Bush Birthday

When you live and work in the bush it is very easy to loose track of time and distracted by work that time relaxing is a rare commodity. We live one of the most beautiful places on earth, yet at times we forget to just sit and enjoy it. With Charlie’s birthday coming up I was determined to make her day a special day. She was not keen. She is a workaholic and being away from friends and family it is easy to let the day pass without celebration. I know, from my own experience, that a birthday away from loved ones makes you reflect a lot on what I have chosen to do and I feel incredibly lonely. Charlie has dedicated herself to EFA and our work and we wanted to let her now that we appreciated this and take her mind of friends and family far away. Unfortunately for Charlie, she had to put up with me for the day!

Even though I was determined to have day off work, we came across a male elephant on the way out west to our Picnic Spot who demanded our attention. We did a 1/5 hour focal and whilst he defecate there was no way we could get to it as he was in thick bush feasting on mangos teen fruit and he had no intention of moving on anytime soon.

By midday we were at a beautiful pan, which I call Whistling Lagoon, as there are always Whistling ducks there, and as we rounded the corner, a large flock of whistling ducks took to the sky and settled on the other side. There was also a large flock of open billed storks, numerous darters and a plethora of pied kingfishers hunting. A pod of hippo was a little wary of us. Being a cloudy day they were perhaps thinking of some daytime feeding, but thankfully stayed in the water. We also spotted some small crocodiles skimming the surface, even at this size; they scared the living daylights out of me. On our way out west we had come across a dead one in one of the crossings, so we had the opportunity to inspect on up close and personal. He was beautiful, perfectly designed for killing!

We had a lovely time at the lagoon, just enjoying the birdlife, the hippo, playing games and feasting on the food, including a precious bar of mint chocolate I had been saving for a special occasion. On our way back to camp we had a dip in the shallows of one of the crossings, having checked for crocs! We had not checked for leeches though and each ended up with one, thankfully I had my Leatherman with me so was able to scrap them off us.

We returned to camp in time for a braai, where our friends from Abu Camp joined us. It is days like this that reminds me why I live here and do what I do.