Vegans Love Carnivores

The following blog is a recount of my time travelling from Namibia to Zimbabwe via Zambia to start my two-week overland truck tour. 3 August After months and months of excitement about my overland truck holiday coming up, it was finally time!  Everything was packed and I said goodbye to all my CCF buddies with a little sadness but a lot of rush (the lady who was meant to be taking us in decided at the last minute to shunt our ride nearly 2 hours earlier!).  We arrived into Otji and hung out in Wimpy for a few hours before getting onto our chariot for the north: Intercape (not quite a chariot, more of a very normal-looking bus).  Very surprisingly, given its reputation, the bus actually arrived EARLY!  We found our seats and settled down.  All seemed to be going well until about midnight when there was a loud bang on the bus, which sounded like something hit the floor of the bus, and then it got quite cold.  It turned out that a rock had hit the wi...

My final days at CCF were both sad and happy; sad because I was saying goodbye to a lot of friends (some human, some furry, some a bit of both), sad because I was also saying goodbye to my whole life that I’d led for the last year in Africa, complete with everything that came with it; but happy to be going back to old friends and the stability of being back in the UK (and not having to worry about what animal might try to kill me and what my medical bill will be!).  Plus, I do admit that I was pretty excited to be going back to a country that serves both Dr Pepper and Starbucks in most towns! On one of the last days at CCF I went out to collect some camera traps from the waterholes that were counted during the annual waterhole survey.  When driving along the airstrip, we came across a family of ostriches (complete with mum, dad, older daughter and 11 newborn chicks!).  It was very cute to see them and we tried to snap a few pics of them as they walked away from us d...

This will probably be the last blog I send before I leave Namibia.   What a strange feeling!   I’ve been living in Africa now for almost a year and have done so many things that I find it weird that all of it has happened in such a short amount of time.   Here is a rundown of the major events: 1)       Got to watch captive-bred lions take down and kill prey right in front of my eyes 2)       Helped to dart a fully-grown lioness 3)       Helped to re-release a wild cheetah 4)       Rode an elephant at night (and nearly got thrown off) 5)       Walked with lion cubs in the bush 6)       Walked with cheetahs in the field 7)       Saw a lioness take down a vulture mid-flight 8)       Saw a whole bunch of awesome wildlife, e.g. leopards, cheetahs, honey badge...

If you have been reading my blog for a while now, you will have begun to realise that I may be what some people class as “accident prone”, at least when it comes to living in Africa.   The problem I find is that there are so many things here that try to harm or kill you!    Last week whilst idly walking home at night time, I was gazing up to the sky and looking out for shooting stars.   Alas, I didn’t see any shooting stars; what I did see is a rather large black and white ball-shaped animal scoot from next to my feet into the buses!   This happened to be a porcupine – an 80 cm long, 25 kg in weight large spiky rodent complete with quills that it sometimes likes to shake off when it feels in danger!   Fortunately for the porcupine and for myself, I marginally escaped treading on this poor creature.   I was, however, slightly shaken up whilst walking the rest of the way home and kept looking into the bushes around me just in case there were any othe...

One of the things that I love the most about living in the middle of nowhere is the sheer amount of stars that we see on a nightly basis.   I can barely remember ever seeing the Milky Way back in the UK, whereas we see it often here. As well as the stars, the Moon seems so bigger, brighter and more magnificent in the African bush.   In fact, a Moonrise is just as impression as a sunrise!   The other night we were standing on top of the water tower that overlooks some of CCF’s land watching the moon rise above the Waterberg Plateau; a beautiful sight. We are unfortunately saying goodbye to our vet (who also happened to be a doctor for me on many occasions) as she has been offered a fully-paid PhD studying pygmy hippos in the Ivory Coast!   We were out on the Big Field a few nights ago for a sundowner (drinks in the bush whilst watching the sun go down).   Usually we climb up Carl’s hide (a thatch-roofed hide that overlooks the Big Field and Waterberg)...