticking out his tongue.

A family of warthogs.

Thursday, May 11^th.

Yikes, early 5 am time for our second last drive. Most of us were a little under the weather but away we went. About twenty minutes in we heard over the walkie talkies that the other truck had seen lions but shortly after lost the visual as they went into the bush. So, Heidi raced over to the rough terrain to get there. We came at the spot from the opposite direction and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by lions! There were a couple in the bush on either side and six or seven walking up the road towards us. Incredible! We have been waiting and wanting to see them the whole month and here they were at last. We were able to follow them for about twenty minutes as the wandered on and off the road. They didn’t seem in any hurry to go anywhere. At one point we could hear the male calling and they seemed to be heading his way. We were the lead truck and watched as they rounded a corner to the right and out of sight. So we moved forward and found just one female laying in the grass watching us. She stayed for about 10 minutes and then turned her head to the bush behind, got up and walked into the bush and disappeared… and that was it. Amazing. We think they were looking for a place to spend the day as they sleep about twenty hours a day and usually hunt at night. Heidi is our good luck charm, she was our driver for both the wild dogs and the lions. We drove off and spent the rest of the drive photographing birds and a few animals. As we were trying to return to camp we encountered an elephant road block as a family of about eight, including two very young ones, were just meandering along the road in front of us. So, we just sat and watched as they took their time before wandering off into the bush. When we got back it was time to complete all the assignments that we had been given the last few weeks and amalgamate them into a folder to give to Paula. I got a bit stressed as the electricity was off again and both my computer and phone were almost flat. Then Lightroom couldn’t find any of my photos… ARGH! I asked Timo for help and he couldn’t explain it, but told me to reimport the lot, which I did. Then I quickly edited ten to give to Paula and sorted out some others of the conservation activities. I copied my blog entry about the 3 Ferrari Safaris for the creative writing piece and managed to get it all handed in about ten minutes before the deadline and lunch. I felt like a high school student again, and leaving everything to the last minute, but before all my friends laugh and say ‘that’s Joe’, to be fair we’re always busy and when we have time to edit and do stuff the WIFI and electricity is off. And, I spend a lot of time updating my blog, truth be told. After lunch we headed out for a sixty-minute drive to an anti poaching unit. The ‘soldier’ walked us through a display of snares and posters and photographs of killed animals. Poaching happens basically for two reasons – food, and money making. Men try to catch small animals to feed their families, but organized poachers go after large animals for meat or for rhinos to get their horns. It was a very sad display and it seems to me that there are not enough men and resources to patrol such a vast area as the Greater Kruger Area. As usual it comes down to too many people with too many needs for food and space and the animals lose. This is the kind of research that African Impact and our volunteers here are trying to do by patrolling the reserve and trying to quantify the number of animals here. It’s good that there are people trying to help but a lot more needs to be done if we are to educate the populace about the need to protect the biodiversity of the planet. After dinner we had a presentation night. The head of research gave us all the statistics for what the researchers had done during the last month, visa vie animal sighting data, camera trap data, wire removal and queen of the night cactus destruction data. Then Paula talked about our photography group and presented every one of us with a certificate of course completion and an award for something to do with our pictures. I received the colour award, Bruce got the birder award and Matt the butterfly award. By that time it was 9 pm so we grabbed a quick couple of beer and headed back to our room with Matt and Timo. Bed by 10:30.