Crispy around the edges

I know, I know, I promised to keep blogging… (I’m hanging my head sheepishly, just in case you were wondering). And it’s not even like I’ve been swamped here, I’ve been busy, but no more than usual!

Anyway, I drove down on Saturday, and it was the weirdest thing: About halfway to Nelspruit and I got this weird feeling of going-homeness. I suddenly noticed the amazing beauty around me and the weird people driving around me (my personal favourite being the car with the “it’s not PMS, I’m just a bitch” bumper sticker – driven by an ancient man who might have been smoking a pipe – the huge sky, the open fields.

I also had a weird flashback to childhood – my dad used to like annoying me (still does), in my family teasing is the common way to show affection for some reason, and one thing he’d do was to call animals by the wrong names. Maybe it was just the zoologist in me getting started early but it drove me NUTS! Once I got used to it I decided it was ok, as long as we were consistent – so giraffe were always raffe-gee, Kudu were called lions, and so on. And of course whenever we drove past a cow field (which you do a lot in South Africa) we’d have to yell “Elephants!” So when I drove past the Oilfants river and saw a field of cows… it totally made my day!

Randomness aside, I kept driving, through several torrential downpours, and ended up doing some grocery shopping in town on my way through. I knew I was back when I got stuck behind two men in their two-tone khaki and kortbroek (no crocs, apparently rainy days call for veldskoen) having a discussion on ruck-bee in the middle of the canned-food aisle.

I made it to the farmhouse by just after 5 to find that despite the rain, the student and her team who had gone down a day before were nowhere to be seen. They emerged about an hour later triumphantly carrying about 6 lizards – it seems that it had cleared for about half an hour and they were admirably tenacious about catching the lizards that they saw. Two of them were my lizards so I got a nice headstart!

It was weird being there with people when I hadn’t adjusted to being there, and I kind of flitted between wanting to get rid of them and asking them to stay an extra night. Wither way when we woke up the next morning it was raining and so they left and I took a nap. Which lasted for about 6 hours. What can I say, it’s like I’m sleeping in my own bed at last! The insomnia is still there, but it’s down to a ‘it’s 3am, why am I awake? I must sleep… this is so annoying, I need my sle-' and then I’m out until morning stage.

Yesterday was lovely and sunny but not too hot, and I got back into the swing of things until a freak rainstorm chased me off the rocks at lunchtime. I was greeted by a huge eagle on the outcrop when I arrived (it was so close to me!) as well as a black mamba which I think may have been as scared as me. It decided to go under a rock AS I removed my traps, meaning that I looked to see what ‘that weird noise’ was to see it slithering past (about 10 cm from me). I had no idea my heart rate could shoot up so fast! I’ve been a bit jumpy since then, but at least everything is ok.

And today was hot. blisteringly like-being-in-an-oven hot! The worst part is that I know it’s going to get MUCH hotter soon! It was a beautiful day, the sky was that amazing blue that you don’t find anywhere else (other countries have blue skies, but not like ours, kind of like how our oceans are pretty, but in Jersey the sea really sparkled), I saw zebra and kudu on my way to the site, ran into a friendly farmer who (get this) spoke English! and had a pretty successful trapping day.

I got to relearn my climbing a little bit, which was fun! I’m enjoying the new flexibility that I think comes from tai chi and stretching although my endurance is lousy as always. I found a bunch of lizards in an area where I’ve never seen more than one or two, so I’m quite excited – maybe the rains have been as good for the lizards as I’d hoped! There are certainly enough insects around – I’m starting to get a bit offended by the dungbeetles flying into my head! So I’m just hoping that the weather holds out, that the lizards are plentiful (and stupid) and that I stay in the (strange) wonderfully happy mood I’ve been in for the last few days!

Here’s hoping!

Oh and the title refers to my sunburnedness. SPF40 has worked like a charm, but there are a few crispy-fried bits that are going to tan permanently (because they always do!), like my lower back, a small patch on my left wrist my upper lip and tip of nose, a patch just below my right ear and so on.

Before my fingers drop off from frostbite

It's FREZING in joburg right now! So cold in fact that people are letting their animals heal by themselves or something because I was at the vet for four hours this morning and I think we saw one animal and I sold two bags of dog food, and did some data analysis. Getting up and getting to work is awful because besides the cold and wind, today it's also raining, which makes life totally miserable...

At one stage I was freezing, despite the heater and several layers of clothing, and so I took the opportunity to make a cup of coffee. At that stage I had been sitting round for about two hours. Of course in the two minutes it took me to make coffee people arrived and one of the other employees helped them, leaving me feeling rather guilty that I'd only helped three out of four potential clients in the morning!

Anyway I was reminiscing about some trips today and I figured what better time to talk about where I would really really like to be right now (rather than trying to resurrect my calculus skills on a data-set that is way bigger than I had thought...)


The obvious choice: the beach! Lying on the hot sand, sleeping off the last dive. Walking along the edge of the surf. Digging around in rock pools and looking at the weird and wonderful animals there. Building random sculptures out of sand, digging giant holes and making wind shelters and then falling asleep against the temporary wall of sand...

Namaqualand - the most beautiful place in the world! Going exploring in the evenings where it's light until late because it's right on the west coast. Climbing rocks (and fences...) and trying to navigate when everything is so huge that any kind of distance perception is lost and estimations are way off every time.

Sitting in the kalahari, watching the random wildlife. I can't take credit for this photo, it's Luke's (The rest are mine). This was actually while waiting for our friend and his research assistant to fetch some giant mealworms for the owls.

The Kalahari, a bit further south. Something about the desert makes me want to climb rocks and watch the sunset.

Beautiful, no?

A road between Namaqualand and the Kalahari, where we saw desert dunes for the first time. Basically any road that is somewhere warm, stretching away further than I can see...

Like this one, on our way up from the Western Cape towards Namaqualand.

Or this road in the kalahari.

I'm really feeling the need for a road trip!

We LET you win!

I must apologise for this post, but I haven't really sat down and watched the cricket for ages, and I felt that I must report back the exciting events of this morning. Plus I'm totally sleep-pdeprived and figured at least this had a framework rather than the mildly incoherent ramblings of the last day or two... here goes:

So I had to be up at the crack of dawn this morning to take my mom to get her car serviced. More accurately, I had to go and fetch my mom after she dropped her car off and take her to work. She left at around 7:30 am leaving me sitting with my birds, clutching a huge mug of coffee 9for the record, Lara gave me a giant mug for Christmas, and I thank her in my head every morning...) watching the end of the latest SA/Australia test match with my dad.

When I left we were tailing by 150 runs with one wicket in hand, which basically meant that we were never going to hit the total (not with low order batsmen) and so if we lasted out the last 20-odd overs we could force a tie. In the meantime, the batsmen in question were: one of our best bowlers, who unfortunately thinks that hes a great slugger and tends to swing blindly, and a newish recruit who had a freshly broken finger. On top of all the the pitch looked like some kind of cracked and dried up mud-flat. And who says cricket can't be exciting?

It was kind of silly, we already won the series, but the idea of our team coming home undefeated was kind of exciting! Once I got home from depositing my mother at the church (not abandoning her, she works there) I saw that my Dad was finishing his breakfast in front of the TV (a total NO-NO in my house, watching the TV at all during daylight hours has always been forbidden) and the cricket was still going. It seemed that with 4 overs to go, we were trailing by around 130 runs and the guy with a broken finger was out and replaced by our captain. Our captain is a great batsman, but during the last match he broke his hand and injured his elbow pretty badly.

So we sat and watched. It was less watching and more taking turns to cover our eyes at every ball, particularly when Slugger was on strike. he was dropped twice while I was out, and rather than doing the sensible thing and blocking everything that came at him, he decided to show off and hit two boundaries, nearly getting caught on his three-for-three attempt. At the end of that over the captain was on strike and trying desperately to get a a single to get to the safe end. We kind of wanted him to stay on strike because he relies on luck a little bit less... anyway there were something like 17 balls left, or 7 minutes if they finished before the time cut-off... and the captain was bowled out.

We were SO close!!! But at this point, I feel that I must say:

1. we won the series already
2. we nearly tied with two different guys playing with broken fingers

On the flip side, the bowler did deserve credit for navigating the cracks on the pitch and getting it past him. If the other batsman had done something stupid he would have been lynched the second he got back home.

So yes, Australia, you won. But only because we let you!