South Africa 2012: Days 9 and 10

I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, I promise! I was snowed under with revision, then exams, then trying to get myself back to some semblance of sanity after exams were over, then I've been sucked in to millions of hours on duty with St John, and I'm finally just about getting back to normal (just in time to move back home!). But more on all of this in a separate post...
For now, back to the last couple of posts about my trip to South Africa way back in January :)


Day 9: Wednesday 11th January 2012

Forgot to mention my horrific sunburn from the beach yesterday - it isn't actually that bad but considering how little time my skin was exposed for (literally about 45 minutes, if even that) I'm surprised how badly I burnt. I've got definite marks from my tankini straps and the top edge of my tankini top on my back, and my scalp is really burnt. The burn on my scalp is the owrst because it's blistered and weepy and gross, but I'm hoping the burn on my back will go away soon if I put aftersun on it (it did, it didn't linger like most other times I've been sunburnt and it was pretty much gone within a couple of days with hardly any pain). I feel so stupid for being so careful about sun cream and my hat, then letting my guard down for less than an hour and getting my first sunburn of the trip.

Today was spent driving to Addo. We were driving along the Garden Route, which is a really picturesque coastal route along the southernmost coast of South Africa. The drive was 10 hours long, and I managed to sleep most of the way which on one hand was good as it made the journey go quicker, but on the other hand was a bit annoying as it meant I missed most of the beautiful views.

We stopped lots of times along the way, refuelling with grape Fanta (which is really nice but also has a really artificial taste to it) and food bought in supermarkets and petrol stations we stopped at. In the countries I've visited so far in my life, one of the main things I've learnt is that you can buy Pringles basically everywhere...

Beautiful views of the mountains while we were driving to Addo. At first I was slightly sad that I wasn't on the side of the minibus that was facing the sea, but the views of the mountains on my side of the bus more than made up for that :)

We eventually arrived at Addo Elephant National Park at about 6pm. It's a really nice place, much posher than the last place we stayed, but it's obviously highly tourist orientated and it's got a huge camp site so there are a lot more people staying here though. We get our own little "section" for our tent which is nice, and we've got a bench with a plug socket next to it and a tree to sit under for some much needed shade. There's decent showers here again which is nice, although as the camp site's bigger I can see there being huge queues for them. There's also a pretty big gift show here, and it's got a supermarket-type section at the back too, so I'll be able to add a bit more variety to my diet and escape from the stodge!

Addo!

When we arrived all the tents were taken out of the back of the luggage van for us to collect, but one group of arsehole boys decided it would be funny to steal our tent and leave us theirs - typically, this would be the group that had their tent broken into on the first day in De Hoop (the one where a mango was left lying in the middle of the floor...), so the front door to the tent is basically destroyed and there's a huge gaping hole in it (so we'll get loads of mozzies in tonight), a baboon has pissed on the floor so it stinks, and the boys left loads of toenail clippings and rubbish all over the floor. So gross.  But at least we managed to put the tent up properly this time as we had more space, so it actually touches the floor this time but it didn't in De Hoop...

HUGE cricket/grasshopper thing that we found outside the Addo Visitor Centre toilets. Haven't attempted to ID this yet, if anyone else can work out which species this is I'd love to find out :)

Off for a game drive at 5.50am tomorrow. I never expected to be getting up at 5am every day on this trip, but my body's really getting used to it now so it's not as much of a struggle as it would be otherwise.I'm really looking forward to seeing lots more animals, especially elephants (the animals that this park was set up to protect).

Day 10: Thursday 12th January 2012

Went on 2 game drives this morning - one before and one after breakfast. I saw zebra (Burchells zebra, a different species to the ones I saw at De Hoop), warthogs (which actually look pretty funny in real life, and they're a lot more ginger than I was expecting!), meerkats (which we got pretty close to, there was a group of them running and playing, it was so sweet), and the definite highlight of the drive this morning, was seeing loads and loads of elephants at one of the watering holes.

Kudu hiding in the scrub

Kudu! (we ate one of these in a rather tasty stir fry for dinner one night)

What I saw for basically the rest of my time in SA - the view from the minibus

Meerkat!

This is what a real-life meerkat looks like when it's not dressed up in gentlemen's clothes on a series of really irritating adverts...

Buffalo

Addo Flightless Dung Beetle, which is native to this area of SA

Weaver bird nests - these hang from trees

Southern Chanting Goshawk. Very proud of this photo, considering it was taken with a simple point-and-shoot rather than a fancy DSLR that a lot of other people in the group had.

A two-headed zebra? :P

 

You can apparently tell the difference between certain species of zebra by the size of their stripe over their bum! Some, like these, have a narrow stripe (like a thong), and another species has a wide stripe (like granny pants). HAven't yet managed to find further proof of this anywhere online, or what species has wich stripe width, but I will investigate further and report back later.

 

ELEPHANTS!!!

The park makes these watering holes artificially to ensure that the animals in the park always have a supply of water, but this one was surrounded by roads so came across as being put in more for the convenience of the tourists (and to guarantee them their precious sighting of one of the big 5) than for the convenience of the animals. That being said, it was still amazing to see so many elephants in one place - elephants are social animals so you're always likely to see more than one at a time anyway, but there must have been at least 2 groups there because there were probably more than 50 individuals. The matriarch (mother, head of the group) from  a group was also there, and I was really surprised at how much bigger she was than all of the others - elephants are big animals anyway, but she was HUGE, easily a good 2 or 3 metres taller than the others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The matriarch, surrounded by other adults.

 

Bath time :)

A lovely reassuring sign...

 

Mummy and baby warthogs :)

 

After the second game drive we were given some free time, the first we've had on this trip! I went to the shop to get some souvenirs, and decided to do some washing afterwards, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake. It's been about 38 degrees Celsius today and yesterday, so when I was doing my washing I was standing in a dark room with the door completely open to let air in, yet I was still sweating more than I ever have in my life when I was simply standing still. Obviously doing my washing made me even hotter, but it needed to be done otherwise I would have run out of wearable clothes tomorrow...

Lunch was sandwiches containing some kind of orange highly processed cheese stuff (stuff is literally the only word I can think of to describe it, as much as it tried to be it was definitely nothing resembling cheese), plus an assortment of other odd bits and pieces including some really chewy energy bars. Not impressed. Take me back to the lunches at De Hoop!

Another game drive after lunch so we could do a practical on distance sampling. The idea was for us to get an estimate of the biodiversity and biomass of larger herbivores in the park by driving along the road and counting how many animals we saw, what size they were and how far away from us they were. From that, plus the distance we travelled, we were supposed to be able to calculate the herbivore biomass in the park. It was actually really difficult, and the results from each of the groups were all pretty widely varied.The lady who's filming us for the course promo video decided to interview me while we were doing the sampling, and she had to turn the air conditioning off in the minibus to make sure that she could pick up my voice properly in the recording, which made the temperature in the bus rocket (it must have been at least 42 degrees Celsius in there...) - I bet I look highly attractive, sweating buckets and stumbling over my words (I've been included in the video, so when I post that after I've finished my diary posts you'll be able to see how truly awful I look haha).

Tonight's group discussion was on the distance sampling method. I think we all agreed that it was a bit shit, but it's actually a really widely used technique - there's flaws in every method you use, and this one has many pros including that it's cheap, easy to do and easy to repeat, so I can see why it's used a lot.

Dinner tonight was carrot soup, chicken pasta, chocolate mousse and ice cream. Yay, a varied meal with relatively little stodge! And yay, nice dessert!

Tomorrow we're going for a long hike up a mountain - we're being dropped off at the top then hiking our way back up. I'm literally dreading it, we're starting the hike at 7am I think so it's going to get hotter and hotter as the hike goes on - as I've been sweating loads just standing still for the past couple of days, that kind of heat plus hiking up a mountain is going to be unbearable...

South Africa 2012: Days 7 and 8

Day 7: Monday 9th January 2012

Not much to write about a today was pretty boring and repetitive, and entirely spent in the courtyard collecting data from the grasshoppers. Thankfully we got along a lot better today - there was not shutting me out, I was listened to and we had a laugh. It was quite a frustrating day as it felt like we were doing so much work and getting so few results - a lot of grasshoppers kept escaping on gusts of wind before we could even measure them, some we couldn't recapture and some we only got 2 data points for (not the 3 we needed) before they disappeared. They're really hard to spot and capture, even on the concrete, because they're surprisingly well camouflaged.

We finished data collection at 6pm and I went and had a shower before dinner at 7pm. When C and I got back to the tent we discovered we'd been babooned again - baboons came in yesterday and caused no damage other than ripping a hole in the mosquito net in the big door, but today they ripped another hole and stole A's carton of juice that she'd left on the tent floor. We found it outside with the lid off and the juice spilled everywhere.

Dinner tonight was stir fry - I'd just been saying earlier in the day how much I would love a stir fry to make a change from all the stodge we've been having since we got here!

Just realised I've forgotten to mention the species I've seen! I've seen some Cape Mountain zebras, ostriches, baboons, bontebok, eland and probably some others I've forgotten. The zebra were definitely my favourite - it's so amazing to see them in the wild where they belong, and it's finally sinking in that I'm actually in Africa!

Back to this evening... We've spent most of the evening in the dinner hall trying to do the stats for our poster and presentation tomorrow. I think we've been really over-thinking it though so we all decided to give up and try again first thing tomorrow morning. We have to have our poster finished by 12 before we go on a dune walk and for a swim in the sea, then between 4 and 5pm we have time to practice our presentation before we have to give it to the rest of the group at some point between 5 and 7pm. We're having a wine tasting afterwards which I'm really looking forward to.

There's been a wedding going on in the garden by the restaurant tonight so we've been having fun listening to the music. They've got fairy lights and spherical paper lanterns hung from the trees which looks so beautiful. The couple got married on the beach earlier on in the day. Sounds perfect - I'd love it if my own wedding was like this!

Off to bed now as yet another early start tomorrow... my body's getting used to 5am starts now so it's waking up automatically at that time :(


Day 8: Tuesday 10th January 2012


Up and in the dinner room by 6am this morning to finish the stats for our presentation about our project. The other girls in my group basically took over most of it so I had nothing to do when I'd finished the bit I was doing, so I attempted to start the poster but it sounded like they didn't agree with what I wanted to do so I gave up as I didn't want a repeat of Sunday.

We eventually got our poster and stats finished before lunch and decided to write our speeches after we got back from the beach.

We picked up lunch bags and drove down to the sand dunes.  I still can't get over how white the sand is - when we first drove in to De Hoop I thought it was snow on top of mountains! (yes, I really am that stupid sometimes...) It was so nice to be able to take my shoes and socks off and walk barefoot in the smooth, warm sand. Everyone lined up along the top of a dune and we walked along so we could have a group photo taken and be filmed for a promo video being made for the course (which is coming up in a post soon!). Somehow I ended up at the front and people were shouting instructions at me from the back of the line but I had no idea what they were saying so I think I made a bit of a fool of myself.... The next photo opportunity was making us all roll down a giant sand dune which was really fun, up until the moment when someone kicked me in the head and I ended up nearly being sick from the mouthful of sand I ended up with. I was really dizzy by the time I reached the bottom too - I was surprised how dizzy rolling down  hill sideways made me!

 

We then headed on to the beach where we were going to swim - it was a little sheltered pool so hopefully the sharks and jellyfish should be kept out! Lots of people got in and wan straight out, but I was quite happy to bob about in the shallows with another girl as neither of us are brilliant swimmers. There were lots of rocks in the pool so it was really difficult to stay safely in one place without risking grazing/cutting your legs or getting your foot trapped under a rock. The waves were really strong and quite a few times I got carried a good few metres towards the beach by them, and once I even got completely washed ashore by a big wave! It was a lot of fun but too soon it was time to head back to the camp for project presentations.

African Oystercatchers

 

We got our speeches written and headed outside to the lawn/courtyard next to the restaurant and sat under one of the huge trees to do our presentations. Thankfully the lecturers had put us into 2 big groups so we didn't have to sit through about 25 presentations! My project group went second; I'm so glad we got it out of the way as otherwise I wouldn't have been able to concentrate until it was done. I think I did quite well as I made sure I didn't just read from my script and I think I gave a good answer to the question I was asked. It was interesting seeing everyone else's projects too - a lot of people did the same or similar things on bonteboks or proteas or insect diversity in dung but I think ours was the only manipulative experimental study and the only one about grasshoppers or a single insect family.

Giving our presentation about our project. I'm on the left.

After the presentations we had a wine tasting. A couple of women from Strandveld vineyards came down, and they brought 3 white and 3 red wines for us to try. I really liked the first white wine, which was First Sighting sauvignon blanc - it was nice and fruity. The second white was way too dry for my liking, and the third was nice as it wasn't as dry but it still wasn't as nice as the first. I didn't like any of the reds - I don't think my palate is refined enough yet! (they also told us one of the reds had a chocolate taste to it, but I definitely tasted no chocolate and thought they all tasted like mud...)

After dinner I headed to bed fairly early because we've got another early start tomorrow to pack up tents ready to leave for Addo at 7am. I don't think I've had a lie in once on this trip! It's a long drive to Addo - probably 10 hours - so I'm sure I'll spend most of the journey asleep, but we'll be travelling along the Garden Route, the really picturesque coastline of southern South Africa, so I'll try my best to stay awake to make the most of the views!

South Africa 2012: Days 3 and 4

Day 3 - Thursday 5th January 2012

I got up nice and early this morning to go shark watching. We left at 7.10am to go to a town near Gansbaai, and it took about an hour to get there. When we arrived we sat around for a while before hacing a safety briefing about the boat trip. We were told we could dive in the shark cage which would have been amazing, but then one of the lecturers said we couldn’t as the uni insurance won’t allow it. Understandable but still disappointing.

People seriously need to be told not to touch the sharks?!

 We got on board the boat, and I sat downstairs at the front. As we were pulling away from the shore I saw my first seal! It dived back into the water just as the boa went past. The waves were huge just as we left the shore and it felt like the boat was literally leaping out of the water!

It took about 10 minutes to get out to the location where the boat crew dropped the baited shark cage. We then sailed for another 10 minutes or so across to Dyer Island where there was a massive seal colony. They were literally covering the rocks and there were loads in the water too. There must’ve been literally hundreds of them! They didn’t seem at all phased by the boat as they stayed where they were as we floated past. They were making funny noises and they smell weird – more like a farm than a seal colony! We spotted a few more penguins and Cape Cormorants as we headed back to the shark cage.

Hundreds of Cape Cormorants

Hundreds of seals!

Seals in the water :D

 

When we got back to the cage, the boat crew threw in a rubber float in the shape of a seal which they used as a lure, and a float with tuna heads on it which was used as bait. The lure and bait were both attached to ropes, and they crew kept pulling the ropes in and throwing them back out to draw the sharks in.

After about 10 minutes, the first sharks appeared. At first they were just swimming around the boat so we just saw the tops of their fins, but after a while the boat crew started pulling the bait and lure out of the water as the shark went to bite them to encourage them to jump out of the water. The sharks were fairly small – well, they were about 3m long so pretty big, but not as big as I’d expected. It was really cool seeing their faces too as they jumped out of the water. At one point a shark grabbed onto the lure and didn’t want to let go. It started shaking its head, as if it were killing some prey. At one point there were 2 sharks swimming around the boat. They were coming really close to where we were sitting which was amazing.


I did think all of this was a bit cruel though – we were winding the sharks up and drawing them in to where they wouldn’t normally be. One of the sharks was also missing the top of its dorsal fin because it had been bitten off by another shark when they were baiting them in.

Poor shark with its fin tip missing :(

 

The one picture I managed to get of a shark's face

We had to end the trip after about 3 hours as a lot of people were getting really violently seasick. Luckily (based on some previous very nasty experiences!) I took a seasickness tablet so I was fine.

We got back to land and headed back to the campsite. I decided to go on an optional walk to the fynbos at Fernkloof nature reserve. It was baking hot because we got there at about 2.30pm and we’d hardly walked anywhere before I felt sweaty and gross – I don’t know how I’m going to survive a proper fynbos walk tomorrow!

Flamingoes!

 

 

Helmeted guinea fowl

We’ve got to be up and completely packed by 7.10am tomorrow (including taking the tent down) before the second group leave to go to the sharks so we’re ready to move to the next camp at De Hoop. I’m looking forward to going there because there’s apparently lots more wildlife that we can see from the camp.

It still hasn’t quite sunk in that I’m in Africa. Hopefully going to De Hoop and seeing all the cool animals will make it feel more real!


Day 4 - Friday 6th January 2012

Just about managed to get up and get the tent packed for our 7am deadline – one girl in my group took forever to pack her bag, then she got really antsy because we were running late packing up the tent and it was running very slightly into breakfast time, so she disappeared with 2 other girls from our group to go and have breakfast leaving me and the only other person in the group to finish packing the tent. It was really difficult and I got so frustrated. I’m not letting her do that when we move to the camp at Addo!

After breakfast we had a couple of hours free to relax in the sunshine before we had to leave at 9am to go to the fynbos at Fernkloof.

A lovely lady called Pat was our guide on the walk. She was probably about 70 years old yet she was so fit and active and bounded up the hills, showing us interesting plants along the way. We started the walk at the bottom of a mountain and walked up to a small mountain peak. It was very tiring and it was baking hot in the sunshine. When we got to the top of the mountain though it was so worth it – the views were amazing, out across the fynbos and out to sea. The walk back down the mountain was nice and a lot easier than the way up! We stopped in a little forested area that had once had a waterfall, but they fynbos is having a severe drought so it had pretty much dried up. There was a little pool at the bottom still though – it had loads of frogs in it and I even spotted a crab just before we left (it was literally a big puddle so the fact that there was a crab living in it amazed me!).

Paths snaking their way up the mountains

These are called "seven year flowers" by the local people - the fynbos has so little water that all the plants that live there have had to adapt so they don't die. These flowers have so little water in them that the petals are bone dry and feel like plastic, so you can cut some and keep them for years without them losing their colour :)

 

We finished our walk at 12 and set off to meet the group that went to the sharks. We were driving for about 6 hours – we stopped at a Super Spar for snacks for our week at De Hoop and for a toilet break. We kept stopping along the way to look at birds, eland, rhebok, yellow mongoose and other things. At one point, just after the Super Spar, we turned down a road and suddenly stopped – there was a massive bush fire just ahead, and even as we were parked up at the side of the road while the lecturers decided what to do the fire got ever closer, rapidly getting to within less than 100m of us! We turned around sharpish and headed in the opposite direction.

A couple of hours into the drive the roads turned from tarmac into dirt, rocky roads. It was really bumpy and dusty in the van but I got used to it after a while. I think I even managed to fall asleep a few times. We had an interesting incident on some train tracks on the way... the train tracks on the dirt roads don’t have barriers or proper level crossings so you just have to look and drive. We were just driving over a level crossing when a car overtook at high speed and beeped its horn, and I’m pretty sure my heart missed a beat because I thought we were about to get annihilated by a train. Definitely one of the scariest moments of my life!

We eventually arrived at De Hoop at about 6pm and set about finding a pitch for our tent and putting the tent up. Somehow we managed to pitch the tent badly, probably because we were in a confined space, so the bottom was too big for the top and the sides didn’t peg to the floor correctly. I’ve had to put all my food and my shampoo in one of the vans because there are baboons that roam the campsite and we don’t want to attract them in with offers of food or mango scented shampoo! The showers and toilets here are so much nicer than at the last place – the toilets have toilet roll and the showers have lights and a little changing area in each cubicle – the last place had none of these things!

Bontebok

Baboooons! They'll become my best friends during this trip...

A proper "Africa tree", like something in The Lion King. Definitely starting to sink in that I'm in Africa now!

We had a discussion this evening about speciation and how it occurs in fynbos plants when there’s very poor soil and little water. It was quite interesting and I actually managed to say stuff for a change (we’ve had lots of assessed discussions this year and I normally always end up in a group with loudmouths who never bloody shut up meaning I can’t get a word in edgeways, which has lead to a lot of very poor marks this year and taken any chance of getting a first out of my reach). Another bright and early start tomorrow morning to go and explore De Hoop and see what’s out there – fingers crossed I see some cool things!