June/July Students – Final Update
In their first update our latest students told us that they’d decided to split themselves into two groups. Lauren has since explained that competing against each other made butchery and other chores more exciting. We’re still no closer to finding out the meaning behind Group B’s name: Team Pronk, which they informed us of in their second update. According to the Wikipedia it can mean a variety of different things, but now they’re leaving so we’ll never know. Oh well.
Joint update from the students
This last week we have had no butchery duties, and therefore no rivalry. As a result Team Nyala and Team Pronk have finally become friends! Karen and Tabs woke us up on nice and early on Wednesday…apparently for a cheetah catching session. Oblivious and sleepy we arrived at Camp Jabulani for an Elephant Back Safari instead. What an amazing surprise! Those liars caught us out nicely. We also fed the cheetahs for the last time that day, sad times.
Survival day came next, and saw us building shelters, tracking, identifying dung, and making a fire without any matches. Fail! Following our day in the bush, Tabs got her rifle out so that we could practise target shooting. It revealed a few snipers among us…’nuff said! The day came to an end with us getting close to the nine month old cheetahs, a special moment for all of us.
On Friday we had a slightly different day out when we visited Paulos Ngobeni primary, the local school sponsored by HESC. We took Charlie the stuffed cheetah with us and taught the children about how these amazing animals are adapted to run fast. They enjoyed our company as much as we did theirs, and it was great to see firsthand what an African school is like.
Back at the Centre we fed the small animals for the last time and said sad goodbyes to Trevor the tortoise, Eddie the caracal, and many others. The panorama sightseeing tour was next. We visited the Three Rondawels, the Bourke’s Luck Potholes and God’s Window. The views were spectacular and well worth the visit.
We let our hair down on Saturday night for Ryan’s 21st birthday, as well as a couple of the guides’ birthdays. The next day, feeling a tad worse for wear, we blew off our hangovers with a session of quad-biking which did the job nicely. We’re really sad to be leaving the Centre, as we’ve had some of the best times of our lives and met many great people along the way. Thanks Tabs and Karen, it’s been amazing!
Remember to visit our Facebook and Flikr albums to see more photos of all the crazy stuff we’ve been up to.
Greetings and love from Africa,
Teams Nyala & Pronk a.k.a. the June/July students