Theme song for trip: Time for Africa
Day 1-2: We had our flight to South Africa! Our first stop was to Antigua where I got stopped by metal detector because of the wire in my bra. Then to San Juan, Atlanta, and finally Johannesburg where there is a 6 hour time difference from the US. The flight to Johannesburg was 16 hours where I watched two movies and slept most of the time. We had 2 meals and a snack on the flight. We took a shuttle to our hotel for the night, Aero Lodge and had dinner there, which is pictured below. We all took showers that night as well, because we were afraid it would be the last night we would have a hot shower.
Day 3: We got up for breakfast at the hotel, then rode to the camp site in Alldays, which was about a 5 hour drive with a stop for lunch. We took a sunset drive and saw some animals including a giraffe, then had dinner and played some cards.
Tent we stayed in at camp
Outside bathroom
Day 4: In order to ease into Africa, we were taken to Mapungubwe National Park in the hopes of seeing some wild life and beautiful scenery. We had lunch at an overlook of a river that splits South Africa from Botswana and Zimbabwe. There was a dinner of spaghetti bolognese that night at camp and more card games. As we were playing cards, we were told that we needed to repack for 3 days, but not take all of our stuff and we would be leaving at 4am that morning, which was about 7 hours away. We then took a freezing shower that night, afraid that we wouldn't get another shower for a while.
Giant cricket that eats small birds
Day 5: We were up at 4am and drove about 1.5 hours to to work on some Rhone, which are rare antelope. They are worth 8,000US. With the Rhone, we darted them, lifted them onto the truck, got DNA and hair samples, gave antibiotics, got measurements, reversed the drug, and then relocated them. We ended up doing 13 out of the 37 that we needed to do. We later darted a Sable that got out of the area it was suppose to be in. We had dinner and spent the night at the vet's (Alex) hanger that night because we had another early night ahead of us.
The vet (Alex) darting a Rhone
Sable that got out
Getting blood on the Rhone
Car we rode around in
Giving the rhino some injections
Day 7: We had to be up at 6am to drive 2 hours to a farm near Thazimbage to take care of some Sable that got Amatraz toxicity (type of dewormer). I rode with vet and at one point drove his car, so that he could write some emails. He told me some of his craziest stories about animals that he had worked with in the past. Once at the farm, we rode out to take a look at the sick Sable. The Sable at this farm are worth 3 million US dollars! The rumen of the Sable's wasn't working, due to the dewormer, in order to get it started again, we killed two Blessbuck for their rumen contents. Once we darted the two Sable, we gave them fluids, the rumen contents, antibiotics, and charcoal. At the same farm, we checked on a buffalo bull who had an incision from earlier that Alex fixed. We then drove 3 more hours to Baltimore to another farm to pregnancy check a Sable and performance check a Sable bull. Afterwards, we drove back to Dave's (our driver) place at Galagos Wildlife Conservation farm for the night, since we didn't want to go back to camp yet. We were learning so much from Alex that we wanted to stay with him to learn more.
Sifting through rumen contents
Getting fluids to Sable
Ten worms (our mascot/Alex's dog) with his GoPro
Our "homeless" van we lived out of
Pregnancy checking the Sable
Posing with Alex
Day 8: We went lion tracking with Dave. We unfortunately weren't able to actually see the lion because it was heavily wooded, but the transmitter said we were within 6 feet of lion! We were worried that she might have been hurt since she was in the same spot they found her 3 days earlier. They didn't think the transmitter had come off because they heard cubs at the same time. We also were able to smell a kill that she probably made. We later found out she did move when they went to find her a few days after we were there. We had lunch at the farm, then went back to camp for cheetah tracking. Apparently luck was not with us this day, because the transmitter wasn't even picking up any cheetahs. However, we instead found brown hyena, which apparently is extremely rare to get a picture of. They are usually nocturnal and dart away before you can actually see them. One of the girl's has a great video of the hyena, but it's too long to post on here. We then had dinner at camp, which was probably the worst meal we had to that point. We then went on a night drive, where all we really saw was an barn owl. We played some cards before bed.
Dave looking for lions
Tibia we found on the ground
Dead hippo
Posing with Dave and the mongoose
Anthony checking for cheetah
Brown hyena
Gross meal of sweet potatos, pop, and frozen meat
Us not happy about doing the dishes in the dark at camp
Day 9: Today was considered our day off, which we really didn't want and weren't happy about. We were so rushed and did so much in the previous days, that we wanted to keep going. We were able to sleep in today, but since we didn't have much to do we ended up sunbathing, taking the "guard" dog for a walk, and doing laundry until we ran out of water. Caron, the next vet we worked with took us with her to suture up the farm manager's dog. We had a campfire that night complete with s'mores.
Yellow billed horn bill
Doing laundry
Suturing up Boots, the manager's dog
Day 10: We were up at "early" (8am) in order to drive to spay the Anatolian sheep dogs. These dogs are placed in with goats when they are very young in order to protect the herd. They do not know that they are dogs. At that farm, we neutered one of the family dogs, and then spayed one of the sheep dogs. We drove down to another farm and spayed the other sheep dog. Caron isn't really a surgeon, so it took her almost two hours to do each of the spays. The owner of the farm, then fed us a dinner of Eland and veggie, with lots of beer that night.
Spaying the dog
Anatolian sheep dog puppy
Eland dinner
Posing with our spay patient as she wakes up
Day 11: We were up at 4am again, but this time, we took all of stuff because we weren't going to go back to camp anymore. (Yay!) We took a long drive to a farm near Modimolle to relocate some Nyala. These Nyala were extremely tame and we were able to get really close to them. After we loaded a few into the truck, they were relocated to another farm and we went and grabbed some lunch at KFC. Our next stop was Sondela, a rescue park, to ultrasound a carcala. At this rescue park, we were able to play with lion cubs! We also saw a cheetah, some older lions, giraffe, and a serval. Caron made us spaghetti bolognese for dinner at her and Steve's place, where we thought we were going to stay for the night. Alex later called them and asked if we wanted to fly with him the next to do Impala relocation. Of course we said yes, so we packed up, then headed off to hanger.
Nyala
Dart guns
Cheetah
Playing with lion cubs
Day 12: We were up early again in order to drive an hour away to the airport where Alex's plane was. We flew to Kroonstad for 6 rhino dehornings. There were some giant rhino on this farm! The land at this farm was very flat with no tall trees, so it was a lot easier to find the rhino. We were also working with three other vets, so after they darted the rhino, we would do the work up. Alex was teaching the others how to do the dehorning, so that more people would know the proper way to do it. At another area at this farm, we relocated about 7 Sable. We then briefly went over to Lechwe Lodge in order to get DNA samples on three different lions there. We were only a fence line away from these adult lions! The farmer was very generous and fed us dinner and gave us a place to stay that night.
Freezing in the back of the truck
Putting tar on where horn use to be
Flat tire
Helicopter chasing Impala into burma
Trucks attached to burma in order to relocate Impala
Day 14: We woke in the hopes for a better day of Impala relocation. This time we had two helicopters chasing the Impala into the burma and after some time, it ended up being successful, yet still not as successful as we needed. We ended up catching 25 out of 150 that we needed. With these Impala, we had a system for ear tags, ear notches (for DNA), injections, and reversals. The rest of the group ended up moving the burma to a different location in the hopes of catching more Impala. We were unable to help finish the rest of them because we still needed to drive back to hanger, so we could be ready for giraffe relocation in the morning. We grabbed some beer on the road, and dinner of pizza, beer and shots before we called it a night.
Ear tags and injections ready
One of Alex's friends that we worked with
Day 15: Caron picked us up at the hanger to drive us to Windy Brow Game Reserve for the relocation of two giraffe (male and female). After we darted the giraffe, we chased them for a bit until we were able to get ropes around them in order to better control them. We blindfolded them and stuffed toilet in their ears in order to lesser the stimulation and therefore lessening their stress levels. We then wake them completely up and walk them to the trailer. The female was a lot easier than the male. He took off and we ran after him for a good 30 minutes or so. Of all the days I didn't wear pants, I just had to chase a giraffe through a bunch of bushes and tall grass. My legs are so cut up now because of it. He finally caught him, but then had to walk him a long way. We then followed the trailer as it drove to the farm where they were going. Once we got there, one of the farmers, who was the middle man between the buyer and the seller, tried to let both giraffe out at the same time, which was not a good idea. The giraffe were already so stressed out that they were trying to escape the wrong way and trampled each other. The female was finally able to get out and walk away, but the male still wasn't able to stand. We had to pull him out of the trailer. He tried standing on his own a few times, but then would just fall over. It was getting close to the time we had to leave, so we weren't able to stay and see what happened with him. None of us wanted to leave on that note, but we were driven to our pick up spot in order for the ACE representative to drive us to the airport. We found out later, that the male sadly didn't make it. At the airport we quickly "showered" with baby wipes since we were very dirty from the giraffe. We then did a little souvenir shopping, got some dinner, and boarded our 16 hour flight to Atlanta.
Putting blindfold on giraffe
Walking giraffe to trailer
Day 16: We arrived in Atlanta around 7am, went through customs, and grabbed some food, just in time to board our 3 hour flight to St. Thomas. During out 7 hour layover in St. Thomas, so we decided to get our nails done, since there was so much dirt and tar underneath them and then headed to the beach at a hotel for food and drinks. We then had a 40 minute flight to St. Martin where we didn't get off the plane, but did pick up some more people, and the headed to St Kitts (landed around 9:30pm). Our travel time was a total of 31 hours, plus the 6 hour time difference. I unpacked and showered that night and ended up falling asleep posting some pictures on Facebook. Well jet-lag got the best of me and I was wide awake around 3am, but I did force myself to go back to bed and got up again at 8am Sunday morning.
Check out my Facebook for even more pictures!
Words we learned:
Good morning - Goeie môre "Good more"
Thank you very much - Baie dankie "Buy a donkey"
You're welcome - welkom "welcome"
Barbeque - Brie "Bur-i"
Animal - dier "dear"
(And a few other inappropriate words ;) )
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