Week one at Ulovane Environmental training

One week doing Field Guide training at Ulovane:

Torrential rain and icy cold winds welcome us to Ulovane Environmental training. Everybody gets assigned to a room and roommate - I get a lovely English girl, Nikki, and we're lucky that our room is only 2 minutes walk from the main building with lounge, kitchen, study room ect. We have an outside toilet and shower which is lovely in warm weather, but icy cold when the wind blows!

A lovely big diverse group we are with ages ranging from 19 to 52 and nationalities mainly Italian, British, German and South African. And a gorgeous little cat called "cornflakes".
Next day we have a talk about the syllabus of subjects we will cover and everyone feels a bit overwhelmed as it is ALOT of information and we will be writing a 2-hour test every Monday at 8am!! Game drive in icy torrential rain (glad I brought my rain suit - even though I forgot the rain pants in my room) but we see a few animals and start to get familiar with the Amakhala Game Reserve. Eland in picture above.

Guy, one of the English "blokes" made a fire for us in the lounge after we returned soaking from the game drive which helped us cope with the freezing weather. Everyone agreed on a yoga session but Sean the instructor was feeling unwell so I ended up being the instructor! On Wednesday it started clearing up and a whole different unfolded. Compulsory First Aid course was run on Wednesday and Thursday which we all passed thankfully and in-between we were all cramming for Mondays' exam - history of Amakhala, communication skills for guiding, regulations and bodies in South Africa, rules and map of the reserve, vehicle skills and Xhosa names of the important animals - a lot to take in!!

Friday from 5am took us on a full day game drive which was amazing and nice and sunny - slowly starting to get our heads around the reserve. First time I saw a "gemsbok" and "mountain zebra" - below, note different subspecies than the plains zebra (and much prettier). Saturday was workbook Q&A, more study time and our first time driving the Land Rover. Washing, yoga, relaxing and more studying on Sunday. Reception isn't very good here and downloading pictures takes ages, but I will try to upload more next time :o)