Yet another hectic week in the bush. Last week started as all excellent Mondays do; with a test! Well, 3 actually... Then in the afternoon the real work began. Last week was our Track and Sign week; learning how to identify all sorts of tracks in the bush, from lion and leopard, to millipedes, tortoises and even water droplets. It was such an incredible feeling spending the week on foot in the reserve, learning not only all of the species tracks, dung and other markings, but even how to tell which way a lion was looking by studying its track. We also got to hang out with Annie the malinois, an anti-poaching, human-tracking doggo and a very good girl, which helped me feel better about missing dogs so much.

Despite not actually looking for animals we had some incredible accidental sightings. While walking around looking for bird tracks out on the sandy airstrip we watched a spotted hyena walking up and down, whilst listening to the roars of feeding lions not too far away. Later that morning we had our coffee break in my favourite spot on the reserve- on a grassy bank next to a river crossing, under the most beautiful, enormous fig tree. After coffee we spent 45 minutes wandering around the sandy river bed studying the tracks of baboons, cane rats, vultures and hyena, trying to pay attention while Annie splashed around in the pools of the river looking cute and distracting. Heading off we crossed over the river and just as we pulled up the other side, there they were. Lions. At first we only saw a couple of young ones, further up the bank by the road, but as we sat there more and more came down the hill to the river bed. We quickly turned around and dropped back down into the river bed and just sat watching, cameras clicking like mad, as around 14 lions gradually came down to the streams and pools around the river bed to drink and play around while they were crossing.

All in all we were only sat there for a perfect 10 minutes before they disappeared into the grass and bushes on the other side of the river. It really makes you think about how much luck comes in when you're in the bush. If we had been in the river bed 10 minutes longer maybe they would have walked down past us? Or maybe they would never have come near? Maybe they were sat watching us while we worked, waiting for us to leave so they could come down, while we were totally oblivious to their proximity. Any of these thoughts is kind of chilling!

We also saw our first leopard at last! Studying some more tracks and signs we saw vultures circling not too far away. This in itself isn't too much to notice, but when you see them suddenly drop down to the ground you know that there is something there. After the session we headed off to see what all the fuss was about and saw a fuck ton of vultures hanging around in like 6 different trees we knew that there must be a kill nearby, and the fact that they were in the trees still rather than on the ground lets us know that the predators were still there. 10 minutes of searching later we found the kill, could tell it was by a leopard, but no predator in sight... We were looking around at the looming vultures, searching for the leopard when suddenly we heard a growl, and a young female leopard dashed up out of the bush about 5 feet away from the vehicle and sprinted off. Far too quick for anyone to get any pictures but just the experience was amazing. We felt terrible that we might have scared her away from her kill, but as we drove away we could see that the vultures still weren't descending to the kill, so she must have still been there and would soon return to eat her impala!

Not gonna lie, I've found track and sign really fucken hard. It definitely doesn't come naturally to me and I swear half the time I can't even see what I'm meant to be looking at, let alone try and determine what it is! But it does come with practice and just looking at every track you see to try and cement the impression of it in your mind. We've had some awesome rain and storms here this week which is great for the bush, but sadly meant that we were rained off 2 of our practice sessions and the second half of our assessment that was meant to be on Saturday morning. We were told that the rest of the assessment would be next week so we all proceeded to get very drunk on Saturday night at a karaoke night at the next door lodge. Only to wake up the next morning to a message from Trevor that the second half of the assessment would be starting at 11am... what the fuck. We all stumbled our hungover asses out of bed and spent a miserable half an hour complaining and semi-attempting to revise, before the text came through that we had been pranked! Post-trauma I can appreciate the joke, but living it was not so hilarious!

I was pretty worried about the assessment by the time the second half came around on Monday morning. The way it works is that we are asked a certain amount of either 1, 2 or 3 point questions, and you're penalised more heavily for getting a 1 point question wrong. Getting a total score of 70-79% gives you a Level 1 Track and Sign Qualification, 80-89% gives you Level 2, 90-99% gives you Level 3 and 100% gives you Professional Tracker. By the end of the assessment I was genuinely wondering whether I had passed. We are told the answers as we go along but we don't know whether which ones are 1, 2 or 3 point questions, so it's hard to predict your final grade. Classic me over-thinking and doubting myself I got a few questions wrong that I know I knew the answer to, so I was freaking out that I was going to fail. Turns out I got 83% and I now have a Level 2 Track and Sign Qualification :) Came with a badge and everything, I feel like a boy scout!

So I am unbelievably glad that that is now over. Hopefully a semi-normal week this week, a few lectures, a few drives and a photography workshop- probably a much less eventful week than last week!