Please Stay Tuned.....

The app we have been using to post to our blog is experiencing technical difficulties and won't let us log in (I have confirmed with them that its their problem and not my own stupidity - which was my, and I'm sure most of your, first suspicion).

We're collecting our photos for future posting.  In the meantime, Game 5 of the World Series will be broadcast tonight starting at 2 a.m. South Africa time.  I'll be watching......

Duck, Duck, Goose

This post is for all you birders out there.  Today we spent the whole day participating in a research study from the University of Cape Town on mapping bird species in South African Game Reserves.  We spent more than 8 hours driving around Shamwari identifying birds.  In total, we found 78 different species.  Besides the bird-spotting, we had a couple of other interesting sightings.  The first was when we were getting out of our land rover for a coffee break.  One of our rangers suddenly yelled - "Back in the car!  Lions!"  Glad we didn't end up as a morning snack for these guys:

The Servil cat we saw in the afternoon was a lot less fearsome looking:

Anyway, on to a small sampling of the birds:

The Cape Glossy Starling:

The Crowned Hornbill (also known as "Zazu" by you Lion King fans)

The Kingfisher

And some cool African ducks (don't remember their technical name)

Melanie will be able to entertain you with many more bird pictures upon our return!  Please be sure that we wake to good news about our Red Sox tomorrow morning!  My playoff beard is still growing......
 
 

 
 
 

 
 

Finally, the sighting you've all been waiting for......

The Addo Flightless Dung Beetle!

Our head ranger told us that to hold the endangered dung beetle was equivalent to holding a panda bear.  Just not quite as cuddly....

Spent the morning out doing predator monitoring this morning.  Great sighting of 2 brother cheetahs enjoying the remains of their latest kill:

One missed post from last week to catch up on too.   A year ago, a caracal was shot on a farm adjacent to Shamwari.  Her three 1-week old cubs were recovered by Shamwari, and have been raised in the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center here for the past year.  Last week it was time to release them into the wild.  While caracals are carnivores, they're pretty friendly around people.  Melanie's motherly instincts kicked in, and she jumped right in to help load them into the truck:

We drove them an hour and a half to the northern fringe of the reserve, where we released them back into the wild:

 
 
 
 

Time to Catch Up

Its been a busy week at Shamwari since our last blog post.  Lots to catch you up on, so pour yourself a cup of coffee and settle into a comfortable chair.

When we last left you, we had returned from a day of Cape Buffalo darting and transport and prickly pear destruction.  Just to give you an idea, here is what a typical prickly pear looks like.  My hand has only now recovered from the thorns.

Thursday of last week was another early one - darting another buffalo and her calf followed by a move to the new herd.  The mother of the calf didn't go down easy, and one of the rangers narrowly escaped getting gored.  Thursday night was a great night - camping out under the stars in our sleeping bags.   Baking "stick bread" over the campfire was delicious:

We didn't sleep all that much, despite the fact that the rangers had left their rifles in carefully selected points around the perimeter of our camp, with instructions to those taking turns staying up all night on guard duty to wake them if they heard anything "unusual".  Thankfully, no elephants, rhinos, hippos or lions took any interest in our camp, though thanks to our many game drives, we know there are no shortage of the same.

 

Much of Friday, as well as  2 mornings this week were spent at a daycare center in an adjacent township called Paterson where the unemployment rate exceeds 90%.   The public water tap gets shut off at noon everyday, so we installed a 5000L water tank to catch rainfall that drains off the roof so the kids will always have a supply of drinking water.  By the by, our drinking water at Shamwari is collected the same way.

The weekend was pretty chill.  We don't have any work to do on the weekends, so we took a couple of long walks around the property (the part of the reserve we stay in is about 1000 acres and is predator free).  Saturday night we took a taxi into Grahamstown - a town about an hour away that is home to Rhodes University (not to be confused with Rhodes College in Memphis).  We hung out at the local university pub, the Rat and Parrot, watching rugby on tv with a few of the other volunteers.

This week has been split pretty evenly between wildlife-related activities and manual labor - finishing up installation of the water tank, removing old fences around the reserve to prevent animals from getting snared in them, and clearing brush that is growing into roadways.  Melanie wields a mean machete!

One of the cooler days was tracking 2 of the cheetahs on the property (they have implanted transmitters), and then being able to get up close with them

This afternoon was a blast too, as we got to go out with the head ranger trainer and shoot the South African version of the American M-16, and a 12-gauge shotgun.  Once again, Melanie's skill frightened me just a bit.....

Well, that's all for tonight.  Glad to hear that America is back open for business.  We're following the Sox and the Pats from a distance, so give us something to cheer about!
 
 

 
 

  
 
 

Day 2 at Shamwari

Not to worry, don't think we'll be bloggin every day of our time here, but today was pretty cool.  We set out at 5:45 this morning (it was freezing) to meet up with the Shamwari vets.  They had to move a couple of female Cape Buffalo out of the existing herd and move them to meet a new bull, trying to set up a new breeding herd.  Interesting factoid:  a large, disease-free Cape Buffalo bull can cost more than $2M.  Anyway, we located the herd and hung out until the vets arrived.  Their first order of business was to tranquilize the 2 females they selected with their dart gun

Nice shot!

Next step was for the vet (with the help of an able assistant) to check that the cow was not pregnant:

(yes, he does have his whole arm up in there)

Then into the trucks for the ride to meet their new boyfriend:

This afternoon was a bit less glamorous - out with machetes cutting down prickly pear cactuses (cactii?).  They're an invasive plant originally imported by farmers as a supplemental food for their herds during times of drought.  They're spreading too far, and its an uphill battle to keep them under control, but we did what we could.  Nothing picture-worthy - I'm sure you're all disappointed.....
 
 

 

 
 

Shamwari, No. 2 and No. 5

Arrived at the Shamwari Game Reserve yesterday afternoon.  We are in a group of 13 volunteers from the UK, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia and the US.  We awoke this morning to a large African rain spider on the wall of our bedroom.  Nice start!

Our first activity of the day was helping in a study of the feeding habits of brown hyenas and African wild cats.  This involved analyzing the contents of the brown hyena scat (No. 2) and the stomachs of the wild cats.  Just another day at the office.....

Melanie rinsing hyena scat:

African wild cat stomach:

After lunch, we headed out for rhino monitoring.  We drove around in search of rhino on the reserve, and then had to record our sitings of specific animals based on notches in their ears.  In addition to the rhinos, we saw lots of other cool stuff:

Pumba:

Zazu:

And not from the Lion King, the Cape Cobra (the deadliest snake in South Africa):

And best of all, No. 5 of the "Big 5", the elusive leopard:

Tomorrow morning we head out at 5:45 a.m. for a very full day of work.  Stay tuned.....
 
 

 
 
 

Smile you sonofabitch!

Leaving the Aquila Game Reserve, we drove down to the Garden Route, a series of very picturesque towns along the coast between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.  First stop was Mossel Bay, where we got to check off one of our "bucket list" activities - cage diving with the great white sharks.  Melanie was the only woman on the boat with the cojones to get in the cage.  Melanie's face is less than 12 inches from Jaws:

Next, it was on to the Knysna elephant park.  The ellies were tame in comparison:

Today, we spent the day in Plettenberg Bay - the playground of South Africa's wealthy.  The beach is gorgeous, and the surfing is great (though neither of us are surfers).  Tonight, I ate Springbok for the first time, though it didn't seem quite so foreign since Melanie bought a Springbok pocketbook in Cape Town.  Tomorrow, we head to Port Elizabeth in search of the elusive "laundromat".  Having been on the road for 15 days, most of our clothes are ready to walk by themselves.  One night in PE, then on to Shamwari on Monday, where we'll be spending the next 8 weeks.

Overheard a conversation a couple of nights ago between an American tourist and a South African:  the tourist said she was planning on going home to the States.  The South African told her she couldn't go, "didn't you hear, America is closed".

Funny vignette for the week:  we were at dinner tonight, and a party of German tourists next to us kept looking over at our table.  Melanie asked them why they kept looking at us.  They said they had seen a mouse under our table.  Melanie was more scared of the mouse than she was of being in the water with a great white shark.  Go figure!
 
 

 

Aquila Private Game Reserve

After leaving Cape Town yesterday, we drove 2 1/2 hours through wine country to the Aquila Private Game Reserve.  Originally a sheep farm, Aquila now is home to a wide variety of wildlife, including the Big 5 (elephants, rhino, lion, leopard and Cape Buffalo), on a 15,000 acre property.  Due to their proximity to Cape Town, they are a prime tourist destination.  We went out on 2 game drives in a Land Rover, as well as one trip out on horseback.  Melanie took a large number of amazing pictures.  Here are just a few examples:

 

 

4 out of 5 of "the Big 5", so far...... 
 
 
 

Last Day in Cape Town

Tuesday was our last day in Cape Town and we had 2 more important sites to visit  - Table Mountain and Robben Island.

The hike up the iconic Table Mountain was tough (tougher for me than Melanie), but the views of the city made it worth it.

 

 

 Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent most of his 27 years of imprisonment, was a very moving experience, and reinforced what an incredible man he was - to emerge from prison able to make peace with those who imprisoned him, rather than to seek revenge.

Mandela's cell - 2x3 meters

A great way to end our time in Cape Town.  A fantastic city that we most definitely will come back to again.
 
 

Another Glass of Pinotage?

Having been in Napa and Tuscany within the last 2 weeks, we couldn't pass up the chance to visit yet another premier wine neighborhood for some tastings  on Monday of this week.  The landscape in Stellenbosch wine country outside of Cape Town is very different from Tuscany, but just as beautiful.  And the wine tastes just as good, even if I can only discern the difference between a red wine and a white wine if my eyes are open!

 

And for you golf fans, a shot at Ernie Els' Winery

 
 

Hitting the Road

This morning we head off on what undoubtedly will be our biggest adventure - renting a car and driving on the wrong side of the road!  Melanie is definitely more nervous about this than the prospect of getting gored by a rhinoceros or bitten by a snake!

The last few days in Cape Town have been spectacular.  A huge shout out to our son, Ben, for all of his recommendations and connections.  It definitely would not have been such a great visit if we had tried to do this totally on our own.

So, to catch everybody up, here's what our last few days have been like:

Saturday:

We spent the morning at the Old Biscuit Mill, a huge craft and gourmet food market in Cape Town that is a hugely popular destination for both locals and tourists on Saturday mornings.  It puts Fanueil Hall and any other place we've been to shame, and we escaped with only 1 purchase (a Springbok pocketbook for Melanie), so I considered the visit a great success!

Next it was off for an afternoon at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.  Though the weather could have been nicer, the plantings and vistas were beautiful, and we certainly are more educated than we were about some of the native flora and fauna.

 

 Sunday was a very cool day - though one of the hardest to capture in pictures.  We went with Ben's old UCT roommate Moses, his friend Charles, and 7 of their closest Danish and Norwegian female friends to a place called Mzoli's out in one of the townships.  Its an open air restaurant with great music and a very cool vibe.  You go in, order a huge platter of grilled meats and then sit around eating and drinking for the entire day.  While the restaurant is in an incredibly poverty-stricken shanty town, the people couldn't be happier or friendlier.

We topped off the day with a luxury snack that was new to us:

We'll try to remember to bring some  bottles of monkey gland sauce home for your gourmet chefs to use in your favorite family recipes!