nearly there!

So, after 2 months of living in the middle of nowhere, the end is in sight! i recaptured enough lizards to make a fasible sample, altough not as many as I would have liked. This is pretty impressive considering that I think I've recaptured more than most people woud have expected, particularly considering that the weather got so horrible and hot and humid that the lizards were only really trappable between 6am and aroun 8:30, so I spent a lot of days getting up at 5 and rushing off to the rocks that were already hot and steaming. I'm sure the humidity is good for me, sweating out al the toxins and so on! All in all it was pretty unpleasant and I felt like I wasn't going to make it to the end here without deregistering quietly and moving to sweden or something.

I've also been collecting insects, which hasn't been going too well as I'm trying to catch the things that i've seen the lizards eat, but all those insects are really really tiny, and hard to catch, and to get enough to do a real chemical analsis when I get back, I'm going to need millions.

Watching the lizards has been a whole bundle of fun too... they're really skittish and its hard to get into a position where I can actually see them well enough to identify individuals. on top of that they move superfast so I can't stay in one spot to watch them, and they generally run around for a minute or two and then vanish into a crevice, only emerging afer a few hours.

Then on thursday it started clouding over. By the evening it was freezing cold.By morning it was still freezing and rainy and we had no power. Ingrid decided to go to nelspruit to have unch with a friend. An hour after she left we had a downpour like I've never seen before. The power came back on in the early afternoon and there was no sign of Ingrid. I did all my work in a hurry so that if the power went out again it would be ok. She got back after dark, all the power in Nelspruit was out, so there was a gridlock around every intersection.

It rained for two more days, torrential rain that made me wonder if the Lowveld gets a monsoon season. We even had purple sky at one stage! It was quite scary! And, contrary to our normal experience the power stayed on! I was quite happy about thata, although also glad that I'd made the trek to Kaapmuiden a few days before to get ive to pack around my samples in the freezer in case it went off again. Kaapmuiden is a tiny tiny town around a train station. When I say tiny I mean it makes Kamieskrron look like a thriving metropolis! It's quite scary too, all sort of ding and dodgy, complete with random dogs running around. I can't even say around the streets because there aren't any. It's a train station, about 10 houses, a bottle store and a general store and that's it.

Yesterday was better and I went out bug-hunting, and today is freezing and clouody, so i'm not too sure if it'll clear up enugh to go out today. But I cna't be lazy because I need to get everything done before I GO HOME! i'm so glad I'll be able to sleep in my own bed, see my family and friends and animals again!

Of course the fact that I'm looking forward to it means that I'll get home, be exhausted and grumpy, and then fight with everybody I care about. fun times!