South Africa 2006

This blog is to cover my 12 week sabbatical to South Africa. The plan so far is to spend the first eight weeks at Esingeni, just outside Alicedale in the Eastern Cape on a Wildlife and Conservation course. Then the last four weeks will be spent catching up with a few friends and then meandering along the Garden Route from PE to Cape Town

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Location: London, United Kingdom

Graham Racher is a world traveller, photographer, gig goer and IT professional. He has travelled to all the seven continents and captures the natural beauty that he finds there. He also seeks out the diverse wildlife that London, his home city, has to offer to enjoy and document. And when the sun sets he often engages in another of his passions, live music, recording images if he isn't too busy enjoying himself.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

25/02 to 02/03

Sunday 26th February
Well I got to SA alright. It was a bit touch and go at Joburg though for the connecting flight to PE. Basically a massive queue at immigration, but after 45 minutes I started to jump the queue, twice and begging to be let in I made it to the front. That was followed by a jog between terminals only to find amassive queue for the dometic flight. I was told to jump that queue in the end and finally made it onto the plane where I fell asleep.
Louisa met me at the airport and after a nice refreshing shower we went out for a late lunch. That evening after talking to one of the girls who worked in the backpackers I was invited along to join her for dinner and have a very pleasant evening 8-)

Monday 27th
Today was a bit of a wipe out as the other students arrived at various times, especially as one of them had missed his connecting flight. They are Miriam, AJ, Ben and Eamon. Seen here with Wayne Vos our lecturer.


Tuesday 28th
It was overcast and drizzerly and we had an introduction to AGCA and also met Craig the owner of the land we are staying on. Also a nature walk in the afternoon.

Wednesday 1st March
We all got up at 05:00 to watch the sun rise from tone of the ridges at 06:00. Had a knap and after breakfast it started to get warm. It was around 31C/34C so we did the nature walk first thing. We had three lectures during the day, talked about signing up for the FGASA level one qualification and did the paperwork for that. Then we headed out at 16:00 for some fence maintenance as warthogs or pushpigs were digging holes underneath a stip of it.

Thursday 2nd
Drive into Grahamstown, first of all to buy tickets for a lecture by Jane Goodall as part of the SciFest here in three weeks time. I was told about it by a girl I was talking to in PE and told Wayne I wanted to go, and all the others thought it was a good idea. It cost R7.50 so 75p !!! Went to ATM to get more money, luckily the second one worked as I was getting woried after the first one gave me a receipt for taking 0.00 out ?! And now as you can see writing this.
We're off to Ado Elephant National Park tomorrow, so that should be great. More as I get a chance, which may end up being only once a fortnight ... but keep your eyes peeled!

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Graham, what's a pushpig?

6:04 pm  
Blogger Graham said...

A pushpig? There is something called a bushpig, which is basically a wild pig, or wild boar

1:32 pm  

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