Pongola Part 2

Day 7

A great activity this morning – a boat cruise along Lake Jozini!! We were taken out on two boats and cruised along the river with amazing views of the mountains and could catch a sight of the border to Eswatini. We saw huge herons, hippos, crocodiles, water buck and more. Got some great photos too.

After chilli for lunch we went out for another game drive in which we also learnt a new skill - telemetry. This entailed using an antenna and radio to track collars that are put on certain animals to record their movements. To practice, we were not tracking a moving animal but a collar that had been hidden somewhere on the reserve by the other group, this was still harder than expected but by the time it was getting dark we were right on top of it, just as the other group had encountered the first rhinos. We were a bit jealous of this but then just in that moment we caught our first sighting of buffalo, another of the Big Five. We also got good sightings of giraffe, a fisher eagle, martial eagle and many antelope.

In the evening, we had stew for dinner and gathered around the campfire for a wholesome night of eating marshmallows, chatting and card games. I taught the group cubo, a card game that caught on really quick.

 

Day 8

Today started with a morning walk in the bush, which felt extra wild as it started raining quite heavily. Zama confessed that he enjoyed going off the track much more. This adventure was cut short, however, as we got word from the other group that there were hunters in the reserve. These hunters had a permit and had scheduled to be there as Pongola Reserve has some hunting allowed, however, a miscommunication meant we did not realise they would be there and it was obviously very dangerous for us to be there at risk of being shot.

Our next activity today was to watch a wildlife conflict documentary, in which we learnt the problems of conservation for local communities who rely on farming the land to survive. Elephants have become a huge problem in certain areas of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and other neighbouring countries. They are remarkably successful breeders when given the space to do so, they also live long lives and destroy much of the environment when overpopulated. They terrorise many farming communities, destroying crops, boreholes, water tanks, and homes. With complicated restrictions on culling elephants, they overpopulate with no effective way of controlling it them realised by conservationists, locals and the government, who continue to dispute the issue.

Later that evening, Mike and Zama split us into three groups to debate this issue. Group 1 as the government, group 2 as local communities, and group 3 as conservationists. We used all we had learnt so far to push the perspectives of our respective groups. As one of the conservationists, I felt we made the best argument. However, the saddest reality was that these debates often go nowhere – just like ours!

Before we had the debate, we were visited by Tibani, the liaison for African Insight to the local community of Candover, where we would be spending Sunday and Monday night. He brought 3 young adults from the community, whose families we would be staying with. I would be staying with Nokubonga and her family, along with the other 3 men on the trip. We then went out with them to complete some conservation service for the Pongola Reserve manager. We were to create natural steps in some of the manmade watering holes by placing rocks on the inside and outside, as smaller animals have been known to fall in and drown.