St Lucia...it might only be one street long but it sure knows how to have a good time!






Its UK Sarah, one of the researchers, birthday this weekend, so we are all piling of to St Lucia for 2 days. Should be good as I haven't been before, and its a chance for real shops, real food, internet and running water!!!


 So, my shower situation at the lodge. I didn't have a working shower from Monday morning to Thursday night, which let me tell you, as someone that washes their hands a lot, this was not easy! But, you have to just remember that there is a severe drought and the whole area is struggling, so I really shouldn't make a fuss. Which would be a lot easier if I wasn't just about the only one who didn't have any water!! So I became a bit of a shower slut, I went to anyone's cabin so long as they had running water! After 2 days of wet wipe washes while living & working in the bush I was ready to get grumpy, so thanks very much to Amanda, Sarah & Sophie for letting me use their showers whenever I needed to! Needless to say I was very excited about the prospect of a whole weekend with unlimited water!!


We arrived in St Lucia at about 5pm and this is it...

The one street in St Lucia

it was actually a really great place and I would definitely recommend a visit. After some initial confusion over rooms we got checked in to relative luxury compared to what we were used to at Thanda, and I was sharing with US Sarah & Miranda, both from the community project. We had lost Tom somewhere along the way, but found him at Ocean Basket (really good seafood) and had some really good grub for dinner, though strangely I was the only one having seafood, all the others were having steak from the adjoining restaurant! Can't really blame them though, South African steak is the best in the world I reckon! Quite an early night for us, in bed by midnight, falling asleep to the sounds of St Lucia nightlife - the karaoke bar across the road.




Saturday morning saw pretty much everyone hanging out at a local coffee shop enjoying bacon, eggs and real coffee, glued to laptops, either editing photos or updating blogs. Or for those who rolled home at 2.30am drunkenly singing 'Happy Birthday' it was spent sleeping by the pool! I had already explored the 'town' the night before but still somehow managed to spend 2 hours walking up and down the street visiting all the shops again and the Spar at least 7 times. It was suddenly so hard to make a decision on the type of crisps to get and how many packets of biscuits, all to be taken back to Thanda for feasting on between bone stew and pap (African dish of maize meal, looks a bit like mashed potato but do not make the mistake of thinking it tastes anything like mash and putting a lot on your plate. You will regret it, it is the most tasteless food ever invented, even smothered in sauce).


Saturday afternoon Tom, Miranda, Lisa (also from the community project) and I took the boat trip to see the crocs and hippos, which was pretty nice just floating around in the sun. This is what we saw...

Two Pied Kingfishers having a domestic

Some crocs

Not so much hungry as happy hippos

Since it was UK Sarah's birthday all 20-odd of us were going out to dinner together to the Italian called Alfredo's. Really good food again, I had a super steak, and a couple of people even had impala stew! Lots of wine and good times, followed by a trip to Babooshka Sports Bar, the place to be seen in St Lucia. So there I am, partying on a Saturday night in flipflops and unstraightened hair, just a tad different from Leeds on a Saturday night! But actually a lot more fun! Much dancing and merryment was had, even though I left at about 1am, some others including the birthday girl (led by, more like) were out til 6am!






Part of the reason my little group were early to bed is that we had booked to go on the Isimangaliso (say that 3 times fast) wetlands tour from 9am-2pm. It involves a drive through the game reserve where we saw more hippos, some lovely kudu and a great troop of baboons wandering across the road. The drive takes you down to the most gorgeous beach, where you can snorkel, but it wasn't the right tide, so we had to just lie on the beach for 2 hours instead. Its a hard life.

Baboon hanging out

Isimangaliso Game Reserve

Sophie, Tom, Me, US Sarah, Sam, Miranda

Well, it was a bit hard actually, our driver for the day said there was water & snacks in the car, so I went back to get some only to find the vehicle full of vervet monkeys who had eaten whatever snacks he had brought! I wasn't too pleased, and I'm sure one of the monkeys hissed at me as I reached in to get a bottle of water (not so interested in that!), unfortunately I didn't have my camera at that moment so no pics. We were a tad hungry but had to make do with a bag of crisps and some chocolate chip cookies between us, but we managed!


Back to St Lucia for 2pm, time for a quick shower, some lunch, some last-minute desperate internetting & binge-shopping at the Spar and back to Thanda at 5pm. It was a much quieter drive home as all the hangovers kicked in. 


First week done, Thanda already felt like home, and I was thinking I was wishing I had booked 4 weeks instead of 2!

Golden rules...




Our first 5 hour game drive this morning starting at 6am, had to plan the fluid intake very carefully as I didn't want to have to ask Anton for a bush break! I would guess he would have to escort me to a suitably safe spot and stand guard, think I would rather be dehydrated, thanks all the same!


We came across the South Pride brother & sister again and they were still mating! 

The look of love

One of the golden rules of game viewing is not to break the outline of the vehicle. The animal can see a large object (the vehicle) and usually gets used to it and realises its nothing interesting but if a person in the vehicle were to stand up or move around, the animal would see it was something smaller and individual and might see it either as a threat, or a snack. I was sat at the back, on the outside and was trying to get my camera out of its case and get the strap around my neck and in doing so lifted my arm up, ... and broke the outline of the vehicle! And boy did the lioness notice! They had been calmly lolling about until this point where she immediately locked eyes on me and moved up to a stalking-crouch position and took a few steps closer. Anton said in his calm voice 'watch out at the back there' as my bowels loosened ever so slightly (one for my soon-to-be brother in law there). Thankfully she soon lost interest and went back to lolling.

Erm, is she looking at me?!

We hung around for a bit but it just seemed rude to keep watching and once a Thanda main vehicle arrived (complete with 2 very posh rich-looking looking older women, one of whom dropped her lens cap outside the vehicle and I swear she was going to try and pick it up until her driver said not to! The lions were very interested by all of this!) we decided to move on.




We tracked the ellies for ages but couldn't find them, we even drove to the top of a hill and got out to stretch our legs and have a good binoc around to see if we could spot them. And we did yay! Quite a way in the distance and in terrain that our vehicle couldn't easily get to, so we decided to try and get closer to a rhino that we had also spotted in the distance. By the time we had driven round to where the rhino had been, it had of course moved on. Anton decided the best plan was to find a nice spot and just sit and wait for the ellies. Golden rule no 2 of game viewing, patience is a virtue. We sat for what seemed like ages in the blazing heat (well, partly shaded by an acacia, but have you ever seen an acacia??) but in reality was probably only 20-30 mins, having some snacks and a snooze, being entertained by a lovely journey of about 11 giraffe (that's what you call a bunch of giraffe on the move) while we waited.

More of a tangle than a journey

We could hear the ellies before we saw them, snapping branches as they munched their way towards us. And then they all came wandering out, slowly making their way around our vehicle, looking at us but not really caring that we were there.

And then there were ellies

Just another day in the bush.

Elephant Charge at Thanda, read the post below first...

In the trenches


So today's conservation activity is working on the waterhole. This is the waterhole-in-progress that we saw the lions at 2 days ago! Thankfully when we arrive they are nowhere to be seen, though there is a rather concerned looking giraffe lurking in the distance.


The plan is to create the waterhole so that Thanda can bring in 2 hippos. We arrive and end up doing the usual thing of hanging round for at least 30 mins while the bods in charge make up their minds what to do.

The waterhole

 The group last worked on the waterhole about 2 weeks ago and since then there had been some torrential rain, so we spent the first hour or so with shovels in hand clearing away the little trench that had been dug to surround the waterhole. There is a material called bentonite, which is kind of like plaster of paris and acts as a base for the waterhole so that when the water goes in it won't all slowly seep out into the ground below. The problem being that the team had already laid out some rolls of bentonite 2 weeks ago, and once it gets wet its starts to harden and weighs an absolute ton (it literally does I kid you not), so after much deliberation (Anton being a stickler again, boy, is he stubborn!) we decide to have a go at rolling out another piece. Its a very fine art trying to line up your rolls of bentonite, and after even more deliberation and false starts (including having to drag it into the correct position for unrolling by use a Landrover) we started pushing. And grunting, and lots more pushing and grunting and breaks for 'what shall we do next' discussions, until eventually we got the roll out and in the right place! That was a great feeling, I really enjoyed today's conservation work, it really felt like we had achieved something and the AI & Thanda staff where really pleased with what we had done, so pats on backs all round!

Having a rethink

The end result!

Spider Alley
Yes, it is as bad as it sounds


First night drive tonight yay! We head out at 8pm and its already dark. Anton says we are going looking for lions! And after 10 mins, we find them! Brother & sister from the South Pride. There are few things quite so scary as coming across 2 fully grown lions at night and watching them pass within feet of your vehicle, especially when Anton kept turning off the lights for some reason! And I was sat in the front on the outside, I was convinced I was easy pickings! We followed them for about 10mins and then lost them in the grass. No pics I'm afraid, was too mesmerised to get my camera out!


Night drives are really magical, you feel so close to the bush in the pitch dark flashing the spotlight around searching for the reflection from an animals eyes, hearing all the frogs and crickets singing away. What is not so magical is that night time is also when the spiders like to set up house.


The pic below is not one of mine, but you can see the size of the buggers. And they were everywhere. 

The golden orb spider

Really bad idea to sit in the front on a night drive, no wonder the guys who had already done one let Tom & I have the front seat. So as we drive along we rely heavily on teamwork and shouts of 'spider', or 'look out' or 'incoming' as generally all being animal lovers we don't want to disturb them, and I must say, their webs are pretty impressive, some must have been as big as a fridge door! But still, I don't really want that all over my face in the dark, now do I?? We had quite a few funny moments as we all ducked and dived to avoid having a spider for dessert, not all attempts were successful as both Kari & Tom did indeed get a face full of either spider or web, and boy are those webs sticky and strong! At the same time as playing spider sweep you also had to keep a look out for the ever-present acacia thorn waiting to launch an attack on an unsuspecting eye or arm. Sometimes they'd be coming at you from both sides!
We did see a white-tailed mongoose and some kind of owl (I forget which) and we could smell the ellies but since we were actually avoiding them that was as close as we got. The reason that we were avoiding them was that while the photographers were on their afternoon drive they came across the herd with one of the dominant bulls, Mpatha. Normally that would be ok, but he is in musth, which is the male version of being in heat, and they get very aggressive and protective of their herd during this time. 

Mpatha

And Mpatha decided he didn't like the look of the photographers this afternoon, and launched a full on charge on them. That is quite unusual as usually they just do a mock charge to scare you away, but this was a genuine one. And a pretty terrifying one at that, one of the photographers took a video, youtube link should be at the end of this post.


So that is why we were avoiding the ellies on our night drive! After 3 & a half hours of driving around and not really seeing much after the first 10 mins of lions, we finally start heading back, and yay, see the lions again! This time they were mating in the road! I know, shocking on so many levels! After giving the male a fright he soon resumed business and we left them to it.


So finally back at camp at about 11.30pm, to be up for a 5 hours drive at 6am, followed by party weekend in St Lucia. I can see I won't be leaving Thanda a healthy and well-rested person!

Chromolina ain't no picnic but its still better than poles!




Second day of a 4.40am start for conservation, this time chromolina removal. Its an alien vegetation species that none of the animals eat and just grows on everything and so blocks pathways for the animals. We spent at least 2 hours next to a croc-infested river (well, Anton said there was one in there but sadly we never saw it!) Once again the machetes, shovels and my favourite, the pick-axe were out in force, we did a pretty good job actually and cleared quite a good sized area to create a path for the animals to access the river.

The pile of chromolina, not actually from my days work, but you get the idea!

Ellie vs Dog


Was a fairly uneventful day, we didn't see much on our afternoon drive until we ran into a bit of ellie drama. We had been looking for them unsuccessfully for a few hours when out of the thick bushes we heard an ellie trumpet, and it didn't sound like a happy ellie! So we sped off to find them and heard on the radio that the ellies were being bothered by the pack of wild dogs! The ellies weren't in any danger, I think the dogs just enjoyed irritating them! As we came around the corner we could see & hear one of the females giving chase to the dogs in the distance. They were a bit away from us though, and no chance of a photo, and then we looked in the other direction and somehow the rest of the herd had snuck up on us and seemed quite distressed. All the little ones were with their mums and they all hurried past us, ears & trunks in the air, to see what all the commotion was up ahead. By the time we got to them all was calm, we got a fleeting glimpse of the dogs looking very relaxed and the ellies feeding, before we unfortunately had to move on to make way for the proper paying safari guests staying at Thanda main (you remember the pictures of the lodge, even though we were doing important research work you can understand why the guests at the fancy lodge get first dibs on sightings!)


No decent pics sadly but a half decent video that I will try and upload later!

Conservation...not what you think it is...




Up at 4.40am bright and early for my first proper day as part of the research & conservation team - this morning, its conservation work! Slightly concerned about what that might mean as I have already heard some worrying stories but I have come here to try new things, so I shall embrace it!!
Off we all go into the game viewer with Anton, our lovely guide (he wasn't so lovely a few hours later when he was determined to beat the concrete, but I'll get to that in a minute!) and off we  go, driving along in the bush at 6am on a beautiful clear African morning. After about 15 minutes of driving we arrive at our destination and I see the bucket of gloves, and the shovels. And the pick axe. Not sure about all this.


Thanda reserve has recently been extended and they have taken down the electric fence to join to two areas, pole removal is simply what it sounds like, digging the remaining poles that held the fence up out of the ground. So we split into 2 teams, thank heavens I was with the slightly less committed team when it came to their attitude; we could see the other team battling away at their poles and it sure did look hard work. So off we set to our pair of poles, marching through the actual wild bush on foot, quite exciting really! 
But let me tell you, I do not like poles. They are no fun to hammer at with a pick axe when you can barely lift the bloody pick axe off the ground, let alone 'find the swing and let it do the work for you', as Amanda so kindly pointed out. 

Amanda in the centre, cheerful as always!

With the help of Martjin the Maniac (who really enjoys hacking away at anything with a pick-axe or machete), we eventually got the crossbar pole loose. Now for the 2 sat in heaven only knows how much concrete! Away we go digging at the base of the first pole, this is hot and sweat work and its only 7am! Were struggling a bit with the 1st pole, so decided to have a sneaky go at chopping the 2nd pole off a couple of inches above ground and seeing if it would be easier to dig out of the ground that way. Turns out not really, so we decided to smash the stump of wood  down and then use our landscaping skills to cover the remaining concrete with some earth, rocks and very strategically placed bits of grass. First pole - done! 


The main aim is to ensure the animals can pass freely without injuring themselves on anything left behind by man, and I think we made a good decision to give in to the cement and allow it to remain! We start the same procedure on the 2nd pole, aware that the other team are having some difficulty with theirs. Figure we'd better make a big show of working really hard and celebrating loudly as if we have finally dug our last pole out of the ground, and then quickly covering up our cheating with the same plan as before. What a lovely rockery we created! Job done!


So we mosey on back to the other team where they are still hard at work on their 2nd pole. It was a beast of a pole, encased in so much concrete that the hole they had dug around it was so deep that they were stood in it up to their elbows!

Look at me, I'm actually helping!

The pic above is the dreaded pole in question. It just wasn't shifting, despite Anton's insistence that we keep at it. We even tried attaching a wire from the pole to the game viewer to try and shift it, but that just broke the wire. So in the end, it met the same fate as the other poles, and enjoyed the benefit of some strategically placed shrubbery. Thank heavens we only had time for one day of pole removal during my time at Thanda!

Maren wielding the pick-axe 

Amanda was determined not to let the pole beat her!

Teamwork!

Cheat Sheet


Bear in mind its only about 9.30am now! So back to camp for Tom & I to have some ID training with Anton. This is where we learn about the animals we will be researching and how to ID them. Not half as easy as it sounds, there are 6 bull elephants on Thanda and they all have names like Majimbos & Masinyavondo & Mpatha and you differentiate between them by a minuscule notch in the left ear, or a groove in the tusk, or a slightly longer than normal tail. Time I went back to Specsavers I think.


We actually really enjoyed this part and Tom came up with the great idea of making a cheat sheet for us to use when out on drive, and we also rechristened a few of the bulls for our own use. So Majimbos became Dracula (he has 2 tusks that point straight down) and Masinyavondo became Mosey because, well, you try pronouncing Masinyavondo in a hurry! The bulls all have Zulu names but I quite liked Amanda's names for the females - such as Tuskless Cow (she had no tusks but was still the Matriarch), short tusk, long tusk, odd tusk etc etc. You can guess how she came about the names, not exactly ethnic but much easier to remember!

Masinyavondo aka Mosey

Majimbos aka Dracula

Training was followed by lunch, followed by a nap and then out again at 4pm for the afternoon drive. We were looking for the North Pride hoping to see if the missing cubs were back, we had heard that one was, but one wasn't. It didn't take Anton long to find them, they were happily chilling out on top of a mound of earth where we would very soon be helping to build a waterhole!! But only 2 cubs instead of 3. The pride is made up of 2 adult females and 3 cubs, 2 girls and a boy.I was so excited to see them, lions are my 2nd favourite animals (after ellies, though sometimes its a tie) and I've never really had a good lion sighting, and definitely not during the day. Anton drove us so close to them, we must only have been 15m away. They noticed us, but were definitely not interested in us. They did look a bit sad though, missing their little brother :(

One of the North Pride female cubs

We moved on from that sighting and saw a herd of buffalo which was pretty good as they are another animal I haven't really seen before. Look at this charmer...

We then drove around looking for the ellie herd and eventually found them at dusk. It was quite dark by now so it wasn't great conditions for photos but it was a great sighting. One of the young juveniles likes to come over and inspect the vehicles, and he did that to us, giving us all a good sniff and actually touching the car with his trunk. Then 3 of the little ones decided to show us how big & macho they were and started practising their best charge faces on us, just about the cutest thing I have ever seen!

You can see how close he was to the vehicle

So the day ended much better than it began!

The first night & morning

After dinner on the first night the different projects have a meeting to set out the agenda for the week ahead and there was some drama straight off as two of the cubs from one of the lion prides had gone missing, so the usual Monday morning game drive had been cancelled so that everyone could just track these lions, and the researchers (my group) were going to do some tracking on foot! Cool, I think, how great for my first bush walk! But since Tom & I were newbies we couldn't go out until we'd had our induction, which wasn't only happening until 9am the next morning :(  Oh well, that gives us plenty of time to rest up and get ready our first day in the bush.

The first night's sleep in the bush went surprisingly well, despite lots of dreams of being chased by lions, and I managed to have a shower, which was quite an achievement in itself, not just because there was actual running water.

The shower buckets

We have to use the large oval bowl to stand in in the shower to collect the water, as that is then transferred to the other bucket using the smaller water scooper (just seen in the medium sized bucket) and then used for flushing the loo! And that actually ended up coming in very handy!! So far so good.

 And then there were my little gecko friends. Now, I don't mind a gecko, large or small, they are quite cute little fella's and they eat the other bugs so I am more than happy to have a few residing in my cabin. What was a new discovery though, was the poop. OMG, the poop. for such small creatures they make mountains of the stuff, and it gets everywhere. On your clothes, on the floor, on your bed, I was even attacked by some flying poop that came off the curtain as I drew it, which did make me jump around squealing a bit as I first thought it I was being attacked by a giant evil-looking bug, but no, just the ever-present gecko poop.

Our induction had been moved to 10am so I had a lie-in and sauntered over to investigate breakfast. Cornflakes, branflakes, toast and coffee. Not bad. 

Everyone else was already out looking for the lions, so it was just Tom and I for breakfast and it turned into quite an eventful one. One of the guys who works at Intibane pointed out the python in the rafters that was eating one of the resident birds!! Not what you usually see at breakfast time, but a real treat none the less.

python having its breakfast, thanks to Mbob for the image (more on Mbob later)

There were 4 of us newbies, Miranda, Tom, Lisa and me. Tom & I are on the research project, Lisa & Miranda are on the community. We had our induction with the lovely Tasch, Business Manager of African Impact at Thanda, where she explained how AI works, it goals and achievements, what our role would be, and the general rules and regulations of life at Thanda. She did say they often run out of water as there is always a drought on and the water has to be trucked in, so sometimes there will be no chance for a shower (drinking water always available though, in these temperatures you wouldn't last long without that!). That's ok I reckon, I can be grubby for a bit I think. Ha, little did I realise just how 'grubby' I was going to get!

So then the rest of the day was a bit slow waiting til the others got back and for the next drive at 4pm. The others arrived back at about 10am pretty hot & bothered and no sign of the missing cubs.

The way the week breaks down is Monday & Friday morning is a 3-5 hour game drive looking for certain animals; Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday mornings are conservation work, and each afternoon there is another 3 hour drive at 4pm to track more animals. Then back to camp for dinner at 7pm, bit of chit chat and usually bed by 9pm, when you are up at 4.30am its a long day! Until Mbob started corrupting us all with beer (don't worry, I will explain Mbob in a bit, he is a real person). 

Since we are the research team when we are out on drive and we find certain animals, such as the lions, ellies & rhino, its our job to fill out data sheets on them including their location, number of animals, who they are & what they are doing, as well as trying to get some good shots to use for making up the ID kits. Then all the data needs inputting onto the computer to help Thanda collate all the information we have collected into something useful for the two main conservation guys working for the reserve. Its probably slightly more technical than that, but that will do!

The first drive....

4pm finally arrives and off we go on our first drive woohoo! The first one is always a bit bone-jarring, your body just isn't used to being thrown about like you're in a blender, plus you tend to grip onto the bar in front for dear life so as not to go flying out of the car (fast forward to our 2nd last drive when we were happily playing rollercoaster going over the speedbumps, what a change!)

The Game viewer vehicle, full of photography ladies

Another view of the game viewer, thats me in the back looking oh-so-casual despite the giant ellie in front of us!

It was a fairly uneventful drive, though we did see 7 of the white rhino hanging out together, but unfortunately they soon ran off. Then Jabulani, our guide for this drive, said he could take 2 of us tracking them on foot. He took 2 of the researchers who had already been with the project a couple of weeks, and off they went. They were gone for an age, and this is what they saw, Sarah obviously preferring the relative safety of a tree for a view point, and who could blame her!

Sarah & Jabulani stalking rhino

So that was our first drive done, back to the camp for dinner, with just a small stop along the way to avoid running over four giraffe who stared at us disdainfully as we dared get in their way on the road! It was quite dark by this point so in fairness we didn't actually see them until we were nearly on top of them!

Tried to wash up before dinner but still no water, there had been none  in camp all day, but there were chinese whisper-style rumours that some people had water, so we lived in hope of some for a shower after dinner!

Dinner was something I have already forgotten, probably more chicken & rice (always very tasty though) and then it was beer time as Tom had discovered that you could buy a 6-pack from the management office to keep in the fridge and drink at your leisure (or in Tom's case, 2 days. Tom is Mbob by the way). And then another short walk with my torch in the dark to my cabin, as you can see from my picture below, I didn't actually have far to go!

View of main house from my cabin

So time for bed, but first a shower. Placed my first bucket in the shower in anticipation, turn the taps....and met by a lot of noise but no water. Hmm. Ok, so I'm not that dirty, just sweaty, I guess I will need to take my first swim-shower! It was pretty good considering it was in the frog-orgy pool (frogs and tadpoles long since gone) with amazing views of the stars in the African night sky not marred by any light pollution. So, in the immortal words of Miranda, I wasn't clean, but I was fresh!!