|
  The other guys on the program are Charl, Stein (Benry), Marco, Tammy, Diederick, Jack, Rickus, Noel, Nico and Sakkie. All of this last group are South Africans, all here with the goal of getting into the industry. Not that Tim and Talley aren’t keen too though, if the guests can just get used to Tim’s accent…
  We have had a special presentation from Jonathan Leeming, who took us all out for a scorpion weekend and had us filling in arachnid work books to gain our scorpion and spider course certificates. This is a cool new addition to the program and it was a great learning experience. We have gotten permits to collect and keep a few types including the largest species in the world which we have here on the reserve, the Hadogenes or rock scorpion. These awesome creatures reach 21 cm in length!
We completed the FGASA level 1 syllabus, with many excellent results. Jack, our sponsored student achieved around 85 percent and passed his practical with flying colours, but more about Jack later. A few of the chaps need a little more time in the field and will also do well on their next attempts at the practical! We are very proud of all of the guys though, as they studied really hard and have done well! Jack, as mentioned, is a sponsored student, he has been carefully selected from many candidates for our program. Africa Geographic magazine have joined us in this betterment project and are co-sponsoring him for the whole year. For more details about Jack and his progress check out March’s issue of Africa Geographic as they will be running a short article on him.
  The lions have been around the camp for the last two weeks, and have been killing wildebeest left right and centre. Some Cape Vultures have been seen for a few days now feeding on the carcasses too! The big male seems to have accepted his 4 year old son back into the main pride, and they have formed a shaky sort of coalition. The massive amount of kills has also improved our Brown Hyaena sightings, with two seen this week!
We had an awesome tracking session on foot with elephants. We tracked for about three hours and ended up with a twenty metre sighting. The elephants could smell us and raised their trunks, but showed no signs of aggression. We have been finding loads of Waterberg flat lizards, and have been hiking all over the mountains to try and see these unusual creatures.
  We have done some big walks into the mountains and even had one seven hour special in the rain. We looked like drowned rats, and ended up cancelling the sleep out as we were all soaked to the bone. In the near future we have Jens Ressig, of the East Rand Herpetological Society coming to give us lectures and lessons on snake handling and advanced snake bite. Also we will be going on another caving expedition at Makapansgat. This is always and awesome experience, as we found out last time when we went underground with the Lyle Wiggins and Mark Leroy of conservation and Stan of the cave research association last time.
Our first aid course went well, with Rufous of LATA doing his bit, and all achieved level 2 first aid. Now they have gone on leave to study for their SASSETA and ARH courses as well as trails guide exams on the March national sitting. Not much of a holiday for the students, but we told them all it was a year of hard work and planning! It will all be worth it when they’re done though, and out there as very well qualified young guides!
Of our current practical’s which are in progress Steve has disappeared into the wilderness of northern Botswana, and is currently busy in the Okavango somewhere, Gerard is in the Kruger park area doing walking trails (dodging buffalo), Jan and Elbie are in the Welgevonden game reserve and Squeak and Noelle are guiding like champions here at Entabeni. Busy times! Well that’s it for now, until the next update! |
| News Articles | Search | Archives |
 |
|
|||