Day Seven: Bushwalk

As I mentioned yesterday, today's big (planned) event was the bushwalk. So, after finishing poop duty and finishing a hearty breakfast, we made our way into the African wild. Dane, our fearless field guide (tour guide), led us along a path that sometimes existed and sometimes didn't. The path is not what is important, though. My eyes could not take in enough of my surroundings, and my camera hardly ever stopped clicking. The sky is so blue here, and the colors so different that what I am used to at home. Everything is beautiful to look at, even things like rocks and grass. Words aren't really helpful for this sort of thing, so I'll just post some photos instead:

We climbed to the top of a big ol' rock pile and this was the view from
the top. Thanks to Courtney for the handy pip hat :D

From left to right: Dane (Scotland), Mia (Denmark), Paul (England),
Tone (Norway), Zelia (Norway), Me

We got to see a mommy and baby giraffe!

Mommy and baby giraffe did not want to be seen

We saw zebras!

This blue wildebeest was very startled!

Pretty view without me in the way

The bush walk ended at around noon. I went down to the river again, but not much was out and about. That heron was there again, but he wouldn't let me get any closer than last time...one of these days I will get a good shot of him...
Then it was lunch time and break time and then cheetah time. Same as normal as far as all this goes. The cubs were lazy, as usual. I sat with Jemima for a while and she had a scratchy spot right behind her ear that made her leg thump like a dog's. It looks really funny when a cheetah does it.

A sketch of Jade, on of the cheetah cubs.

As for tonight, the crazy Norwegians (said very affectionately) are planning a nice big Braii (South African BBQ) with a bonfire, music, and lots and lots of alcohol. It looks like we're in for a crazy night :D
That's all I have for today!
Over and out,
Taylor

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

Day Five: Lion Wrestling

Today we had a day off, so we were able to go to Boskoppie. Boskoppie is a lion park about 1.5 hours away from the Dell. So all of us volunteers piled into the van at around 8:30 AM and made our way there. The day started off with a tour of the facilities, which hosts about 170 (yes, one hundred and seventy) lions and some odd number of jaguars, leopards, tigers, caracals, and a single cheetah. There was this massive tiger that weighed at least 450 pounds...and he was the biggest baby, talking and rubbing up against the fence. Don't worry, we stayed well on the safe side of the fence with the big cats. What really surprised me was the fact that the adult lions and tigers are often kept in the same enclosures. Our guide informed us that this is not possible in the wild, and is only possible in a captive situation when the animals are hand-reared. There were so many amazing photos...the lions were big hams, posing for the photos and everything. This lion park is also trying to breed white lions, so there were quite a few of those animals as well.
After the general tour, we were nearly mauled by a lion named Luna. Luna is a whopping five weeks old an about as big as my head. Never in my entire life would I have though that I would be able to touch and hold and cuddle a little baby lion cub. It has to be one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. After Luna, we were able to go in with some bigger lion cubs, who are much more active than our cheetah cubs here at the Dell. Pretty much everything is fair game when it comes to chewing toys...hair, clothes, shoes, fingers, and braids all were in a lion's mouth at one point or another. I was especially fond of Iggy, a white lion cub who sat in my lap and tried to eat my braid. After we survived these cubs, we were allowed to go into an enclosure with some even older cubs. In this enclosure, there were tawny lion cubs, white lion cubs, and tiger cubs. Tiger cubs are even more ornery than lion cubs. They are rather fond of jumping on you while your back is turned. So many amazing photos! It is hard to describe in words what it is like to hold these amazing wild animals, and be so close to them.
Like all good things, our time at Boskoppie quickly came to an end. On the way back to the Dell, we stopped for lunch and we were able to get ice cream! Yum yum.
And....I figured out how to get my photos onto the computer. So feast your eyes on this!

More to come, I promise, but I've spent two hours figuring this out and I am sick and tired of the computer.
Over and out
Taylor

Day Four: Maintainance

Today I had early morning duty with Mia, so we were up and working at 7:30 this morning. I actually really like this time of day, because it is still very cool outside and very quiet and peaceful. I am usually up by 7 on my own anyways, so I much rather would have something to do rather than sit around and twidle my thumbs. As I've been informed, the motto for the pace of life here is "rush to wait". Things get done when they get done, and the schudule tends to be more of a guidline than an actual rule (Pirates, anyone??). So sometimes there is a lot of waiting before we actually start on a task, and a lot of thumb twidling.
So today's task of the morning was maintainance. This basically involves giving all the water buckets a good scrub and giving all the cheetah huts/houses a good wash. We finished pretty quickly, at least quicker than when we had to do slaughter duty, so we were back at the house by around noonish. After lunch, I went down to the Vaal River with my camera (who still needs to be named), and got some pretty neat photos. There was a monitor lizard who caught a crab, and he was very proud to show it off to me. He let me get so close!

Of course, at 2 o'clock, we head off for cheetah time. Today we feed the cheetahs bones instead of meat, so it did not take as long as yesterday to prepare everything. This means lots of cheetah time. I sat with Jemimah for a very long time, and she fell asleep with her big spotted head on my lap. She also drooled, which is something I didn't really expect from a cheetah. I took every chance I could to draw and photograph the animals as well. By the time I leave this place, I am pretty sure that the cheetahs will be sick and tired of hearing the clicking sound that my camera makes. One of the volunteers here has a SD card reader, so hopefully I'll be able to upload some pictures here pretty soon (EDIT: I FIGURED OUT HOW TO UPLOAD PHOTOS NOW!!)...

After cheetah time, we fed the bones to the cheetahs. After having a cheetah fall asleep on your lap, it is easy to forget that these animals are wild predators. Watching them go after the bones was a sharp reminder of that fact. It was amazing to see all the same. After that, we came back here to the house and I went back down to the river with my camera. I took a picture of a big bird that Dane later informed me was the largest species of heron in South Africa...I guess I've had a pretty good lucky day with my camera (any name suggestions? I'm getting tired of writing "my camera).
Dinner calls, so I'm off!
Over and out,
Taylor

Day 3: Bloody Mess

Hello all. After sleeping through the entire night last night (yes!!!), I woke up to go see a cheetah run at 7. The cheetah run space is about 100 meters long, and allows the cheetah to get up to at least 80 km/hr. That is, if the cheetah has any interest in chasing the feathery fuzzy lure that is pulled along. I was warned beforehand that sometimes cheetahs will be lazy and run about halfway and then lay down, or that they will simply jog the run instead of actually run it. This morning, we ran Nala. She did very well, running for all three runs. She didn't run full speed for any of them, but if the lure didn't malfunction halfway through the 2nd run the others thought she may have reached full speed. I had my camera with me, like always, and took a few nice photos and a lot of blurry ones.
I was dreading this morning's work task, which was labeled as "slaughter" on the work chart. The cheetahs here eat horse and donkey meat, because it is high in protein and low in cholesterol. I wasn't dreading it because I think it is wrong to use horse and donkey meat for the cheetahs - after all, the cheetahs are carnivores and have to eat something meaty. I was more worried about being able to deal with the smell and and look of the slaughterhouse. We didn't have to see the animal butchered or skinned, but we did have to take the meat off the bones and cut it into suitable chunks for the cheetahs. While I couldn't say the work was enjoyable, I did find that it was doable. It is one of those things where you just tuck into the work and get it done. You may not like it, but you can deal with it. It is all for the good of the cheetahs. And if you are cringing about the fact that they are horses and donkeys being eaten, I can try to console you with the fact that they live very happy lives out in the pasture before they become dinner, and are treated very humanely. But I think this will be the worst task I will have to do while here, and so now I feel up to anything.
After that lovely morning, we had lunch. You'd think you wouldn't be hungry after dealing with that much carnage in the morning, but we were. Following lunch, we had to separate the meat into a week's worth of feeding bags. Most of the cheetahs get around 2 kg of meat a day. Some of the larger ones get up to 2.5 kg, while some of the smaller cubs get about 1.4 kg a day. That is quite a good amount of meat to go through in a week. Some days the cheetahs get bones instead of meat, but that wasn't today. After prepping the meat, we had cheetah time again. I spent time with Jemimah, who was very content to sit and be adored. Typical cat.
Then we fed the cheetahs and came back here. My team is making some vegetarian chili tonight for dinner, and after that I don't know what we'll do. But I want to go back out into the sun now, so bye!
Over and out,
Taylor

Day Two: Poo

I know you may not want to know all of the miniscule details of my day, but you're going to get them anyways-starting with 2 A.M this morning. Aparently the six hour time change didn't quite agree with me. That, or the fact that I had a cat on either side of me pinning me in a single very uncomfortable position may have had something to do with this early wake up call. So I just was there, on my bed, not at all sleepy. I grabbed my nook, read some Feast for Crows, pet a cat, tried to sleep, failed, read some more, and finally fell back to sleep around 5 A.M...Only to wake up to an alarm at 6:30. I did not mind at all, because I was so excited for my first day with the cheetahs!
The fact that my first day with the cheetahs started off with poo duty did not dampen my spirits in the slightest. In case you are curious (because poo duty sounds so fascinating), poo duty involves a bucket, two spades, and quite a bit of walking at 7:30 in the morning. Once you succesfully spot a poo, you collect it and decide if it is: A) solid B)bit runny or C) very runny, and then the data recorder (DC) records your observations accordingly. This may sound a wee bit strange (I'm picking up Scottish lingo from Dane, who hails from Scotland), but I actually did enjoy being out in the early morning time and getting to see the cheetahs and the land. After poo duty, we returned to home and had breakfast with the the rest of the volunteers. I forgot to mention that we are broken into "teams" for duties like meal-making and early morning duties. So Mia, Dane, Leante, and I are on one "team", while Tone, Paul, and Zelia are on another. So tomorrow, the other team does early morning duties and I get to sleep in a bit.
After breakfast, we started working on Phase Two. Phase Two refers to the second part of a three part plan that has been developed to reintroduce cheetahs back into the wild. This has never been done before. Phase One involves obtaining and breeding the hand-reared cheetahs, and trying to teach them hunting skills by using the lure and running them. The most promising "wildish" female cheetah will then be  be put into a large enclosure stocked with suitable game, and human contact will cease (Phase Two). Once the cheetah has adjusted, male cheetahs will be introduced and hopefully the female will have cubs. The cubs will be reared by the mother cheetah, with absolutely no human contact. After about two years, when the mother naturally chases off her young, the "wild" cheetahs will be removed from the enclosure and relased back into a private game reserve (Phase Three). The part I play in Phase Two is that of a bipedal weedwhacker. This morning was spent clearing away a variety of plants, all of which were well armed by thorns and spines. It was a long and desperate battle betwixt I and the spiky sprouts, but by noon we had cleared a pretty impressive portion of the area. At least, it felt impressive. There is still a great deal left to be cleared.
After battling the brush, lunch was eaten. We had break time until 2, at which point we checked to make sure the cheetahs' meat was thawing, and then we had "cheetah time". To be able to sit down next to a cheetah and have it lay its head on your lap as you stroke it is an unbelievable experience. I could not be any happier, I think. I also had plenty of opportunity to take photos and sketch a little. The cheetahs we were able to meet today were Nala and Jemimah. We also were lucky enough to meet the cubs, Jade and Tippy, who are only 10 months old. Cheetah time was suppossed to end at 4, at which time we were suppossed to go get the meat out of the warmer and feet the cats. However, the electricity went out and the meat could not be served cold...so we extended cheetah time and lounge-about-lazily time while waiting for the electricity to return. It came back on at around 5:30, then we got going on feeding. We didn't get back to the house until 6:15. I was tired and hungry, but very very happy.
So that's it. My day in a quick blog. These words are not quite enough to describe how amazing it is here, but they are a good try.
Over and out,
Taylor

Day One

Hello all! I am most happy to report that I am writing from the Dell Cheetah Center. I arrived at around 1:30 P.M today after succesfully navigating from my hotel room to the pickup location. This is a big deal for me since I am directionally challenged. Anyways, it only took about an hour and a half to get here. I was introduced to my fellow volunteers, to my room, and to the Dell Reserve. Dane, who is our field guide but more fondly teased as our "tour guid", took me and the other newbie around to see where the cheetahs are kept, as well as where the caracals, servals, and wildebeest live. The other newbie's name is Paul, and he is from England. There are three other volunteers - Zelia, Tone, and Mia - and they are from Denmark and Norway. Everyone is very kind and friendly. There are two house cats, Thunder and Fury, who are very good at sneaking onto beds and counters. As I sit here typing at the volunteer computer, I am looking at a large painting of Pumba on the wall. I have decided that I am going to do very well here.
As for actually being in South Africa, it is hard to find the words to describe this country. It is beautiful and sunny, and not even hot! The colors here are more rich and vibrant, and even the dirt seems more colorful. I've already gotten out my notebook and drawn some of the Kudu skulls (I realize that this may sound a little weird and morbid, but skulls are really quite fascinating to draw. Really. I'm not crazy) they have around here...and now I can't wait to break out my Canon (who still needs a name) and take some pictures. I'm not sure if I'll be able to upload photos to my blog, but if I figure it out, this will be the first place I put them.
It is strange how incredibly different this place is, and yet how very familiar it is at the same time. Everyone speaks English, which no doubt helps with the whole adjustment thing. I am so awed by the country right now that I feel that I will just be blabbering nonsense if I continue to attempt to describe my exact sentiments. So I'll stop here for the night. I have to be up and ready for Poop duty tomorrow at 7 A.M. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.
Over and out,
Taylor