Aliens

On Wednesday, it was the usual 5.30am alarm call so we could be out by 6am to find the lions. The batteries were running down in the telemetry device, which didn't make the task any easier. The reserve doesn't really like guests to know that the animals have radio collars on and so whenever we see another vehicle on an early morning game drive, we have to hide the aerial that we point to try and pick up the signal of where the lions are. Then we radio to the other vehicles when we have found the lions and hopefully the guests assume it must be because of our incredible tracking skills. I reminded the game ranger that my surname is "Stalker" after all, so it sort of sounds like I know what I'm doing.

Lions found, we went off to do some weeding. The reserve refers to it as "clearing alien vegetation", which sounds over the top for a relatively mundane task but I find the background fascinating. Back in 1820, 4,000 British settlers arrived in Algoa Bay and on the wheels of the ox carts that they brought ashore, there were seeds from plants that subsequently took root in South Africa. These plants serve no real purpose - they can't be eaten by the animals and they suck more moisture from the drought-stricken soil than the indigenous ones. So the reserve is gradually trying to remove and replace them, as water conservation is a highly important issue. I am somewhat amused by the poetic justice of it all, that I am here as a British volunteer some 200 years later pulling out plants that were introduced by my fellow countrymen. One of the game rangers commented that he is always happy to see British volunteers doing this.

Just a few more to go..

As a reward for the hot and sweaty hard labour, we took a relaxed drive around the reserve in the afternoon and I managed to see some of the animals that I hadn't come across so far - elephants, giraffe, zebra. But it's not just idle observation. We have to ID the giraffes as part of a research programme on the reserve. We have a booklet with black and white photos of unique markings on the left flank of each giraffe that are used to identify them. Peering through the binoculars, we try to match each giraffe we come across to the reference photo and then note its location. It was not easy! We had to give up on one of them, because it kept moving around and wouldn't present its left side to us. I hope they don't get me counting stripes on the zebras next week.

Can I see your ID please?

We then drove right over to the other side of the reserve, where the Bushman's river runs through. The river bed is dry in some parts in the summer, but you can still get a sense of how beautiful it is. There is also an area where you can camp out in the reserve, which we are planning to do next week along with some canoeing down the river. It took us over an hour to return back through the reserve to the main entrance which gives you an idea of how vast it is, although our passage was reasonably slow on the bumpy dirt tracks.