News Update from September 2006
This latest course had 7 students on, 2 locals and the rest from overseas. There was one lady from Denmark, 3 from Columbia and 1 man from Germany. Christian was the only man on the course and at times could have felt a bit overwhelmed with so many women around him!!!! Although he didn't make the course, I felt he did surprisingly well as it turned out he had only learnt English about 4 months before coming on the course, and it was this that proved his downfall in the end.
It was good to be back training again after a break for about 3 months. The training sessions took on a new lease of life with more modern equipment having been introduced and the use of a computer to help. We have also introduced Internet facilities for the students at the centre itself, which makes it more accessible to the students and they don't have to rely on coming to the office to download information or communicate with their families back home.
The course itself went very well with 5 of the 7 students getting through. Teaching plant identification had its usual annual problems in that the rains had not yet arrived and the trees were still essentially leafless and the grasses were almost impossible to identify for beginners, let alone myself. The elephants were in abundance this year and we enjoyed many memorable sightings throughout the course.
We also had a few sightings of buffalo on the reserve and also drinking from the waterhole in front of the centre. We had one sighting of a pride of lions on Grietjie. In fact half the pride had managed to get inside one of the buffalo breeding projects and caused quite a stir for a day or so. Fortunately they all came back out safely in the end with no buffalo being killed or injured. We had a number of lion sightings during our 3 day stay in the Kruger too, along with rhino, elephant and buffalo.
The students enjoyed their visit to the Khamai reptile Park near Hoedspruit where they were afforded the opportunity to get close to not just a puff adder and other snakes but to also hold scorpions and spiders in their hands. This was quite a challenge for Helle but she managed it without too much problem.
We had one day when we caught a large Monitor lizard close to the centre and the students were able to examine it at close quarters. We also had a few snakes during the course, including a small egg-eater, who gave us a really good show of how they defend themselves. These snakes have hardly any teeth and are totally harmless. To compensate for this, they imitate the venomous Night Adders and use their rough scales to rub against each other and make a noise as though they were hissing- just like the adders do when defending themselves. They also have a black lining to their mouth and they strike out readily, which gave a couple of the students a good fright as they tried to take photos.
We also had 3 days when a film crew were at the centre filming us for a part of a documentary that is due to be screened on the African Travel Channel shortly. One of the memorable aspects of that, was studying a scorpion under ultraviolet light where they turn an amazing illuminous green colour by comparison to the normal dark colour.
Our 3 days at Satara camp in the Kruger National Park went well and was enjoyed by all. Fortunately it only rained on the last night and so we weren't really affected except to pack up some wet tents. We had some very good sightings and many good bird species were seen too. We spent over an hour watching a pride of lions with some half grown cubs that had great fun romping around in a lala palm grove. We also had a couple of rhino sightings and some large herds of buffalo. It was also noted by everyone just how many Steenbok there were. I presume that we noticed so many more than normal because the grass was very short or had been burnt, which made it much easier to spot these small antelope. We even watched one individual bury its dung in the unique manner that they are renowned for.