Well for all those who are interested in knowing, I just took my second exam and I feel like I did pretty good. The questions I missed was “what is binomial nomeclature” ? and “which animal kills the most people a year”, as well as a  few others but not very many. It feels good to get all the information behind me for the time being. Now we have the rest of the day off to do whatever we please, I think ill work on my tan, lol and deff try to convince myself to run. Maybee a movie perhaps? …. anyways I now have the next 7days off to do what I please, 4 of the people from my group are headed to Swaziland, the locals are headed back to their villages or to do guide at moholoho and the rest of us are packing up all our gear and are headed through the panoramic route through all of Kruger National Park!! so I am deff going to see some bloody cats! we have a different place booked each night so there will be plenty to see!!

This morning was pretty basic, just 8am class where we went over questions and answers for our big exam tomorrow and we went over some health and safety precautions and presentations. After class we had lunch and took a group picture by the land rovers. Apart from that I have just been studying really hard today, tomorrow is going to be tough, lots of information to learn, so wish me luck!! Crazy enough our first 7 days off is in a few days!! man time is going by fast.

Hello to all !! Today was a pretty normal day we went out on our 6am drive and within minutes saw 4 white rhinos grazing for food. This is pretty rare around these parts but not as rare as the black rhino which is highly endangered. The rhino we saw were quite surprised to see us come right up behind them so they ended up running away to avoid us since it happend to be  a group of females who wanted to protect a young calf. Rhino running through the bush is pretty loud by the way, it sounds like loud crashing , branches breaking, floor rumbling, its pretty intimidating. After we had scared them off by stalking them, we decided to push on. We drove to the watering hole  where we saw a mother and baby hippo out of the water which is a good thing to see since they spend most of their time in the water during the day. When we pulled up the sound of our brakes startled the hippos as well as a troop of baboons who had slept on the steep rocky cliff by the watering hole. The hippos slowly but surely went back into the water and we drove off. On our drive we closely approached a large male bull elephant who was eating from a tree. You would never believe how something so large can just show up out of nowhere!! we sat and watched him from a safe distance for about 20 minutes and then reversed back a couple hundred feet to have our tea and breakfast break. Like usual we had a  hard boiled egg, green apple and a couple of sandwiches made with cold cheese and butter, but food is food and we were definitely all very hungry. After we ate we got back into our land rover and headed back to school. Sean found this to be  a perfect time to try a new road that we had never used before made up of huge and I mean huge rocks, we got stuck a couple times but managed to get through with nothing 2 severe just severe bruises on my legs from hitting the seat and bar in front of me and whiplash in my neck. I got to take a video of it but it would probably make you sick if I showed it. As we were driving we saw a couple of trees filled with 3 different species of vulture which was highly unusual so we figured they were overlooking a kill, but it turns out they all came to this area to thermoregulate and gain heat from the sun. When we got back to school we sat around for a couple hours wondering why  the other group hadnt returned? When they got back they told us they took so long because they spotted a big male lion sleeping under a bush!! Man was I upset , I have been here for a month now and have not seen any cats!! I was almost turned off looking at all the awesome pictures everyone got.

Next week I am backpacking the Kruger park  for 7 days so hopefully I will see some then, I’m guessing iI will get an encounter I will never forget by the looks of it!

today was an interesting day, luckily we got to sleep in until 6:30 which was a treat, but i ended up waking up at 5am and couldnt go back to sleep , so i decided to take a run around the campus, when i got back i showered and headed to breakfast where I ate 3 pieces of toast and a bowl of special k with loads of sugar in it to give me a little kickstart. Mark( the head guide of bushwise) was at our campus today to give us a lecture on rifle use and how it works. It was very detailed and we literally have to know every single thing about a rifle from primer ignition, powder burning and barrel time to the parts of a gun and bullet including extractor groove, flash hole, rim, claw, magazine spring and so on. We even have to learn the ballistic coefficient and sectional density as well as the bullets flight path and gravity rate and trajectory. It was enough to make me crazy but thank goodness we arent being tested on it in this Saturday’s exam!! thanks to Mark!! after our gun talk we headed off to lunch and came back to the class to do our presentations, I did mine on the lion. Then we were shown a very detailed video on how to track and hunt down an elephant. I was deffinately turned off by the sight of beautiful gentle creature getting a shot to the brain and collapsing, but i guess thats part of our training and understanding from all the aspects.  Well gotta go early morning game drive!!

2 close for comfort

Well today started off pretty nervewrecking for me, and I think everyone knows why, yes I was first up to drive the land rover at 6am when i could barely hold my head up. When i got in the car I felt a million different things going through my head and on top of that i had to do another pre trail brief which i was not expecting, i couldnt remember a thing because i was so focused on what i was taught by jeremy and dustin about stick shift. After my brief where i only missed  ”please no flash photography” I started the car and btw the steering wheel was on the other side and you even had to turn the igniton on backwards and manage the stick with your left hand!! I stalled out the first 3 times and accidentally short circuted the whole vehicle a few times when I tried to go straight from 4th gear to 2nd gear( whoops) but after that I did pretty well, we didnt really see that much when i was driving and all i could pay attention to was the road. After breakfast which consisted of cheese and butter bread sandwhich, apple and hard boiled egg and lunch which was chicken and pasta we headed back towards the school kinda bummed out because we hadnt seen much. Just as we were pullin back in we noticed a huge herd of elephant in the distance. Nellie and Sean found this to be a perfect opportunity to practice what we had learned about animal behaviours so they told the two people on the tracker seat to get in the vehicle and they switched drivers because we arent that experienced. They warned us that we are going to get very close to the elephant and do not move a muscle and dont make any sounds! I figured they were over exaggerating and was like yeah yeah yeah lets just go already, man was I in for a big suprise!! First Seans vehicle pulled up with haulf the students to test the herds patience, then when it was all clear we pulled up right behind them and switched off our vehicles, once you switch off your vehicle there is no turning them back on because this could scare the hell out of the herd and this would be really bad for us! as we sat there flashing photo after photo of the herd and babies eating the elephants moved in closer and closer and closer till they surrounded our vehicles, never before have you ever felt such a huge prescense so close to you! At any minute everything could go wrong, but we were there now and there was no turning back. One of the curious males decided to come right in front of our vehicle and get a good sniff and feel for what we were. It stood there so long looking at us that it got tired and ended up resting on his back legs, which was a good sign they were calm and allowing our presence. Just as we started to feel too comftorable around them we noticed a group of females surrounding the babies trying to hide them from us, which meant they were feeling protective. Just then 3 big males surrounded the other jeep and formed a wall and started to flap out their ears, put their trunks up in the air, and trumpet. At that moment i thought what the hell are we doing here? and we are going to die!! just then sean tried calming the gentle giants down saying “shh shh calm down , calm down now” which worked because they started to quiet down and slowly turned around and walked away. For all who didnt know you can actually talk to an elephant and get them to change their mind by having a very calm and soothing voice, and ensuring them that its okay can make the difference between life and death. As we watched these huge magnifcent creatures dissapear off into the bush, I looked around and the look on everyones face was priceless and boy did we ever start talking and freaking out and showing eachother all the gerat pictures we had taken and got out of our jeeps with knees wobbling and legs shaking from all the adrenaline!! I cant believe I got so close never in my life had i imagined I would get that close to something so big and confident, it was truely a moment i will never forget!!