Today started at 0445, I had breakfast and then we drove to Langa (a private part of Makalali Game Reserve which is fenced off to allow it to regenerate and is free of ‘big 5’ game). We did a botany walk for a couple of hours. Trevor showed us loads of different trees and some grasses, showed us how to identify them, some of their uses and let us practice using the key, which is like a flow chart of questions about the leaves which leads you to the correct ‘group’ and then you can find the correct tree – there’s definitely an art to it and it requires practice! We also saw dung beetle and scorpion tracks which were pretty cool.
We got back to camp and went to the classroom, there was a water scorpion and a frog in the pool, which were quite cool. We had a quick meeting with Sharon (just some admin stuff) and then it was time for brunch. Today we had salad, potato salad, chicken, fruit and banana bread.
We had the early afternoon free again, I finished my workbook for this week and started learning my bird calls for the week. At 1600 it was time for another botany walk. We just stayed around the camp this time, we recapped some of the trees and grasses from earlier and then learnt a few new ones too. It’s like the birds in the sense that there are rules, and then some trees break the rules, or when they’re young they look different and things like that! I now have so many photos of leaves, bark and grasses – lets hope I can remember all of them to help my study!
We had a really good dinner, some sort of cheesey potato bake, broccoli cheese, steak and salad, followed by leftover banana bread. We went back to the classroom for a while, then time for an early night – another early start tomorrow.