Tuesday started off bright and early, as I still hadn't gotten over my jetlag. I went to bed at 8:30 the previous night and woke up wide awake a little past midnight. I could not get myself to fall back asleep and woke up around 4:30. I found it nice though to have some peace and quiet before the lodge was bustling with volunteers and staff.
The day's agenda included an optional outdoor yoga class at 6:00. I love doing yoga outdoors, so I was really looking forward to this. Only two other girls decided to participate, but it made for a nice class. I can also now say that I did yoga in the company of monkeys. (I forgot to mention this the other day, but there are some wild monkeys that hang out near the lodge, mostly in the mornings.)
Work started at 7:30 with a drive to a school located about 20 to 30 minutes away. I was disappointed when I learned that we would not be interacting with the children. Our task was to weed the school's vegetable garden and plant a few additional plants. The garden itself was very cute and things seemed to be growing nicely. I decided to work on weeding rather than planting. I ended up focusing on the far end of the garden which was lined with tomato and chili pepper garden beds. I enjoy gardening, so even though I was weeding, this was a fun activity for me. Everyone seemed to enjoy it actually.
Everyone worked diligently and we ended up finishing a lot sooner than expected. We were walked over to one of the classrooms, which currently had no students, so that we could see what it was like. Upon reading the title on the workbooks sitting on a table, I learned that this was the Ecology classroom. I LOVE that the kids are being taught about ecology. The room itself was painted vibrantly and had a variety of animals and quotes on the walls.
The school itself was broken into several buildings. As we walked around, there were quite a few kids outside the classrooms. Some of them seemed shy or disinterested in us, but many others had huge smiles on their faces and waved at us. They all looked so cute dressed in their school uniforms of white shirts and blue shorts.
After having lunch back at the lodge, we headed out to one of the large Big 5 game reserves located nearby. (Side note: In case you don't know, Big 5 means that it is possible to see elephants, lions, buffalo, rhinos, and leopards there.) I was shocked and a little scared when I learned that this activity was an overnight camping trip! I was totally fine with the camping part, but not totally fine with the being in the middle of a Big 5 reserve part. I was going to be sleeping where lions roam! This volunteering program was turning out to be even more of an adventure than I thought it would be.
When we reached the entrance to the park, we were introduced to our guide and piled into the game drive truck. This truck was a lot more heavy-duty than the one we used the previous day.
The park itself is huge and we seemed to drive around for forever before we even made it to the campsite. The site was nicer than I imagined it would be. The tents were very sturdy and already pitched. Inside, there were mattresses and pillows and we put the bedding on the mattresses ourselves. The site also had a primitive water tank which supplied a sink, running toilet, and outdoor shower. This was a lot nicer than the type of camping that I am used to.
One of the staff had a headache. A guide mentioned that elephant dung smoke can help to alleviate headaches, so she burned some. The dung is basically just grass so it smelled like incense, not poo. We also played a short impromtu game of elephant dung soccer later on.
Once the campsite was finished being set up, we headed out on a drive at 3:30. We came across lots of animals to include impala, buffalo, and giraffes.
I was amazed when a few elephants were spotted. They were quite a ways off the dirt road so the driver off-roaded a bit so that we could get closer. Part of our data collection for elephants includes counting how many males, females, and infants there are, as well as taking photos of the faces of the adults to help in identifying individual elephants and herd movement. So there was a reason for us to go off-roading and get close to them other than "just for the fun of it." It was so awesome to see them! There were several adults and infants and they seemed so content as they grazed on bushes, trees, and roots. I was so happy that it only took two days to have my first elephant sighting.
Later in the drive, we came across an area where two lionesses were. However, they were located across the boundary of the park that we were in. Even though there was no fence, our guide was not allowed to drive over there since park rules stipulate that he must remain within the park boundaries. It was a bummer to not be able to view them, especially since it is difficult to track lions down.
Dinner was back at the campsite and by this time I was dead tired. We didn't even finish our afternoon game drive until 8:00 and I was shocked once again when I found out we would be going out on a proper night drive too. (It gets dark here at about 6:30pm.) I figured my best bet would be to nap as long as I could before dinner was served. My nap ended up being around 30 minutes long and according to my roommate I was out like a light because she had a hard time waking me up.
The night drive began around 9:00. It is a totally different experience than the daytime drives. One of the guides holds up a spotlight and shines it back and forth along the road as we all look for eyes glowing back at us. Once we do find eyes, we only focus on an animal if they are nocturnal or not very sensitive to the light. For all others, the light is turned off and we continue onward. We saw some small nocturnal animals like rabbits and bushbabies. The most interesting animal we caught sight of was a small group of hyena (which were located near another camp!) They were a lot larger than I thought they would be and quite intimidating.
Toward the end of our drive, one of guides became aware of a leopard being in the area based on footprints. We circled a large area where the guides believed the leopard was. At a few points we could actually hear the leopard grunting, and we were told that leopards will make this sound about every 6 minutes. So we sat quiet for a while to see if we could hear where it was coming it. The sound carries pretty far, so even though we could hear it, we still couldn't track the leopard down.
That night, there was a new moon, so the sky was full of stars shining brightly. If you looked at the sky for just a minute or two, you were sure to see at least one shooting star. Even if we had not seen any animals that day, gazing at the sky that night would have made the experience totally worth it.
By the time we finished the night drive I was ready to pass out. There was bad news for all of us though. The water tank unexpectedly became empty because elephants had messed with it a few days earlier. This meant that the toilet was no longer working and we would have to do our business in the bush itself. Now we were camping for real! I hoped I would be able to make it through the night without needing to "go" since going would be a very dangerous thing, considering our location. In fact, we were told that if we did need to go in the middle of the night, we would have to wake our roommate up to come out with us for safety reasons. Thankfully, neither my roommate nor I needed to do this.
We woke up the following morning with the sunrise at 4:45 to go out on a 4.5 hour drive. Animal activity varies greatly depending on the time of day and weather conditions, so that is why game drives happen so frequently. We saw many of the same type of animals that we saw the previous afternoon. Some were the exact same animals and some were new ones.
The highlight was coming across a few elephants close to the road. Before we knew it, more elephants seemed to come out of no where and kept coming. I counted at least 25 elephants, of which more than half were infants or juveniles. (In addition to just being curious how many there were exactly, this was also my data task.) It was such an incredible sight! They all were just peacefully eating leaves and grass and mingling around. There were so many little elephants that many got lost in the view behind others. Every time I thought I saw the smallest, cutest one, another littler one would pop out. It was like they were elephant nesting dolls.
We also witnessed an extra-special treat. Two adults, a male and female, greeted each other with a few minutes of "kisses" where the elephants embraced each other with their trunks. It was like they were long lost friends or relatives and were so happy to be reunited, which could actually have been the case. Elephants are very emotional creatures and have strong attachments to other elephants.
The birds here are incredible also. Many are types that I have never seen before, and they have interesting beaks, coloring, or calls. Hopefully by the time I leave, I will become better at remembering the names of all of them and identifying some by their calls.
In addition to seeing lots of animals, another thing that makes game drives great is when you have excellent guides. We lucked out with having two guides on this trip. One was our driver who was employed by the park. He was a phenomenal driver. For example, elephants tend to knock down trees into the road when they graze, which means we had to do lots of driving in reverse or off-roading to get back on track. It felt like we were on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, but for real! The other guide was one of the program's staff. She technically was just on this drive as an observer, but when being a guide is in your blood, I guess you can't help but always be a guide. Her eye for catching sight of animals was unreal! It's like she had built-in binoculars. Both guides also had a never-ending knowledge of the different animals, birds, and plants that we came across, so we were constantly learning new things.
It turns out that this overnight game drive trip is usually on the agenda every week, so I can't wait to do it again!
Another game that the guides taught us: impala dung spitting contest. I couldn't believe people were actually putting that crap in their mouth (pun intended.) I didn't participate. We'll see if I end up trying it before I leave.
No comments:
Post a Comment