Today we helped out at the 'Born Free' foundation, an organisation located on the reserve that takes lions that have been held in captivity, often in pretty poor conditions, and provides them with 'a little piece of Africa' in which to see out their days. In reality they are held in large compounds as they could never be released into the wild but this is still a far cry from their previous existence. Our task was to gather large stones and set them out to define a path to a new enclosure after which we scoured a nearby road edge and loaded a trailer with more stones that we then used to anchor down the base of the wire fencing in the enclosure. It was hard work under the sun, humping and dumping the rocks, but we got ourselves pretty organised and made good progress before heading off for lunch.
Today’s lunch spot was a great setting in a narrow valley, sheltered but under an open sky. Afterwards we headed off for more animal monitoring. No elephants today but we did come across two lots of rhinoceros with their young. We also came across two male lions lazing in the sun - brothers apparently - and just around the corner the eight cubs from yesterday playing with the remnants of a warthog carcass.
Our day ended with a long drive back across the web of tracks in the reserve with more antelopes (I’m going to the communal room after this so I can identify the different types), more zebra, warthogs, giraffe and a mongoose. It was then a rushed dinner before I popped into the local village (ten kilometres away so requiring a taxi) to buy some beer for the week. Alicedale is a tiny community of about 800 people and there is nothing but a dusty road between here and there but it is the only place to get beer and money. Once home I opened one of my beers and chatted under a star emblazoned sky, the Milky Way bright and clear spanning over our heads, after which it was time to retire in readiness for tomorrow.
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