Day Six: Banana Sunscreen

Today I was able to sleep in all the way to 8 o'clock AM! It was quite fantastic. After a quick breakfast, we had to clean the slaughterhouse. Nobody really was enthusiastic about this particular job (big surprise) so we worked as quickly and efficiently as we could and were finished by 9:30. That left us soooo much free time that I really had no idea what to do with myself. So I just wondered off with my camera, in hopes of getting some good photos. I ended up back at the river, where I FINALLY was able to get some pictures of Rock Dassies, which are rodent-looking rock-dwelling creatures. I call them rock elephants because on the first day when Dane was showing us around, he said they were very distantly descended from elephants. They were very shy the first couple of days I went down to the river, but today I took it very slow and eventually their curiosity got the better of them. They are very talkative little critters, and they saw me, but they stayed out and about anyways. I actually managed to get quite close. I only retreated when I accidently overturned a rock and a tidal wave of ants came swarming out.

After stalking dassies, I meandered up and down the river bank, but there was not much else around. So I went to the one sure place where I am certain to find something interesting - the cheetah enclosures. I spent about an hour just drawing the cheetahs and getting sunburnt. After realizing my skin was not comfortable, I returned back to the volunteer house for some lunch and some sunscreen. This is where the blog title comes into play. I bought this janky sunscreen from CVS that is 50 SPF and works great...except for the fact that it smells very strongly of bananas. I don't really mind all that much, so I didn't think it would be too big of a problem. Skip ahead to cheetah time, however, and I discovered that cheetahs are very fond of banana-flavored sunscreen. I was groomed by every single cheetah I sat with today, including Nala, Jemima, and the cubs. You might be thinking "Oh, how cute!". I agree, except for the fact that a cheetah's tongue feels very similar to large-grain sandpaper. The upside to it all is that my legs feel very soft and exfoliated now. I also had the chance to sketch Mufasa, who doesn't really like women so well but deigned me good enough to draw him from a fairly close distance.

So that's about it for the day. Tomorrow we get to go on a bush walk around Vaal Rock, which is where the Dell is located. Dane said we should be able to see zebra, giraffe, kudu, and more! So I'm super excited for that. Also, I'm going back and updating previous blogs with photos that go along with them, so look there if you want to see.
Over and out,
Taylor