Loooong day. Breakfast at 6am; out in groups at 6:30. This was my first day doing the population surveys and vegetation sample plots. It was very tedious and took a while; plus, the sun was out today so it was slightly miserable and very difficult. We did see some leopard prints (apparently it's very rare to actually spot the buggers). And we saw a giraffe from afar on the crest of a hill. They assure us that the animals are much more numerous in the next place we're going and spotting them will happen much more often. But anyway, today was absolutely exhausting, and my legs feel like jelly from hiking, and now we're going to have two lectures by Dr. Bowers about the fossil record and evolution of primates...ughhh...
May 15, 2010
Today was a great day; we had a pleasant surprise when Shawn told us we were going on a game drive before work for the day. So we spent two hours driving through the park and we spotted giraffe, impala, kudu, zebra, and warthogs. Also a wildabeast and enough rhino poop to fill a kiddy pool.
After two hours' blissful escape from vegetation plots, we started another transept into a donga. After half of it, someone noticed a baboon on the other side of the ravine, so we stopped and tried to get a population survey and more baboons appeared; then, all of a sudden, there was a BLOWOUT--National Geographic style. A bunch of big ol' males started screaming and fighting and running down the cliff after one of them who had what looked like a vervet in its mouth. It was a definite shit show.
We all sat down on a rock and observed them for another hour or so. They calmed down, no sign of vervet lunch, and they went back to feeding and grooming. The alpha male kept giving us warning hoots to remind us we were close to his territory, but they were calm because the donga was obviously impassable for us. We were at the perfect viewing spot. Both groups were at about the same hight on our respective hills, so we could look across the 60m distance and watch the baboons interacting without them fearing us.
After they'd moved off to better trees, we finished our transect and did a vegetation plot while Shawn radioed Brandi the news about her beloved vervets' loss. Since the group with her probably couldn't do much primate data (the monkeys would not welcome visitors right after one of their own had been just picked off)we went to meet them at the road to figure out what to do.
To our pleasant surprise, Brandi and Shawn decided we'd go to a pub in town that had a pool. On the way there they kept warning us of how redneck the guys there would be, saying they'd be sure to make racist jokes or hit on us easy, wild, American girls.
It was fine though, and nice to sit with a (non-alcoholic!) drink by a small pool and just chat with everyone. Shawn told me I did good work today as the compass girl, blazing the trail with everyone walking single file behind me; i got the worst of the thorn damage!!
For dinner we had a braai (a South African barbeque) and had toasted marshmallows around the campfire. Eventful day overall!
May 16, 2010
Another day of hellish vegetation plots. At least we started with another, less successful, game drive. I think everyone was just about done with doing veggie plots; it was especially difficult today since Brandi was ill and therefore all 15 of us were using three tree i.d. books in an 10x10m plot...you know how that goes.
Dinner was followed by a genetics lecture by Dr. Bowers (yes, again), then a few of us sat around the fire pit, staying up til 10 (oooh! rebels!) since tomorrow we're doing NOTHING! Yay for a free day!
May 17, 2010
A blissful day of sleeping in (only until 7am, since we're so used to waking up at 5:30 now), lounging around and just getting shit done, like studying for our tests or reading articles and preparing for our presentations. Some of the people who hadn't gone in the monkey groups spent the morning hiking the dongas looking for them but with no luck. I spent some time chatting with Dr. Bowers about my research paper topic.
Dr. Bowers must have given her blessing for a few alcoholic beverages because Andrew took orders for a booze store run. I pitched in on some rum and had two rum 'n cokes with our braai dinner. It was our last night in Loskop so several of us stayed up late (10:30!!) to play some games and laugh around the campfire. Tomorrow: bye, Loskop, Hello Lajuma!
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