9,000 volts, survival and ellies at Campfire!!

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  Campfire Safaris, South Africa
Sunday, September 30, 2007

Sunday evening and time to assemble random thoughts and weave them into a work of huge interest, or not; let's see how it goes!

Returned to camp this morning from visiting Jessica a 7year old hippo. She wasorphaned during floods 7 years ago and "adopted " by Tony and Shirley -she lives in the river at the foot of their property and is free to leave and never return altho she seems to want to stay. As she's been hand reared she's pretty human friendly but you're wise never to forget she is a wild animal. Having said that, I can now confirm that I have kissed a hippo on the nose! She is so lovely and those little waggly ears - aaahh and being able to clearly see her close her nostrils as she submerged was fab. Did you know they secrete their own sun screen? How clever is that? Hilariously at night she comes out of the water and sleeps on the porch of the house under a blanket -I kid you not! She has lots of friends in the form of approx 6 bull terriers one of whom had just had 11 pups 6 weeks ago -there were 2 left and they were absolutely gorgeous (Liz).

We started the evening by sleeping outside but there were bugs and God knows what else dropping out of the tree that over hung the tree so when we were awoken by rain on our faces at 1am and we dragged our mattresses indoors we weren't so bothered I think!

This was our 2nd sleeping outside experience this week. Thursday saw our "survival " attempt in the bush. It was according to the boys a completely woosie version as we didn't have to forage for food or water but given that there's bugger all to eat in the bush right now we didn't real feel that it was cheating....

Ah, firelighting. What a delight that is. We definitely needed Ray Mears. Gawd! We spent nearly 2 hours trying to get a spark using 3 different methods -1- Stone agin stone 2 glass lenses using the sun and 3 twizzling a bit of hard wood into soft wood.

Guess what? Yes that's right, none of them worked and we all have RSI! Having lit fires with matches we then had to keep them lit (3 of them) all night to keep the animals at bay(remember we are in Big 5 country). We worked in pairs of 2.5hr shifts thru the night and in the second shift when I was asleep some of the guys had crept thru the bush with recordings of lions and ellies to scare us. I slept all thru their visit but I'm sure it was scary and hilarious in equal measure.

Last week whilst the others were at Kruger, Helen and I were having a cuppa near to the fence when we thought we heard something -we peered into the bush......"there's something there....bugger me , it's an ellie!" We leapt up , legged it up to the tower (3 storeys -needed an oxygen tent on arrival due to unfitness and over excitement) and watched as 2 elephants drank from our waterhole for about 5 mins then melted off into the bush , their massive bulk spectacularly disappearing, moving almost silently -fan-tastic!

So, what's the reference to 9,000 volts? Well the outer fence is electrified to 9,000 volts -no higher as it would kill smaller animals. Well I was closing the gate the other day and accidently touched it . S**t!! that hurt -but how the others laughed! I also have had a close encounter with a 4ft x 4ft blackboard that was moved by a gust of wind from where it was perched, landing edge down right across my ankle (I was at the time dozing , music in my ears and didn't see it coming) my ankle has been quite interestingly coloured for about a week now -doh!

Our students did their final exam on Weds and should get their results on Tues coming -here's hoping they've all passed.

We had quite a bit of rain today and when it stopped went off for a bush walk. There were loads of these amazing bright red Velvet mites everywhere -stunning. It was also millipede city with them all over the place too -a great loking balck and white one called unsurprisingly, a zebra millipede. Their little legs are ace -I picked one up and it had a wander on my hand.

Okay people, that's all for today, speak again next week.

Love , hugs etc,

Africa Sal xx