DAY 6:
Today Ali and I split up to do our own thing since she wanted to spend the day taking REALLY touristy pictures and figured I wouldn’t want to. She was mostly right, besides I wanted a day to myself. After middling breakfast, I washed my sharky smelling swim suit and headed off to Camps Bay. (Another even MORE gorgeous beach!) I spent the day lying in the sun and wandering over rocks and generally enjoying myself. It was just windy enough that I never got too hot even lying directly in the sun. Evntually I had enough of the sun and combie’d back to Cape Town. There were still two hours until I had to meet Ali for dinner, so I walked along the waterfront (not the OFFICIAL waterfront) and wandered quite a ways to a lighthouse! Very pretty and very old, mum would be proud. We had dinner at a pizza place that had GREAT pictures in the ads and the menu, but not in reality. Which was okay, and I spent the rest of the evening at the hostel bar chatting with the other guests. Met a very nice kid (he was 19…) from the states who I swapped travel stories with, and the bartender who was interesting, and a rather drunk Scotsman. It was very fun. :D
DAY 7:
We checked out of our hostel and headed off on a HIGHLY sketchy looking train to Simon’s Town where the PENGUINS ARE! The scenery on the way was beautiful! Simon’s town was very quaint and quiet and felt like any gorgeous little town by the sea. We checked into our hostel and then wandered around looking at the shops (looked a lot like the French Quarter in New Orleans). Eventually we wandered around the different beaches and oo’d and aww’d over the random penguins we found hanging out there! We eventually went over to the boulder beach viewing platforms where there were LOTS of penguins hanging out. I didn’t have my beast camera with me and Ali didn’t want to stay too long, so we fled from the abundance of asian and French tourists and headed back to the hostel. We stopped on the way for FANTASTIC pita bread pizza and then rented movies which we watched at the hostel bar (the only place with a TV). Bed sounded quite good at that point, so we hit the sack! (The unfortunate thing was that I woke up with about 20 new bug bites. D: )
DAY 8:
I got up VOLUNTARILY at 7am to go take pictures of penguins for 2 hours. Seriously. They were that awesome. And I didn’t even get coffee first. They were just SO funny and they sounded like DONKEYS! Then I went over to the part of Boulder Beach where you can actually swim. With. Penguins. SO COOL! They were swimming RIGHT next to me and the water was warm and blue and it felt like paradise. (well… if paradise includes a few screaming kids, a crowd of old people, and ducks that want nothing more than to rob me of food…) I wandered around and laid on beaches and found little markets and such until dinner with Ali. We ended up going to this little pub (turns out the place with the MENU was upstairs) and we ate sketchy, but good, pub food and drank for the rest of the evening. There was a lovely older Scottish man named Pat who we hung out with until we eventually called it a night and went home.
DAY 9:
I woke up not feeling my greatest and so Ali went on ahead of me to Cape Town while I slept for a couple more hours in the hostel. Eventually, I got up and made my way back to our original hostel via the train. I was planning to just wander around and maybe go up the cable car to the top of table mountain, but I was told it was a bit late for that. SO I ended up at South Africa Gay Pride instead! Woah! It was pretty much like other gay pride festivals I have been to (of which there was… one) and there were a lot of pretty men and sparkles and drinking all around. I mainly went around taking pictures and wishing there was a little more shows or events and a little less drinking, but it was fun all the same. Since Ali and I didn’t have any plans to meet, specifically, I ended up getting tortellini pasta for dinner and cooking it at the hostel. I also had a DOCTOR PEPPER! Not something so common here in Africa! We had to get up for our taxi to the airport at 5am, so we pretty much just went to bed early and tried to think happy thoughts about the next day’s travel.
DAY 10:
We made it to the airport in plenty of time and there were no problems. Our flight was pretty enjoyable and when we landed in Joburg, we were tired but in pretty high spirits. Our only REAL snag was that when we got to the bus rank I couldn’t remember where the combie rank was! I knew it was basically in the same place, but I had never actually BEEN in the HUGE bus rank terminal before. I ended up leaving Ali with our bags and wandering around asking for directions until I found it. The combie rank truly is FOUL, full of garbage and exhaust fumes and bad tempers. But we eventually found the right combie (just as cushionless as the one coming up) and waited for the combie to fill. (long distance combies leave when they are full, not at a specific time). The ride back was uneventful, but left me with a cramp in my lower back that persisted for days. D: We got back to Gabs at about 7pm, and I never felt more glad to see the Gabs bus station. A taxi driver was right at the door to our combie and we were driven back to the dorms no problem. Overall, it was an AWESOME trip. :D
Moral of this story is! I love sharks and penguins (and they love me), tanning is actually possible, my life is a food tour, craft markets are my downfall, and coffee makes the world go round.
THE END!
Monday, April 16, 2012
My (belated) CAPE TOWN adventure!!!!
MY CAPE TOWN ADVENTURE OF LOVE AND EXCITEMENT!!!!
DAY 1:
The trip from Gabs to Joburg was uncomfortable and late (which is typical), but I was SO excited for this trip. We drove 6 hours in a combie that had absolutely no seat padding, but that really could have been worse. We arrived at a rather deserted combie station in downtown Joburg (it WAS near midnight) and hit our first snag: we… didn’t have the address to our hostel. I mean, I HAD the confirmation, it just didn’t include the address like I thought it did. Luckily, some very nice locals took pity on us and helped us call the place and make sure our cabbie didn’t overcharge us as they are want to do. We got to the hostel, a bit tired, but none the worse for wear. We went to bed AS SOON as we were checked in. (SO tired) As luck would have it, we were the only ones in the 16 person dorm. PERFECT.
DAY 2:
Day started out at the bright and early hour of 11AM…. Yeah. I am SUCH a morning person, you can tell. We got up and needed coffee and breakfast, so we set off to find what we could. Our original plan was just to walk to the street and then pick a direction and hope we get lucky. GOOD THING that didn’t happen because there were no good cafes within… well… walking distance. (Also the hills in Joburg are even more severe than in San Francisco.) Lucky for us, a local named Jean-Pierre rolled by in his car to ask if we were staying at Diamond Diggers (he knows the owner). He spoke French and was impressed that I knew a bit of French and ended up offering to drive us to a “nearby” café. Since we had no clue where one was, we accepted. (I also figured he wasn’t too much of a creeper since he had his 8 year old son with him.) It turns out that he designs and contracts houses. Before we went to the café, he stopped to check on a house that was… HUMONGOUS and very modern. It had 2 stories, a pool, a gorgeous view, and nearly every wall was actually a bank of windows. Not really my type of house (WAY to big) but is WAS beautiful. We were both very impressed by the tour he gave us. Eventually Jean-Pierre did take us to the café (which was actually in a shopping mall) and wished us luck. The food was pretty good and the cappuccino was even BETTER! I was, however, greatful to catch a taxi back to our hostel (re: HUGE HILLS) When we returned to the hostel, we headed off to the airport!
This is where we ran into our… second snag. For some reason when Ali booked our flight online, it only booked us one seat… and the flight was completely full… and they had no more flights to Cape Town that day. ACK! Well, we were both pretty calm as we ran around trying to find some airline with flights to Cape Town same day. Well, I say ran around, but really we just asked at South African Airways who directed us to British Airways who had a flight scheduled for two hours after our original flight for R800ish. (roughly 100USD) GOOD DEAL. So we booked that ticket and Ali RAN to catch her own flight. I dawdled and made small talk with the airline people and then went through security and wandered around the shops. I sat and had a vanilla latte and then grabbed a SUBWAY sandwich and generally had a peaceful flight including a meal and rather nice seating (this is BA). Ali’s flight… apparently was horribly bumpy and she was stuck between loud asian ladies… so I feel like I got the good end of the deal. But Cape Town was gorgeous even from the airport! The sun was setting behind the mountains for chrissakes!
After we checked into our hostel (very nice), we decided to find somewhere for dinner. AND WE FOUND A MEXICAN RESTAURANT WHAT! I have not seen another Mexican restaurant in all my time in Africa. I had chicken mole and horchata and it was awesome :D And then… because the night could not end and this day could not get longer than it already was… we decided to go have a night on the town! At a… very sparkly gay bar down the road. We had shots, danced with very fun gay guys (I was pretty much insta “fag hag”), and even got creeped on by the only straight guys in the place. The bartender thought we were REALLY hardcore for having the shots, but I wasn’t even drunk. GOOD night.
DAY 3:
Slept in the next day (little woozy despite not even being DRUNK the night before), and just wanted COFFEE wherever I could get it. We did our “wander around until we find a café” technique and it actually worked! Except the place we went was actually pretty awful. Burnt coffee and bad food all round. But hey, caffeine. So after that we went to the waterfront. The waterfront was GORGEOUS but full of the wealthy and touristy. Seriously, the mall there had THREE STORIES and a bunch of really long, really organized hallways full of really expensive clothes. D: However! There was also some very nice craft markets in warehouses that were DANGEROUS. I bought a notebook and some tea and HAD to stop before I bought something at every stall D: We went on a VERY kitchy and punny harbor cruise, but there really wasn’t much other than the shopping. So we decided to go see a movie since I like seeing movies and Ali is a HUGE movie buff. We saw This Means War which was highly entertaining, but not an epic must see. We went back to the hostel and to a random Thai place which actually had pretty good Pad Thai. The moral of the story is: the waterfront was GORGEOUS and shopping for that long makes your feet and wallet hurt just a bit.
DAY 4:We had an earlier start today with actually GOOD coffee in a Spar café of all places. After that we headed over to Green Market. It was a pretty long walk, but it was SO worth it. It was like being in one of the craft markets so typical here, but in the middle of Boston. And VERY clean and cheap stuff. I found a lot of nice souvenirs and… ya know, stuff for me. We wandered around there for a few hours, which I enjoyed, and then hoped a combie to Clifton Bay. We spent the afternoon RELAXING on the beach. It was SO beautiful. I even managed to get a TAN even though the Atlantic was JUST as cold here as on the East Coast.
But the real excitement was for tomorrow: SHARK DAY!
DAY 5: (Better known as shark day)
Day started at 4:45am (not good) but lead to a LOVELY place called Gansbaai which contained both a beautiful view and middling coffee, so it’s all good. We set sail quickly enough after breakfast and we were SO excited. Ali and I were in the first group in the water (the wetsuit was a HASSLE to get on). The cage was attached to the side of the boat and the crew attracted the sharks to the boat with a fish head on a string. (I could not get “fish heads fish heads rolly polly fish heads fish heads fish heads, eat them up! Yum!” out of my head) THE SHARKS WERE SO BIG AND SO COOL! The only problem was that half the boat was getting violently ill over the side of the boat due to sea sickness. Let’s just say that the motion-of-the-ocean did not agree with us. I waited it out and went down into the cage a second time. SO AWESOME! LOVED IT! When we eventually got back to our hostel, we completed our fishy day with SUSHI. Seriously, there are SO many sushi restaurants in Cape Town. Like DOZENS. I love sushi. GREAT DAY.
DAY 1:
The trip from Gabs to Joburg was uncomfortable and late (which is typical), but I was SO excited for this trip. We drove 6 hours in a combie that had absolutely no seat padding, but that really could have been worse. We arrived at a rather deserted combie station in downtown Joburg (it WAS near midnight) and hit our first snag: we… didn’t have the address to our hostel. I mean, I HAD the confirmation, it just didn’t include the address like I thought it did. Luckily, some very nice locals took pity on us and helped us call the place and make sure our cabbie didn’t overcharge us as they are want to do. We got to the hostel, a bit tired, but none the worse for wear. We went to bed AS SOON as we were checked in. (SO tired) As luck would have it, we were the only ones in the 16 person dorm. PERFECT.
DAY 2:
Day started out at the bright and early hour of 11AM…. Yeah. I am SUCH a morning person, you can tell. We got up and needed coffee and breakfast, so we set off to find what we could. Our original plan was just to walk to the street and then pick a direction and hope we get lucky. GOOD THING that didn’t happen because there were no good cafes within… well… walking distance. (Also the hills in Joburg are even more severe than in San Francisco.) Lucky for us, a local named Jean-Pierre rolled by in his car to ask if we were staying at Diamond Diggers (he knows the owner). He spoke French and was impressed that I knew a bit of French and ended up offering to drive us to a “nearby” café. Since we had no clue where one was, we accepted. (I also figured he wasn’t too much of a creeper since he had his 8 year old son with him.) It turns out that he designs and contracts houses. Before we went to the café, he stopped to check on a house that was… HUMONGOUS and very modern. It had 2 stories, a pool, a gorgeous view, and nearly every wall was actually a bank of windows. Not really my type of house (WAY to big) but is WAS beautiful. We were both very impressed by the tour he gave us. Eventually Jean-Pierre did take us to the café (which was actually in a shopping mall) and wished us luck. The food was pretty good and the cappuccino was even BETTER! I was, however, greatful to catch a taxi back to our hostel (re: HUGE HILLS) When we returned to the hostel, we headed off to the airport!
This is where we ran into our… second snag. For some reason when Ali booked our flight online, it only booked us one seat… and the flight was completely full… and they had no more flights to Cape Town that day. ACK! Well, we were both pretty calm as we ran around trying to find some airline with flights to Cape Town same day. Well, I say ran around, but really we just asked at South African Airways who directed us to British Airways who had a flight scheduled for two hours after our original flight for R800ish. (roughly 100USD) GOOD DEAL. So we booked that ticket and Ali RAN to catch her own flight. I dawdled and made small talk with the airline people and then went through security and wandered around the shops. I sat and had a vanilla latte and then grabbed a SUBWAY sandwich and generally had a peaceful flight including a meal and rather nice seating (this is BA). Ali’s flight… apparently was horribly bumpy and she was stuck between loud asian ladies… so I feel like I got the good end of the deal. But Cape Town was gorgeous even from the airport! The sun was setting behind the mountains for chrissakes!
After we checked into our hostel (very nice), we decided to find somewhere for dinner. AND WE FOUND A MEXICAN RESTAURANT WHAT! I have not seen another Mexican restaurant in all my time in Africa. I had chicken mole and horchata and it was awesome :D And then… because the night could not end and this day could not get longer than it already was… we decided to go have a night on the town! At a… very sparkly gay bar down the road. We had shots, danced with very fun gay guys (I was pretty much insta “fag hag”), and even got creeped on by the only straight guys in the place. The bartender thought we were REALLY hardcore for having the shots, but I wasn’t even drunk. GOOD night.
DAY 3:
Slept in the next day (little woozy despite not even being DRUNK the night before), and just wanted COFFEE wherever I could get it. We did our “wander around until we find a café” technique and it actually worked! Except the place we went was actually pretty awful. Burnt coffee and bad food all round. But hey, caffeine. So after that we went to the waterfront. The waterfront was GORGEOUS but full of the wealthy and touristy. Seriously, the mall there had THREE STORIES and a bunch of really long, really organized hallways full of really expensive clothes. D: However! There was also some very nice craft markets in warehouses that were DANGEROUS. I bought a notebook and some tea and HAD to stop before I bought something at every stall D: We went on a VERY kitchy and punny harbor cruise, but there really wasn’t much other than the shopping. So we decided to go see a movie since I like seeing movies and Ali is a HUGE movie buff. We saw This Means War which was highly entertaining, but not an epic must see. We went back to the hostel and to a random Thai place which actually had pretty good Pad Thai. The moral of the story is: the waterfront was GORGEOUS and shopping for that long makes your feet and wallet hurt just a bit.
DAY 4:We had an earlier start today with actually GOOD coffee in a Spar café of all places. After that we headed over to Green Market. It was a pretty long walk, but it was SO worth it. It was like being in one of the craft markets so typical here, but in the middle of Boston. And VERY clean and cheap stuff. I found a lot of nice souvenirs and… ya know, stuff for me. We wandered around there for a few hours, which I enjoyed, and then hoped a combie to Clifton Bay. We spent the afternoon RELAXING on the beach. It was SO beautiful. I even managed to get a TAN even though the Atlantic was JUST as cold here as on the East Coast.
But the real excitement was for tomorrow: SHARK DAY!
DAY 5: (Better known as shark day)
Day started at 4:45am (not good) but lead to a LOVELY place called Gansbaai which contained both a beautiful view and middling coffee, so it’s all good. We set sail quickly enough after breakfast and we were SO excited. Ali and I were in the first group in the water (the wetsuit was a HASSLE to get on). The cage was attached to the side of the boat and the crew attracted the sharks to the boat with a fish head on a string. (I could not get “fish heads fish heads rolly polly fish heads fish heads fish heads, eat them up! Yum!” out of my head) THE SHARKS WERE SO BIG AND SO COOL! The only problem was that half the boat was getting violently ill over the side of the boat due to sea sickness. Let’s just say that the motion-of-the-ocean did not agree with us. I waited it out and went down into the cage a second time. SO AWESOME! LOVED IT! When we eventually got back to our hostel, we completed our fishy day with SUSHI. Seriously, there are SO many sushi restaurants in Cape Town. Like DOZENS. I love sushi. GREAT DAY.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Lion Gate Park Has No Lions... But It DOES Have a Roller Coaster
So I went to Lion Gate Park/Resort yesterday with about 25 people from the choir and it was SUPER fun! It’s this water park/theme park sort of thing about 15 minutes outside of Gaborone. I was expecting something teeny and, well, less than it was. But my god! It was a bit like being at home except for all the thatched roofs. There was an honest to god WAVE POOL, two slides, and a two-level kiddy pool. There were 8 rides (though four of them were kids only and a fifth was out of order). There was even a ROLLER COASTER. So basically, I had tons of fun playing in the pool and once I got over the “OMG, this is a theme park ride in AFRICA a la Flying Swings and Tilt-A-Whirl! What if it BREAKS!?” I had a lot of fun there too. SOME HIGHLIGHTS! While swimming in the pool, the guys had the funny idea to start doing fake “baptisms” like you see on travel programs where the priest is dunking peoples’ heads in the ocean water and yelling. So… they proceeded to grab all the girls in the group and “baptize” them, much to everyone’s amusement. I was not spared, lol! Another thing is that… almost NONE of them had ever been on a roller coaster before. And we ALL went on the Ghinza Roller Coaster for 14 Pula each… It was hilarious! They were all so nervous but excited and you would not BELIEVE the screaming. All the guys were acting macho and saying they’d have their hands in the air the whole time… I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that did that. It was a good sized coaster, it even had a loop, but it wasn’t THAT big. Some of the girls were a bit traumatized and most of the guys admitted to being scared out of their wits after some obligatory manly posturing. But they all had fun and didn’t regret trying it, so I suppose it’s okay. The last highlight was near the end when things LOOKED like they were winding down, but then we started singing. In a huge group. In the pool. With dance moves. In Setswana. And of course I was the only foreigner. But it was so much fun! People outside of the pool kept trying to take pictures and little kids kept trying to join in even though they didn’t really know what was going on. It was a pretty fun day!
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Cheetah Tracking Adventures, Part 3
DAY THREE
Five AM wake-up, breakfast in bed (we ate in the back of the car, which was technically my bed), and tracking cheetahs through the bush was not a bad way to start the morning! I was pretty tired by this point, but my enthusiasm for seeing the boys was not diminished and I FINALLY could identify them pretty well. Anakin is the one with the really dark spots, Omadillo has the fluffiest face, and Obi-Wan has smaller spots. Really, that is pretty much how you ID cheetahs; they are practically IDENTICAL!
The boys were still pretty lazy and I finished my book while we were sitting with them. They moved only once to find some shade when the sun came out for a bit. It was sprinkling by the time we walked the 2 kilometers back to our camp site. The rain came on VERY suddenly actually and we ate lunch huddled in the back of the car again.
When Rachel arrived to give Ryan his supplies for the day, she came bearing CHESTER! We were going to release him with the boys! So another volunteer and I hopped on the back of the truck with Chester’s crate and we tracked the boys as close as we could get from the road (Rachel’s car has 4-wheel drive). Since we were in the truck that they used to be fed from when they were in captivity, they came running when called. Once they were about 30 meters down the road, we opened Chester’s box. He came right out and went up to the other three and they all started purring and licking each other. They were so cute!
The only other exciting thing about the day (besides the fact that we arrived back at CCF at 7:30, aka over 4 hours later than expected) was that we almost got stuck in a giant mud puddle. Really stuck. Jess and I (the volunteer that was with me in the back) gamely hopped out and pushed the car from the front while Rachel reversed. We were knee deep in mud and water; but joking about it brightly when we eventually got un-stuck. Getting stuck is a huge fear out here in the rainy season since the tractor takes about 5 hours to get out to Bellebino farm to get you unstuck. I was COVERED in mud, but it was okay because my clothes and shoes were already FILTHY from tracking anyways.
We got to CCF in time for dinner and I was very happy to shower after our mud adventures. Really, I have no IDEA how Ryan does it day after day. It is EXHAUSTING tracking those boys!
Five AM wake-up, breakfast in bed (we ate in the back of the car, which was technically my bed), and tracking cheetahs through the bush was not a bad way to start the morning! I was pretty tired by this point, but my enthusiasm for seeing the boys was not diminished and I FINALLY could identify them pretty well. Anakin is the one with the really dark spots, Omadillo has the fluffiest face, and Obi-Wan has smaller spots. Really, that is pretty much how you ID cheetahs; they are practically IDENTICAL!
The boys were still pretty lazy and I finished my book while we were sitting with them. They moved only once to find some shade when the sun came out for a bit. It was sprinkling by the time we walked the 2 kilometers back to our camp site. The rain came on VERY suddenly actually and we ate lunch huddled in the back of the car again.
When Rachel arrived to give Ryan his supplies for the day, she came bearing CHESTER! We were going to release him with the boys! So another volunteer and I hopped on the back of the truck with Chester’s crate and we tracked the boys as close as we could get from the road (Rachel’s car has 4-wheel drive). Since we were in the truck that they used to be fed from when they were in captivity, they came running when called. Once they were about 30 meters down the road, we opened Chester’s box. He came right out and went up to the other three and they all started purring and licking each other. They were so cute!
The only other exciting thing about the day (besides the fact that we arrived back at CCF at 7:30, aka over 4 hours later than expected) was that we almost got stuck in a giant mud puddle. Really stuck. Jess and I (the volunteer that was with me in the back) gamely hopped out and pushed the car from the front while Rachel reversed. We were knee deep in mud and water; but joking about it brightly when we eventually got un-stuck. Getting stuck is a huge fear out here in the rainy season since the tractor takes about 5 hours to get out to Bellebino farm to get you unstuck. I was COVERED in mud, but it was okay because my clothes and shoes were already FILTHY from tracking anyways.
We got to CCF in time for dinner and I was very happy to shower after our mud adventures. Really, I have no IDEA how Ryan does it day after day. It is EXHAUSTING tracking those boys!
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Cheetah Tracking Adventures, Part B
DAY TWO
Waking up at 5am is not high on my favorite list (it’s not on the list at all!), but the fact that I was waking up to track cheetahs made it SO much better! It had rained all night, so we couldn’t get the car out of the lot, so we tracked them on foot. They weren’t so far away and when we found them, they were hunting again! We heard an oryx death cry and Ryan took off at a run! I was VERY hard pressed to keep up and I pretty much failed. I mean, from when we first saw them trot off to the kill spot, it was over 300 meters! Luckily, Ryan was wearing a bright red beanie that was easy to follow.
When we got there, the boys were already on their kill: an oryx calf. I was so proud of them! Omadillo was holding it down while Anakin went for the throat bite (classic cheetah kill which strangles prey pretty quickly) and Obi-Wan protected them from… well us. He was very weary of Ryan for a bit. But then it started getting very sad… and gory. Since these boys are still learning, they couldn’t quite get the neck bite right and kept getting startled by the oryx’s little horns… so they eventually gave up on the neck bite and Omadillo started eating the hindquarters… while it was still alive. It took the poor thing 35 minutes to die. Ryan and I were so angry at them when Obi-Wan and Anakin just laid in the grass instead of helping with the kill, but they are LEARNING and apparently Chester usually does the neck bite. It was pretty horrific and so sad because the little oryx was fighting the whole time. When it finally died, Obi-Wan and Anakin started eating, too. Moral of the story is that it was hard to watch and very sad, but I am glad the boys are hunting and getting their own food successfully. They will learn to kill properly with time.
The rest of the day they were pretty lazy. They were so full of food that they looked pregnant! Ryan and I actually sat down and did data entry/ read a book respectively. They were just flopped on the ground, so we didn’t have to record much. It was VERY surreal to be sitting 10 meters from 3 technically WILD cheetahs reading a book about dragons… but there you have it. It didn’t rain ALL DAY so we got a fire when we got back to camp! Dinner of leftover mystery meat (possibly goat we decided), garlic bread, and pasta was awesome! (BUSH FOOD TOUR!)
Waking up at 5am is not high on my favorite list (it’s not on the list at all!), but the fact that I was waking up to track cheetahs made it SO much better! It had rained all night, so we couldn’t get the car out of the lot, so we tracked them on foot. They weren’t so far away and when we found them, they were hunting again! We heard an oryx death cry and Ryan took off at a run! I was VERY hard pressed to keep up and I pretty much failed. I mean, from when we first saw them trot off to the kill spot, it was over 300 meters! Luckily, Ryan was wearing a bright red beanie that was easy to follow.
When we got there, the boys were already on their kill: an oryx calf. I was so proud of them! Omadillo was holding it down while Anakin went for the throat bite (classic cheetah kill which strangles prey pretty quickly) and Obi-Wan protected them from… well us. He was very weary of Ryan for a bit. But then it started getting very sad… and gory. Since these boys are still learning, they couldn’t quite get the neck bite right and kept getting startled by the oryx’s little horns… so they eventually gave up on the neck bite and Omadillo started eating the hindquarters… while it was still alive. It took the poor thing 35 minutes to die. Ryan and I were so angry at them when Obi-Wan and Anakin just laid in the grass instead of helping with the kill, but they are LEARNING and apparently Chester usually does the neck bite. It was pretty horrific and so sad because the little oryx was fighting the whole time. When it finally died, Obi-Wan and Anakin started eating, too. Moral of the story is that it was hard to watch and very sad, but I am glad the boys are hunting and getting their own food successfully. They will learn to kill properly with time.
The rest of the day they were pretty lazy. They were so full of food that they looked pregnant! Ryan and I actually sat down and did data entry/ read a book respectively. They were just flopped on the ground, so we didn’t have to record much. It was VERY surreal to be sitting 10 meters from 3 technically WILD cheetahs reading a book about dragons… but there you have it. It didn’t rain ALL DAY so we got a fire when we got back to camp! Dinner of leftover mystery meat (possibly goat we decided), garlic bread, and pasta was awesome! (BUSH FOOD TOUR!)
Cheetah Tracking Adventures, Part the First
DAY ONE
The morning was pretty hectic as there was a little bit of a miscommunication in the time we were leaving and who was ALLOWED to go to Bellebino to track the cheetahs, but it went okay in the end and I arrived at the Bellebino camp around 1pm. I re-met Ryan, who pretty much lives at the camp and tracks cheetahs every day. I had been introduced to him once before when he was at CCF to catch up on data entry and have his first day in 16 days not trekking through the bush. He is a VERY enthusiastic guy who is willing to do pretty much anything for the release cheetahs.
How the tracking works is that we WALK twice a day (we go back to camp for lunch) to find the cheetahs and using a radio collar system. Once we find Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Omadillo (the three boys we were tracking), we follow them and take GPS points and notes about any significant events (such as marking, kills, movement from one resting spot to the other, etc). There is actually a fourth cheetah in the group called Chester, but he got into a fight with Omadillo a week or so back and had to be recaptured and fixed up. They were probably fighting for dominance of the group. Anyways, it is important that we track their progress and ability to hunt because the Bellabino farm is only the first step (the “soft release”) of their release. Their end goal is actually India!
The first afternoon of tracking was very interesting. We used the car to drive half-way (it does not have 4-wheel drive, so it can’t go very far with all the large puddles on the roads) and found the cats closer than we thought they would be and they were hunting! This was VERY exciting even though I had to run after them more than I would have liked. They didn’t catch anything though because they haven’t QUITE got being sneaky yet and so the adult oryx kept running them off with their horns. They eventually gave up and wandered off, but it WAS very exciting. We had to leave the boys a few hours early because there was a HUGE storm rolling in. We pretty much RAN the kilometer back to camp, and it started raining buckets and thundering shortly after we got back. Thus, Ryan and I huddled in the back of our car and ate cold lasagna and fries from last night’s dinner at CCF. It was so rainy that I didn’t even WANT to try to set up the tent that Rachel had brought to replace the flooded one that was supposed to be mine. So I set up a pad and sleeping bag in the back of the van and slept there! Great first day!
The morning was pretty hectic as there was a little bit of a miscommunication in the time we were leaving and who was ALLOWED to go to Bellebino to track the cheetahs, but it went okay in the end and I arrived at the Bellebino camp around 1pm. I re-met Ryan, who pretty much lives at the camp and tracks cheetahs every day. I had been introduced to him once before when he was at CCF to catch up on data entry and have his first day in 16 days not trekking through the bush. He is a VERY enthusiastic guy who is willing to do pretty much anything for the release cheetahs.
How the tracking works is that we WALK twice a day (we go back to camp for lunch) to find the cheetahs and using a radio collar system. Once we find Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Omadillo (the three boys we were tracking), we follow them and take GPS points and notes about any significant events (such as marking, kills, movement from one resting spot to the other, etc). There is actually a fourth cheetah in the group called Chester, but he got into a fight with Omadillo a week or so back and had to be recaptured and fixed up. They were probably fighting for dominance of the group. Anyways, it is important that we track their progress and ability to hunt because the Bellabino farm is only the first step (the “soft release”) of their release. Their end goal is actually India!
The first afternoon of tracking was very interesting. We used the car to drive half-way (it does not have 4-wheel drive, so it can’t go very far with all the large puddles on the roads) and found the cats closer than we thought they would be and they were hunting! This was VERY exciting even though I had to run after them more than I would have liked. They didn’t catch anything though because they haven’t QUITE got being sneaky yet and so the adult oryx kept running them off with their horns. They eventually gave up and wandered off, but it WAS very exciting. We had to leave the boys a few hours early because there was a HUGE storm rolling in. We pretty much RAN the kilometer back to camp, and it started raining buckets and thundering shortly after we got back. Thus, Ryan and I huddled in the back of our car and ate cold lasagna and fries from last night’s dinner at CCF. It was so rainy that I didn’t even WANT to try to set up the tent that Rachel had brought to replace the flooded one that was supposed to be mine. So I set up a pad and sleeping bag in the back of the van and slept there! Great first day!
Monday, November 28, 2011
Baby Time!
It is quite cool and rainy here right now. Pretty much I spent the first two days here doing tedious data entry (I am happy to do it, but would obviously rather be doing something else.) But yesterday and today have been spent bottle feeding goats and feeding 3 week old puppies! They’re SO cute. There are 14 goats, all a few months old. Paige (another volunteer) and I feed four at a time because we do not have 7 hands each! They are bad goats, though, and like to jump on us and try to eat my hair. The amount of dirt and goat slobber on my shirt is amazing. They also like to randomly jump up and hit me with their front hooves. It doesn’t really hurt, but it can knock you off balance a bit. I also learned how to properly pick up a goat yesterday as we were trying to wrangle them back into their pen.
The puppies are SO cute. We had to weigh them and clip their claws yesterday so I got to hold them A LOT. They don’t quite know how to bark yet, so they kept making this grunting and squeaking noises that were really adorable. I got to pet them a lot and then watch them stumble around in the puppy paste we give them to eat. (It’s a combo of dry puppy food, water, and goats’ milk). They are ADORABLE but their mama looks so tired. By the end of yesterday, I was covered in goat milk, dirt, puppy paste, and probably a bit of pee from sitting on the ground of the puppy pen. Ew. But it was okay; I had a lot of fun helping out around the corral. The animals seem to be warming up to me nicely! Though… that might be because I keep giving them food. Haha.
The puppies are SO cute. We had to weigh them and clip their claws yesterday so I got to hold them A LOT. They don’t quite know how to bark yet, so they kept making this grunting and squeaking noises that were really adorable. I got to pet them a lot and then watch them stumble around in the puppy paste we give them to eat. (It’s a combo of dry puppy food, water, and goats’ milk). They are ADORABLE but their mama looks so tired. By the end of yesterday, I was covered in goat milk, dirt, puppy paste, and probably a bit of pee from sitting on the ground of the puppy pen. Ew. But it was okay; I had a lot of fun helping out around the corral. The animals seem to be warming up to me nicely! Though… that might be because I keep giving them food. Haha.
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