Work Hard, Play Hard!

Last night was amazing, I went to the games room with quite a few others that consisted of a mixture from ‘my’ group as well as quite a few people from the Australian university. We started off by playing around the world table tennis which is basically where everyone stands around the table and you each take it in turns of hitting the ball then quickly pass the bat to the next person. If you miss either the ball or table then you are out, so gradually the number of people around the table decreases until you are basically sprinting from one side of the table to the other; although I was never good enough to reach that stage, as I got too excited and kept hitting the ball too hard. We then went on to play Uno which was good although there was a bit of controversy as to what the rules were as apparently each country has ever so slightly different rules. It was good to mix with different people and get to know them better. What I find really cool is how even though I have come travelling alone, I don’t feel in the slightest bit lonely as everyone is so welcoming and also a lot of people are in the same boat.

This morning, as I got up around 4am to go to the toilet, I could hear the lions roaring, which was just something so special, it took me a while to get back to sleep after that as I was just so excited although I eventually did drift off. We all got up around 8 and headed to breakfast where I had fried egg, spicy sausages, and toast so basically all the cooked stuff which was nice and set me up for the working day ahead. At breakfast we all got told to make sure we were wearing comfortable clothes, shoes and to take a packed lunch for the day. My lunch was just a cheese sandwich plus an apple although by the time we got around to eating it, the cheese was all melted from the heat. We all got into the safari truck and were taken to ‘Kwantu Wilderness’ which is a game reserve that only has prey in; it helps to keep the numbers up in the reserve so if they notice that the zebra number has dropped for example, then they will capture them and put them in this part of the reserve until the numbers rise again. We managed to see warthogs, baboons, and antelope today whilst driving through the reserve which was awesome purely due to the fact you would not normally see such animals back in England. Once at the reserve, we were taken to a part where the cactus plant was getting out of hand; half of the group were given machetes whilst the other half was given pointy sticks. The group with the machetes had to chop them down and de-root them whilst those with the sticks had to stab the plant and move them to a pile which would later be burned. A lot of people ended up with blisters on their hands although by some magic, I managed to avoid getting them despite not having any gloves. Between the group we all made a massive impact to the cactus, it looked a lot clearer than before. It was about 30 degrees Celsius today, so we only done this for 2 hours which I was pleased with as I was sweltering, and I had already drank half of my water and we had been told

there was an educational hike afterwards. The hike was to be through the Kwantu wilderness, and we were told it would be an easy hike; it was anything but easy. We started off walking down hill and the ranger would point out different footprints, nests, habitats etc. which was very interesting but then we got to a picturesque mountain. At the bottom of this mountain, we were told we would be going up it and having lunch at the top. By this point most of us had no water left but the only way was up so we set off; it was a real struggle to say the least, really steep and with no shade. It was about 600m high, but everyone eventually made it to the top to have our lunch and the view was beautiful although I was too thirsty to properly enjoy it. We sat at the top in the only shade we could find for around 30 minutes before making our way back down to the truck. I have never been so relieved to see a truck in my life before. I was so hot by this point and my mouth so dry; I certainly was not well prepared for the scale of the hike today, although saying that neither were a lot of the others. When we got back to our accommodation, everyone made a dash for the fridge and downed 2 bottles of water roughly before all getting changed into our swimwear and going to the pool to quite literally cool down, it felt so nice after melting all day. Typical weather though it turned overcast and quite cold after around 40 minutes, so we all went back to the dorms to shower and watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. During the film, a

monkey decided to come through an open window, steal a banana before going back outside and sitting on the window ledge watching it with us.

I found out tonight that even though I kept thinking dinner was exactly the same, turns out it is done with different meats. Tonight, it was chicken casserole with rice and there was also squash that had been in covered in cinnamon which was surprisingly a lot nicer than what it looked.

Apparently, tomorrow we are going to be going to the local school to play with the children, spend some time with them and also cook them a meal as they are poor which is obviously sad, but it will be interesting to see how they actually live in Africa.

Time to go and spend some time with everyone before bed in a few

hours.