African Dream: Week 5 - Hluhluwe Camp

Two new volunteers arrived on Monday, Johan (19, Germany) and Toby (21, Canada) – very nice boys with good sense of humor. Each of them has already been to two of the other parks I’ll be headed to in a couple of weeks, so it was nice to hear about the accommodations at the other camps.

Since this was my last week at the Hluhluwe camp, I spent a lot of time in the afternoons working on the GIS/data standardization, but Wednesday evening we were able to find the 2 dogs that got out of the park and then came back in. Then on Thursday morning, as we were taking a coffee/tea break in the bush, they walked right up on us! It was so cool to have them walk up to the vehicle and check us out and then they walked off and disappeared into the bush again. Then on Thursday and Friday evenings, the Crossroads pack of 7 wild dogs walked across the road in front of us while we were having our coffee/tea again! Apparently all you need to do to see wild dogs is break out the beverages J.

This week we were also able to setup cameras in the area where the female cheetah and cub were seen last week – 4 total. I’m looking forward to keeping up with Facebook to see what pictures come from them. I’ve also been concentrating on my bird watching skills this week. Some new noteworthy birds I’ve seen include the African harrier-hawk, African firefinch, white-browed scrub-robin, Kurrichane thrush and black-collared barbet.

Even though there aren’t many people at camp, we’ve had a chance to be pretty social. There is a group of girls here from Berkley University that I’ve gotten to know pretty well, so we decided to have a braie on Thursday night. We all had a great time with good food, funny conversation and a nice fire. Then on Friday night the boys, Cathy (our monitor and the program coordinator) and I had a nice dinner and played pyramide de la mort – good times with good people J. Then…this morning, on the way out of the park to go to town, we saw a large male lion walking along the side of the hill – roaring! So amazing.

Now I’m sitting in a hotel in town waiting to be picked up and transferred to the camp in the south side of the park, iMfolozi, until August 13^th. The monitor there is Antoine and I will get to see my old roommate, Claire, again. I’m looking forward to seeing the habitat differences between the north and south sides.

Love to you all!

Impala in the morning.