Week 7 - Tembe Camp

This camp is quite posh.  There are small cabins for each volunteer, a kitchen/living room area (with a TV – how nuts!), a separate toilet and shower area, an office area and a braie area.  There is loads of electricity, plenty of water (including hot water) and it’s all in the middle of a sand forest (most similar to Florida’s scrub).  The volunteers with me are Regena (21, Canada – with me during week 6 as well), Johannes “Doc” (19, Germany – with me during week 5 as well), Dustin (18, England) and Michael (18, Canada).  The permanent monitor for this park is Clinton, but he was only with us a couple of days and then had to leave to go on holiday, so Kevin (the relief monitor with us during week 6) came to camp on Wednesday to take us on the morning and evening drives.  There is also an elephant monitor here, Leonard, who works for the park and he takes us out on elephant monitoring sessions during the midafternoon.  With 3 monitoring sessions a day, life at camp is very busy.

The main focus of this camp is the lions and elephants.  Staff check on the prides and herds every day to make sure they stay inside the park.  Since Clinton was busy our first 2 days, we only went out with Leonard until Kevin arrived – but we had quite a sighting!  On our very first afternoon drive on Tuesday, we were sitting in a blind at a watering hole watching the elephants, when out of the bush comes Isilo – the biggest “tusker” in all of southern Africa! This animal was IMPRESSIVE.  Each tusk is estimated to weight about 150 pounds and a little over 11 feet in length.  He is estimated to be in his late 50’s, possibly early 60’s, which makes this a historic sighting since he is probably going to die of old age very soon (elephants don’t live much past 60ish).  We also had very cool sightings of suni antelope on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday evenings.  Suni are one of the, if not the, most endangered antelope in the world – they are also about the size of a small rabbit J.  There is only 1 pack of five wild dogs in this park and they are denning right now, so tracking them was easy as they stayed close to the den site, and we got a glimpse of 4 of them on Friday evening as they were returning to the den after hunting.

The lions here are also impressive.  They are some of the biggest in southern Africa and when they get close to the truck it makes you realize just how puny humans are.  We’ve been able to see them fairly regularly and we hear them roaring almost every night and morning.  We are anticipating a “call-up” in the coming week, which consists of a carcass tied to the back of the truck and using a distressed buffalo call to bring the lions in close to the vehicle.  This is done so the lions can be darted with a tranquilizer by the park veterinarian and then fitted with radio collars.  I’m hoping to be able to report back to y’all on that event if it happens next week J.

There aren’t many pictures this week due to a really slow internet connection, but hopefully next week I’ll be able to post more.

Love to you all,

Stef

Isilo - the biggest tusker in southern Africa.  He is AMAZING!!!!!

This is the only sighting of a suni that I was able to get a picture of.  We have seen them in daylight, but they are so small and fast that by the time I get the camera up they are gone.

One of the lions seen during the week.  I hope to get good pictures of the others - they are ENORMOUS!