Week five in Ulovane

Another 7am exam and we are ready to start the next week! This week is our biggest yet in terms of learning as we are covering trees, grasses and flowers including latin names, medicinal uses, traditional beliefs and animals associated with all of them. Very full-on and most of us feel completely overwhelmed especially with all the latin names and having to recognise all the trees in the area as well! On top of that one of our land rovers (Theodore) had broken down so we can't do too many game drives this week which is probably a good thing due to all the information we have to take in! In any case, mid week called for a sundowner so we all walked out to the remembrance garden with our beers and had a great sunset as a reward and a beautiful waxing crescent moon on the way back!

On Thursday we got the "reptiles and raptors" guy called Darren around for a full day on snakes, spiders, scorpions, owls and other raptor birds. Fascinating stuff, especially when he starts opening the boxes and those who dare can play around with them. We only play with the non-venomous ones i.e. milk snakes and garden snakes and some pythons, and he handled the bigger guns i.e. puffadder (picture below) and a beautiful and verrrrry aggressive cape cobra! After that we were all able to handle a gorgeous barn owl (picture below) and a majestic black eagle called Maggie. Fantastic day!

On Saturday 4 of us got told that we have been selected to guide some UK and SA kids that are visiting Amakhala Game Reserve through a local exchange program - great opportunity! Kerim and I made up one team and we had a fantastic morning walking for about 3 hours on Carnaervon Dale (part of the Reserve), chatting to teachers, kids and mums about the local animals and trees and birds. We got everyone involved in helping to ID a fork tailed bou bou, saw some giraffes, walked as close as probably 125 metres from an eland bull and watched a herd of black wildebeests and red hartebeests kick up dust over the plains. Now... back to those latin names ;)