uMkhuze dag 12: A long day.

Vrijdag 2-11-2018

uMkhuze dag 12:   A long day.

Dieren vandaag gezien / Animals spotted:

·         Impala

·         Cheetah (boma)

·         Blue wildebeest

·         African wild dog

·         Thick tailed bushbaby

·         Zebra

At 4 am Teegan and I left to go on our morning session. It was still dark but it didn’t rain. This improved my mood. We drove to the beacon to check for the signals and after this we changed our plan a little. There was a signal for MLF2 in the north of the park. We found out MLM7 was probably with her as well. We did a triangulation because they were hiding in the bush and we couldn’t get to them. After being finished with this we started going for the male dogs. They too were resting in the bush we waited for a while but they didn’t move. Then looking for the females. We found there signal, triangulated them but didn’t go looking for them. They were to far away. In the mean time I felt a few raindrops, not again ☹. Trying to get everything covered up so it wouldn’t get wet. While scanning I had a look at the sky. Wow what was it pretty. Different layers of clouds on top of each other with a clear blue sky behind it.

Back to the male dogs. They were still in the same place. We’ve waited here for over an hour but they didn’t move. In the mean time I enjoyed the sun. The rain didn’t push true and it was getting nice and warm by this time. I just loved it. We left here around 8.20 am and checked on MCM22. He was there off course but he was looking straight at us. Now I could really see the difference in his eyes. He has some sort of cataract but his vision is good enough to leave it this way.

We arrived back at camp just after 9 am. I went straight to bed and woke up around 1.15 pm. A nice and long sleep.

For this afternoons session we (Emilie, Pascal and me) left at 4 pm. Megan will be our monitor from now on. We were going to look for the dogs. We picked up signal close to camp in the holiday camp. We only had to drive around for 10 minutes to find them. They were obvious looking for food. They hopped in and out of the bush. We didn’t see them for long. After we lost them from our sight we kept looking for a while. When they were in the bush where we couldn’t reach them we tried to find the lions from this morning. No luck here. Then the female dogs. We looked for them for a while as well. But no luck here either. We checked the other signals from the beacon and then went back to camp. I was pleased with this because I had a huge headache.

When we arrived the fire was going and the table with booze was ready to go. Teegan and Aaron had done a good job. Some other people joined us for this party; Eduard, PJ and Kate. It was a lovely fire they made and the food was alright. The night went on and the booze was flowing. After a while we went inside where the others played drinking games. Some of them got sick. Which wasn’t a surprise. I can’t believe people can go over their own limits just because there is alcohol and peer pressure.