Week 4 - Hluhluwe Camp

This week has been more of the same – trying to find the dogs and looking out for other opportunistic sightings of species of interest.  We had a treat on Wednesday evening when we came across a female and adolescent cheetah – probably the same pair we’ve been seeing over the last 4 days.  They caused of bit of a traffic jam on the road, but we waited for all the other vehicles to leave and were able to see them attempt to hunt a young zebra – amazing, but we don’t know if they got the kill or not as the chase moved into the bush out of sight.  I have also taken on a personal pet project – a poo identification book.  Sometimes the only way you know an animal has been in the area is because of the poo they leave, and each animal has a different shape, size, color and consistency.  So…what better way to pull it all together than with a poo book – who knows, maybe I’ll be able to publish it J.

Our monitor, Marumo, left on Thursday for her 10 days off.  She and I had so much fun and laughed a lot together, it was sad to see her go and she will be dearly missed L.  On Friday we had an afternoon braie with the iMfolozi camp volunteers – it was nice to see Angela again (my roommate for the first 2 weeks) and find out how camp life is like in the south side of the park.  I found out that my schedule has changed slightly and I will be at Hluhluwe camp until August 3^rd and then I leave on the 4^th to drive to iMfolozi camp until August 12^th.  After that I head to Tembe, Mkuze and then finish off my time at Thanda.

Saturday was the annual park bike race event to raise money for wild dog and black rhino research.  We were supposed to assist in manning a table for wild dogs, but apparently they didn’t need us and we spent a lovely afternoon with folks from other parks in the area.  We watched the bike racers come in (the guy I bet on won J), watched a rugby game (Go Sharks!), drank beer, ate great food, danced and had an overall fun time with lots of laughter.  One of the guys I met is the ecologist at Mkuze, so it will be cool to work with him more once I get to that park in a few weeks.  We also had a great sighting of an uncollared wild dog pack – they were only ¼ mile from the race area and walked right down the road for all the event visitors to see, what a great opportunity for people donating to wild dog research to actually see the critter they are there to support.  It was an overall great success for the conservation of these 2 endangered species.

We did find out that 4 wild dogs from iMfolozi got out of the park boundary fence and 2 of them have found their way back into the park on the Hluhluwe side.  We spent Sunday afternoon trying to find them so staff can know which 2 are still outside of the park.  We found their collar signal, but wasn’t able to get a sighting on them.  We have also had some interesting elephant encounters this week in the camp area.  The camp is surrounded by a fence with electric lines to keep elephants out, however one section of the fence went down for a couple of days and in that window of time 4 bull elephants made their way into camp!  One of them apparently knows how to turn on the water spigot where we wash the vehicles.  It was wicked cool to watch him use the tip of his trunk to perform such a delicate task – now if they only knew how to turn off the water when they are done with it J.  We kept our distance while he made his way around camp, munching on the various trees, and eventually park staff was able to maneuver him out of the camp.  You never know what will happen in the bush!

Love to you all and talk to you again next week (nagidsm@gmail.com)! 

Adolescent cheetah seen nearby - it was chirping for its mom when we saw it.

We had a ton of giraffe sightings this week - one of the better looking of them :-).

Birds were everywhere these last 2 weeks.  This is a spectacled weaver - so colorful and curious.

Baby zebra - I love the fuzz on his back.

Three of the four dogs in the uncollared wild dog pack seen near the bike race event site.  

They came right up to the road, trotted down it for a bit and then laid down under the shade of a tree for the afternoon.

Bull elephant that made it's way into camp when the electric fence went down for a brief period of time.  Notice he is using his trunk to turn on the water spigot so he can drink.

Drinking water from the water spigot.

Munching on branches from a tree near our vehicle.  We couldn't leave camp for about an hour until he decided to move out of camp.  Luckily, the electric fence was able to be repaired this same afternoon so our camp is now elephant-free.