Second Blog from Africa

Hard to believe two weeks have already gone by.  The weather has been much hotter and drier this week.  We have been working a little bit more and game driving a little bit less.  We are up to 10 volunteers on location now.  We had two ladies join us. One is from Ireland and one is from England. I thought I would include a few landscape pictures this week to give you a feel for the area.

 We visited the local township school on Thursday.  Only ninth, eighth, and seventh graders were in attendance.  I spent the morning with the ninth graders and taught some math and science.  The students’ skill level was equivalent to the third grade at home.  Most of them struggled with simple addition. These children have one pen, one tablet, and no books

I finally got to teach math and science

We went on a short night game drive. This picture was taken at 6400 ISO and lighting was provided by a spot light so the quality wasn’t the best.  But the lions are more active at night. Check out the pictures below this one to see the lions during the day

This is a picture was taken from the front yard of the volunteer lodge.

Sunset from our lodge

A wide variety of animals can be seen across the reserve.

The bull elephant.  About 6000 pounds of gentle giant unless you get too close.

This is close enough.

The bull from a safer distance

Sunrise on an early morning game drive

This is the king of the jungle. After feasting on a kill the lions lie on their backs because their stomachs are too full.

This cub is the only one not sleeping this morning.

We saw are first black rhino this week. They spend most of their time in the bushes.  They have a shorter head then white rhinos.  The coloring is the same between white rhinos and black rhinos. This guy looks like he is smiling for the camera.

The game reserve cuts the horns on some of their white rhinos to discourage poaching. Over 20 rhinos have already been killed in South Africa this year by poachers.

This Caracal is hard to see through the grasses. They are members of the lynx family. Their ears are very long.

Dragon Fly

A pair of Zebras just because I like the picture.

Cape Glossy Starling

Burchell’s Coucal

Coming for a closer view of those strange people with the cameras

Steppe Buzzard

John really wanted to get this picture of these mushrooms.  There are growing in dung and I think John is lying in dung to get the shot.

Paint Brush Flower

A Rock Dassie, which is supposed to be the closest living relative of an elephant.

The elephants like prickle pear cactus and thorny bushes.  The needles don’t seem to bother them.

That’s all for this week.  Let me know if there is anything you would like to see a picture of.  I am still looking for my first leopard in the wild. 

Good morning from Kariega Game Reserve in South Africa.  We have seen lots of wildlife in only three days and we haven’t been worked too hard.  There are eight volunteers on site, four Americans, one Swiss, one Australian, and two Canadians. Day one was spent driving across the about 60% of the reserve to change the batteries and memory card in game cameras.  So this was primarily a game drive day.  Six of my favorite pictures from this day are below. This is just a sample of the 450 pictures I took on the first day.

 A lion cub that was born this year.

 A young lion that is a year old

 A Kudu ram with two does

 Blesbuck Antelope

 A Burchells Zebra resting after a hard day

 Day two as a volunteer was another grinding day.  We had more game cameras that needed batteries changed.  So another extensive game drive was in order.  Five of my favorite pictures from this day are below.

A Black Backed Jackal 

 A young giraffe with mom

 A cute baby elephant

 Three elephants out of the 26 elephant herd

 This elephant decided our vehicle needed a push

 

Day three was our first day of hard word.  But it took us two hours to get to the job site because of a traffic jam and poor road conditions.  Our first route was blocked by White Rhinos that refused to leave the road. So we had to back down the road and take our second route.  After the front end of the Land Cruiser sank up to the frame in a mud hole we abandoned this route. Our third route got us to the job site.  Our assignment was to chop down an invasive species called Waddle with machetes that didn’t hold an edge so it was like whacking at a tree with a butter knife.  

Rhino road block

 Don’t even think about coming this way

 A nursery of Impalas

 John Miller and an Ostrich that would leave us alone

A Trumpeter Hornbill

 

That is all for this post.  Let me know what kind of pictures you would like to see in future post.