African Dream: Week 2 - Hluhluwe Camp

This week has been better than last week. I got to talk to Eric from the internet café in town on Monday, so at least every Monday I get to call home when we go to town to go grocery shopping. The girls and I had a really fun day that day. After shopping we went to the hotel in the park to have dinner with our monitor, Marumo. The meal was fantastic and the hotel staff was so fun – dancing and singing. Marumo even joined in and taught us a local dance back at camp. It was fun to just chillax (as Angela would say) with the girls and let loose a bit. The next morning was very cool with amazing sightings of the wild dog pack we are tracking and seeing an adult cheetah walking and resting – warthogs were so close to the cheetah we were hoping for a kill, but it seemed more interested in sleeping J. The rest of the week was more of the usual and some cool bird sightings – lilac-breasted roller, African harrier hawk, white-backed vultures, red-billed hornbills and a couple of new critters – hyena and kudu (this pic is for you Erin J) - sorry Steve, I have yet to see any kind of reptile. There was one bad thing that happened at the park this week – 3 white rhinos were poached and the horns taken. We were able to locate the location of the rhinos, but we never saw them – just smelled the decay and saw the vultures circling overhead.

Friday we had a day off and went to the town of St. Lucia, which is right on the Indian Ocean. Had a great time visiting a local craft market, taking a 2 hour boat ride on the Mhkuze River, eating locally grown mussels for lunch and then checking out the beach for a bit. On the boat ride we saw hippos, crocodiles, vervet monkeys and loads of birds. The yellow sand beach was beautiful and the Indian Ocean has Caribbean blue water. The ocean was actually pretty warm considering this is the winter season – the Mozambique current flows close and keeps the temperature warmer than other parts of the ocean. Then…I was putting my feet in the ocean and my phone was in my pants pocket, as I turned around to walk out of the surf, a big wave came and splashed me before I could get back up the beach and got my phone wet! Argh……my luck with electronics is just not very good these days. So, back to town today to try to figure out how to get a new phone and USB modem for my laptop.

We’ve also had some fun social stuff with the other researchers here at camp. Saturday night the Spanish researchers made everyone arroz con pollo and sangria – so delicious, but made it a little hard to get up at 5am the next day J. Also, on Sunday night we pulled our meat together and had a BBQ (called a ‘brie’ here) – also a really fun time and good way to say goodbye to the girls. Sarah, Marion and Anglea left this morning. I get to stay in Hluhluwe for 2 more weeks to get all the data setup on my laptop so I can start my GIS work and then I move to the next camp at the end of the month. Unfortunately, the next camp is not as nice as this one (power and water are limited) and I won’t get to keep up with the Olympics, so I’d love to hear from y’all about how the good ole U S of A is doing.

Love you all and talk to you again next Monday!

Adult male cheetah laying in the grass near the road.

He got up and walked around a bit, marking the grass with urine.

Hippos seen in the Mhkuze River when we went to St. Lucia on Friday.

Spotted hyena seen one morning - we hear them all the time calling during the night.

Adult female kudu - they don't like to have their picture taken so they are always far away from us and usually running away.

Adult male nyala - these ungulates are EVERYWHERE. We've seen more nyala than impala.

Lilac-breasted roller - one of my favorite African birds.

African wild dogs - this is the main pack we track every day. There are 7 of them in the pack and 2 that have collars. You can see the collar on the one on the left - his name is Bala.