For days, nothing. Then a flurry of text messages, phone calls and finally a long e-mail confirmed that Christelle Randall remained in one piece, healthy and contented, and able to bring news of her African wildlife adventure.....
Firstly, apologies for taking so long to do my first blog post but the last couple of weeks have been really crazy.
I had fully planned to write with news of the first few days in Jo'burg and the journey down to our reserve (Venetia Reserve), located in the Limpopo Province, nearest town Messina.
But I have not had a minute to myself, so have decided to write now and launch straight into what has been going on here in Venetia.
The reserve is spread across 32,000 hectares and is owned by the De Beers family who have a large diamond mine here. Their interest in conservation coinciding nicely with any guilt caused by their plundering?
On the first morning we were woken by the sound of screaming monkeys and one of the girls in our tent looked out of the window only to see three lionesses walking past. We were later told that this was unusual and lions tend to stay away from camp. Something I am now grateful for after hearing about migrant Zimbabweans who stray into the reserve only to get eaten..
Each morning here is freezing, or feels so three degrees - if you are out on the trucks at this time you get borderline frostbite on the face, only to be sunburnt a few hours later, which I am sure does wonders for the facial ageing process.
We have been studying every day, rising at 5am and going to bed by 8pm.
Studies have involved learning in great detail about every species, antelope, big cats, birds and anything else that might live on the reserve. I never knew so many different types of antelope existed, it's taken me a week to stop referring to the whole lot as deer.
The only one from the big five not present is a buffalo. In fact only a month before we got here they culled 16 lions in a bid to manage the reserve, as the lions were depleting the prey animals and terrorising the other predators. I have mixed feelings about this as part of the culling process involved allowing hunters to kill the lions, although the money goes back into the reserve and into future research.
One of the most important things we've learnt is telemetry and triangulation which we need in order to track collared animals.
Telemetry involves using a black transmitter box which is programmed with the collar numbers. Their likely home range is also programmed so when tracking an animal you would key in its number and frequency.
It's exactly like the machine in Alien when the beeps get louder as the animal gets closer. Anything over 0 is pretty far away but the minute you go into minus you need to be careful.
We are always on the vehicles but there have been one or two instances when someone jumped off to have a bush pee only to "telem" the animal and be down to -3 with some pretty loud beeps. Once you are down to minus 5 it's safe to say the animal is metres away and even safer to say you should be head down in the truck.Our first time tracking with the telem system took us all over the reserve for five hours. Not only do you have to scan for the animal but also triangulate with a map and compass to get exact bearings. It's not easy work but immensely satisfying to find the animals this way.
Our driver Chris, also the reserve manager and serious bush man, was pretty hardcore and ploughed through very dense woodland to find our targets. We eventually found the pride of lions and then logged all the necessary information which is collated and used as research.
Camplife is also interesting. There are 12 of us in the group and split into eight for one tent and four in the other. I am with the bigger group and it's unisex.
The groups get on pretty well - there are people from Denmark, US, Australia and a couple of fellow Brits. One of the American guys is hilarious. His name is Steve and he's only 23 and from Florida. The other Americans get cross with him because he gives them a bad name. His main aim here is to see as many animals as possible get killed, preferably by lions.
The other day, when we were telling him about a Nelson Mandela film in pipeline with Samuel L Jackson due to star, he said: "Wow that's awesome. I wonder what it's going to be about?"
Other highlights include a day trip to a nearby reserve called Mapunbugwe in which there lies a confluence of two rivers, the Sashe and Limpopo which intersect Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana.
The view from the hilltop was incredible, sweeping landscapes and dramatic skylines. We picnicked there and joked about that we could eat each course of our mail in a different country.
A running joke is also now that elephants seem to have taken a strong and slightly disturbing liking to me. Yesterday I went on two game drives and both times we were mock charged by an angry bull elephant possibly in musth which is when they seek out females in oestrus. Not too sure what that says about me but I can assure you having an elephant mock charge is not a pleasant experience. They rarely charge for real but if they decide to then not a great situation, vehicle or not.
Next week is when the research starts for real.
We've been examined in everything and this is when we start going out in groups and finding particular animals every day. I am especially excited about the African Wild Dog which are here in the reserve and endangered. We also have a mountain phase coming up too and then I complete a further five weeks at a different reserve called Karongwe, apparently much less remote with the animals easy to find.
On this note I sign off my first blog post.........
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