It's our first day lion tracking, 6:30 start, with Mark and as Hanne hadn't done any spotlighting we thought it fair that she be the first to track. Here, to find the lion,s they use telemetry. Basically, a collar is put on a lion that gives off radio signals (different frequency for each lion) and we have an antennae, a cable and a little black box. Obviously the higher you are at the beginning the better as the lions seem to have a tendency of lying in ditches, so we always start on a hill. Once you can hear a beep you can then fiddle with the gain and the precision to work out exactly what direction and how far away it is.
Anyway, the morning wasn't particularly successful, although Natasha and Mark are dead certain they saw Bently and Milo, 2 lionesses, sprint in front of the car as we reached one of the water holes, which is a good thing as a failed darting has left them completely freaked out about humans. So at least we know they're doing ok. But we mainly wanted to find Thika, a 12 year old lioness with her 2 "cubs", Tuli and Tahni, who are about 2 and a half. It was important to find them and know their rough location as Tuli is getting old enough to leave his mum soon and will need a collar of his own. Mark found a signal for Bentley and Thika at the top of Repeater, a huge rocky hill that we're not allowed to go up, so we set off to find Thika. Once a signal is found, and is close enough, we start mobile tracking, so Hanne had to telemeter whilst Mark crashed through all the mopani trees. Unfortunately Thika was too far in the bush for us to get to her. No lions today. But we did see some hippos and a jackal (as well as the usual antelopes...)
Back at camp, it was time for a major clean up (which is usually done on Saturday), as Mr and Mrs Dave were arriving later that day.
Braai for dinner ( South African barbecue) which was sooooooo good, with home made sangria and some awesome people to sit round the fire with.
No comments:
Post a Comment