First bit of real hard work

Hey guys,

Just had to write a quick blog, cos the past few days have been amazing. We've been working hard this week doing lots of vegetation transects, and pushing it until we drop.

This involves Michelle walking 50m into the bush, which, in tall grass and thick trees, is sometimes too far - I get nervous when I can't see her, and imagine her being munched by something. She's started singing while she's walking, just so I know she's still alive. Sometimes the singing stops, but so far that's just cos she's forgotten the words. I stand at the other end of the transect (close to the car, yipee!), or sometimes sit (when we remember to bring the chair), and scribe for her. I'm slowly learning the grasses and trees again - Shmitia (I spelled it wrong the other day and crossed it out VERY fast), Dychrostachys, Stipagrostis... and so it goes.

The last thing to do at a site is collect the soil samples - the most strenuous bit, and the bit when we move slower and slower until we get to stop under a tree and munch on some food. This bit is always great - the kitchen's here are fully stocked, so we've been having roast beef sarmies with mustard, cheese, gherkins... and today was cottage pie, grapes and pears. :)   When we went into Maun the other day, we bought ourselves some bags of toasted marshmallows. So each day, when we come back, we are each allowed one marshmallow. We've named them PFM's - Post Field Marshmallows. They keep us going.

Yesterday Face (yes, that's his name - stories about him later) told us about Goose, the leopard, sitting with a kill off one of the roads, and gave us his coordinates. So, being the cool trackers that we are, we tracked him down. Well, actually, Michelle tracked him down :) We got right up to his little copse of trees, and found his kill hidden in a tree, but couldn't see him anywhere - eventually I spotted him under some thick Acacias - if we hadn't been like 2 metres away, we would never have seen him. And if he hadn't been collared, we could've done a transect right there and not seen him until it was too late. Well, too late for Michelle - I'd be in the car by then. He was beautiful, and so cool - not skittish at all. He just walked in front of us to change trees, did some yawns, flicked his ears, and went on being cool Goose.

Face also told us about two male lions, Doohan and Mike (what kind of name is that for a lion?), that were sitting just outside of Savanna Camp with a kill. We found them too, and their kill... the punks killed a giraffe! Just two of them, taking down a giraffe! It was pretty impressive.

"Do you see what I killed?"

It doesn't end there - Michelle decided that today was gonna be my day for learning how to 4X4. As we were driving out this morning, I stopped to contemplate a wet and tricky part, and Michelle said "Ah, Kelly - are you seeing this?" I looked up to see a massive pride of 14 lions just strewn all across the road RIGHT in front of us - all looking up and looking quite menacing. This pride has been walking through our camp in the night and early in the morning - we've heard them a lot very close to our rooms (but by now I'm just sleeping through it). Also lots of elephant feeding right outside our room most nights - we just keep praying that they don't walk through the canvas walls! :)

Anyway, i could give a long list of animals we've seen and stared at for ages, but that would just take forever :)  Besides work and animals, we're watching a lot of movies in the evenings, drinking lots of hot chocolate and coffee, and chatting until we can't keep our eyes open anymore.

I miss all of you so so much, and it's only been a week.