Saturday night was a night I will never forget! As I was getting ready for the Brie (cookout) at Laura’s house I was stopped dead in my tracks to the sound of lions roaring so loud, I thought the guys two doors down were blasting one of their national geographic movies, so I ignored it in disbelief. When I headed outside to use the phone I heard it again and knew it wasn’t coming from any speakers. I saw Ben walk by and asked him if that was seriously real? He said yes! We wasted no time to get down to the fence to witness this ASAP. I couldn’t believe how loud it was, a lions roar can be heard up to 5 miles away! So we thought they were right outside our doorstep. We ran by Sean’s room real quick to ask him if he heard the lions, he replied yes and told us we could go down to the fence line as long as we were careful.  As we stupidly ran down to the area where we thought the lions were, we were surprised to see 4 people already there sitting down a few feet from the fence. Right in front of them on the other side of the fence one of the guides that works here was in his jeep shining a bright light around the area where they heard the lions. As we starred at every inch the light was hitting in anticipation, we were surprised and disappointed to see nothing. The guide decided to drive off and look in a different area, leaving us behind alone on the ground, in the dark, which I was not too comfortable with, because now we were out in the open with no protection. As we sat quietly our minds started to play tricks on us so we thought. Every now and then we would hear branches break and footprints in the grass, we couldn’t even see 5 feet in front of our faces, so knowing a lion could be stalking us or standing right in front of us made me very uneasy. Lions have excellent night vision and their confidence doubles as soon as the sun goes down so we were taking a big risk. Just when we thought the lions had left the area we were suddenly startled by the roar of a lion, followed by another, followed by another. The sound was so loud you had to cover your ears and when the German girls heard this they all scooted back a few feet and were tempted to run, until I told them “Do Not Move or Run! “ The lions were literally right in front of us and all I could think was how stupid I was to get this close and what it would be like to be eaten by one of these giants! My heart was beating so hard and so fast, just thinking how I would possibly escape? The roars were so intense I felt the growl and rumbling vibrating inside my chest. What was going on was early that day there was a buffalo kill and on top of that there were 2 male lions trying to take over a pride from another group of males, so the atmosphere was an intense place to be already without us there. When the lions stopped roaring we all decided it was time to get the hell out of there. So we all stood up at the same time and walked backwards (because you never want to turn your back on a lion) and step by step moved further and further away from these ghosts in the darkness. I felt so foolish to have gotten that close, and will never do that again! For the time being J

This morning we had to get up at 4am to meet out on the soccer field for astronomy and bird calls. When we all stumbled onto the dark field with our eyes still shut, we set out a couple blankets and plopped down. Sean and Nellie were quite enthusiastic of course, but everyone else was dead silent. It was pretty chilly this morning and there were no stars out in the sky! At this point Sean said well since there are no stars we have to just sit here and wait for the bird calls, which didn’t come for another hour! Finally we heard our first call which was a pair of Scops owls calling to one another, quickly followed by hornbills, grey headed ghost shrike, babblers, and the cape turtle dove. Just as we were talking about the interesting power facts of these birds Moses jumped up from right next to me and yelled, without hesitation I did the exact same without looking! My first thought was “snake” as my heart pounded out of my chest i managed to turn around and go back to see what everyone was crowded around. It was a giant scorpion! and it was headed within inches of my hand! Well I’m sure this would have creeped anyone out , but it just about send me back home on a plane! I was so distraught the rest of the lecture that i couldn’t even focus anymore and kept my eyes peered onto the ground. The golden rule with scorpions we learned and is also portrayed in Indiana Jones is the larger the pincers and smaller the stinger the less venomous they are and the smaller the pincers and larger the stinger was the more venomous. So luckily for me a) I wasn’t stung and b) it had the same size pincers and stinger! whew talk about a close call, especially since a man here rushed to the hospital after he was stung by one !

This weekend was jam packed full of things to do. We woke up Sat morning at 6am to take our exam and whe finished we headed to play in a  tournament held this year at the Southern African Wildlife College. We had a few teams come in to play us in volleyball, netball, and futbol ( or soccer for the Americans) lol . A few days prior to this I was handed a volleyball and was told to put together a team and run practice and coach for Saturdays match. Overwhelmed with studying , I managed to find the time for one vball practice before the game on Saturday. I didn’t know what to expect , but we ended up playing against Kruger, who was actually pretty awful, so I’m glad to report we won and got to take the invisible cup from them as well as nice gold medals. The volleyball team was the only team here at the SAWC to win, so that was definitely a bonus!

RARE

Today was a wonderful day! We woke up at 5:30 am for a day out in the African bush. We received word that a couple of roads that have been off limit to us were now accessible, so we waisted no time to get to them as soon as possible so that we could see what we were missing out on.  I was extra excited to explore today because I was on the tracker seat, so it was up to me to find us something good! ( no pressure ; ) Our first sighting started with a whole buffalo carcass that was around 3 weeks old. When we checked the perimeter to make sure whatever had been feeding on it was gone, we jumped of the vehicle and approached the carcass. The smell of it was almost unbearable, but it was really neat to get that close and check out all the bones and evidence around the carcass. I felt like I was in CSI or something walking around the buffalo looking for cat prints and vulture feathers. When we decided we had enough of the smell we took a couple of the loose buffalo hooves and put them in a bag to add to our interesting collection in the classroom. As we continued on the path I spotted something unbelievable! At first glance it looked like a cross between a rock and a snake , but as I continued to focus on it I realized that it was moving! I quickly yelled for the driver to STOP! and when he did everyone asked me what I saw , but I didn’t know what to say , because i have never seen something so odd in my life! All i could manage to do was wave my hands back and tell the driver to back up , back up. Just as Sean started to look at me as if i was hallucinating I pointed to what I had seen and heard Sean say OH MY GOD! I had spotted a Pangolin! for all of you who don’t know what this is , it is one of the top 5 rare species to see in Africa, you can live your whole life here in the bush and never see one of this species because it is very shy and nocturnal, but there it was clear as daylight walking around scavenging for ants.  We all whipped out our cameras like the paparazzi and starting to take dozens of pictures and videos because we knew this could be a once in a lifetime sighting! When we sent a radio message through to the other vehicle , we had to repeat ourselves 3 times , because they were not expecting to hear the word Pangolin, as they booked it to get to this amazing sighting we decided to quietly get off the Land Rover and approach this strange creature who did not seem at all affected by our presence. I was so amazed by what this creature looked liked and how it moved. It reminded me of a little dinosaur that walked on its back two legs and kept its front legs off the ground. I just kept saying oh wow like a million times! As the other vehicle approached everyone jumped out and was very anxious to spot the rare Pangolin. Nellie our guide said that she has been guiding for 12 years and has never seen a Pangolin, so the look on her face was priceless! As we all sat and watched it for about and hour , Sean decided that since this may be the only time we will ever see this we should go all out with it, so we got within inches of the pangolin and even got close enough to see it curl up in a ball and touch it very lightly. This did not go well with some of the students , so they did not wish to proceed with the sighting and went back to the vehicles . We had a small dispute when the sighting was over about crossing this animals comfort zone , which we definitely did and it was unethical , but well worth it!

Yawwwwn is all I have to say about today. My morning started at 4:30 am. I don’t think the bush babies were even awake at this time? We all loaded in the driving school bus headed by a funny man who was owned the driving school and headed off to the sound of Cat Stevens “Peace Train” blaring loudly over and over again, it was very entertaining and kept me awake somewhat. An hour later we arrived at the DMV and thought we were pulling up to a Spice Girls concert. The line was sooo long!  we were warned it was going to take all day and we were going to have to be patient. As we headed for the  line everyone starred at us, because I’m guessing we were the only tourist  to come through that place! As we slowly approached the back of the line, we did not hesitate to whip out the blankets and lied down on the dirt to finish our sleep or catch up on our studies. This caused even more stares and laughter because we were the only ones sitting and lying down in the whole line of a few hundred people, but we were too tired to care. Shortly after when we had moved up 3 spaces in one hour we decided to pull out a big cooler which contained our breakfast ( nothing like butter and cheese sandwiches to get you going in the morning) As we ate and poured the tea and juice the locals just kept starring and talking , I’m sure they were wandering whats coming next? sofa and TV! After sitting in the first line for 2 hours the DMV opened and slowly but surely we got in , but we had 3 more lines to go through and ended up leaving 5 hours later! it was miserable, but we tried to keep each other humored as much as possible! Never will I complain about another line in the States again!