Hippos and Crocs at iSimangaliso Wetland Park

The name iSimangaliso means miracle and wonder.  It is an apt name for a very special place.  A place that is both a Ramsar Wetland as well as South Africa’s first Natural World Heritage Site.  I feel incredibly privileged to be here for a month, discovering my passions and doing the things I absolutely love, bush walks, game drives, writing and photography!

The park has 8 interlinking eco-systems, Africa’s largest estuarine system, over 500 bird species, fishing traditions that are over 700 years old and 25,000 year old coastal dune systems which are amongst the highest in the world.  

We spend Tuesday afternoon on a hippo and croc tour getting up close and personal with these magnificent beasts. 

The Nile Crocodiles live to be approximately 70 years old.  While it is the largest predator in St Lucia, their fat deposits enable them to  go without food for almost a year!  There are estimates that the croc population in the lake systems here could reach 1,500 but they are a vulnerable species.  Some of the main threats to the croc population here are the conflicts with humans and the loss of habitat.  A female will lay about 45 eggs every 2 to 3 year and this could increase if food is abundant.  However, only a couple of crocs will actually survive past a few years and become fully fledged adults.

We are captivated by the hippos and are fortunate that we are on the water during a time when they very active.  We pass by many pods some comprising of at least 20 hippos.  Hippos have the dubious reputation of killing more humans in Africa than any other animal.  However they are an important part of the eco system here and at night you find them eating tonnes of grass from both the surrounding swamp lands as well as the neighbouring parks in the area.  It is not uncommon to encounter a hippo on the street if you are walking home late at night in St Lucia and we have been briefed as to the appropriate behaviour in the event of a hippo encounter! In general, if you don’t get in the way of a hippo and the water or a hippo and her cub you will be safe :)  

By day you can find a hippo wallowing in the water, digesting all of the food they have eaten.  The lakes here are full of their nutrient rich dung which in turn supports a huge food chain including invertebrates, fish, birds and crocs.  

It is late afternoon and the hippos are active at this time, which makes it exciting for us.  As photographers we are all vying for those perfect yawn shots and I think we all managed to catch a few although making sure it is always in focus is quite a challenge. 

We are also fortunate to see many bird species such as sea eagles and the goliath heron. 

We have had an amazing experience and even before we step off the the boat we are making plans to revisit the estuary by boat before we leave St Lucia.

The sun is setting when we return to the boat ramp.  The lake changes from beautiful shades of orange to amazing shades of pink.  The Miracle, Wonder, and Magic of iSimangaliso will always remain with me.

 

It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.  ~K.T. Jong

A Week in the Life of a Conservation & Photography Volunteer

I am excited to commence my first week as  conservation and photography volunteer in St Lucia. 

I and the rest of the photographers have now moved into the main house which we share with about 25 other people.  Megs and I still get to share a room which is great.  Our meals are cooked for us and our laundry is taken care of so we are quite spoilt.  We both have similar habits and early morning people so we make good room mates!

We have a variety of activities lined up, all of which involve some aspect of conservation and photography.  We will work closely with Sean, our project co-ordinator who is a Canadian volunteering with African Impact and Robyn a local eco tour guide here in St Lucia.

 

While I signed up for this position through Real Gap, the projects are run by their local partner African Impact.  The project managers and coordinators are all volunteers from the west but the staff who look after us are local South Africans.  They cook beautiful meals for us and keep the house and gardens well looked after.

At the end of our month we are required to submit a series of conservation and wild life photographs which will be sent to various organisations such as Green Vision to be used for promoting conservation.  We will obtain these photographs by participating in bush walks, game drives, and other activities, so yes this is a hard gig :)!

We spend Monday morning on a estuary bush walk at the iSimangaliso Wetland Park.   We walk down to the coast which has one of the world’s highest vegetated sand dunes and look for wild flowers, bugs and beetles to photograph.  These creatures are hard to capture but recording the bugs and beetles that are around at certain times of the year is an important aspect of conservation.

We spend the afternoon planning for our first teaching opportunity mid week at a Conservation Club in the local village school.  We plan to work with students who have elected to be in this club because of their interest in the environment.  The club has recently started a recycling program in the school but it has not taken off.  Our work will involve helping get this back on track as well as guiding them in crafting a Charter for the club and setting some goals for the future.

The planning session is very beneficial when we participate in our first club meeting on Wednesday afternoon.  The kids are in their early teens and get involved enthusiastically in the agenda we have put together.  Unfortunately, their goals are quite ambitious and we do have to bring them back to reality and encourage them to set more realistic goals that will actually be achievable in a year.

On Tuesday morning we spend half a day engaged in conservation activities at the local Crocodile Centre.  The centre has all of the African species of crocodiles including the Nile, Long-snouted and Dwarf crocodiles. 

The purpose of the centre is mainly for education but they rehabilitate ‘rogue’ crocodiles from around the country, breed a limited amount of crocs and  perform occasional releases of crocodiles in areas where they are endangered.  We are hopeful that we might be part of a release operation during our stay here as we have missed the time when the eggs hatch!

Working at the centre will be a weekly occurrence for us.  Our first task is to build a path that will take visitors away from the main crocodile enclosures and get them interacting with some of the wild ‘uncaged’ animals in the adjacent bushland.  I help the boys build the path while the rest of the gang  mulch the path we build.  We are quite pleased with our days work and head back to get ready for our Hippo and Crocodile tour, which I will talk about in a separate post.

Wednesday morning sees us back on another bush walk, this time in the forest of iGwala Gwala.  We are in search of birds but it is a windy morning and the birds are high up in the trees, so we don’t get any winners on this walk. 

Robyn our guide gives us a pep talk before we go in the forest.  She was walking alone here a few days ago when she heard the sounds of a leopard in the bush.  She gives us  strict instructions on what to do in the unlikely event we come across one - don’t panic, run or scream but back away slowly.  We are instructed to get each others attention by slapping our thighs and clicking our fingers!  Right, this sounds similar to the instructions we were given in California about the bears - curl up in to a little ball on the trail if a bear approaches.   None of these instructions really work in real life because people panic but you can’t really out run a leopard..and there really isn’t any point in climbing a tree! 

My best photograph of the day is that of a vervet monkey on the way home.  They are found everywhere in our neighbourhood and love getting into the garbage early morning before the daily collection.  There were no leopard to be seen and we survive to photograph another day. 

 “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”  Aaron Siskind

On Assignment

My first week spent working with Emil and the other photographers has been quite intense!  It is a mix of lessons and sessions spent out in the field practicing what we have learnt. 

Each day we are given an assignment that requires us to present 5 photos to a group of 25 people that includes volunteers from the other programs.  The group votes on the photos they like and the photo of the day is chosen from what Emil refers to as the ‘Peanut Gallery’.  After all it is the general public who will ultimately decide on the fate of your art.

On Day 1 we are taken to a really boring field, a hoola hoop is thrown and we are asked to present 4 photographs from within the hoop and one from outside the hoop.  This was the photograph I shot from outside the hoop. We had an early morning rise on Day 2 and spent the morning photographing at iSimangaliso Park. Our assignment for that afternoon was to capture a portrait.  I love shooting portraits because it allows me to interact with my subject, something I truly enjoy.  I find that people often open up to me and allow me in to their world, which is useful when taking a portrait.  I wander into town because the locals are such wonderful subjects.  Many in the group loved my portrait which came in as the runner up that evening.  (I submitted the middle shot).   Day 3 was when I felt the most inspired. We wake up early morning to shoot another sunrise at the beach.  All of my photos were well liked by the group and Emil and this one came in as the photo of the day!

Some of the other photos I took that day include the following:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent the morning of Day 5 at the Crocodile Centre.  We will visit this centre each week as part of our volunteer assignments and donate our photos to the centre.  Our assignment was to take 5 pictures that were connected by a theme and then present them to the group.  I chose the theme of education in conservation and did a presentation that linked the visiting school kids with the centre.  Yes, we got pretty close to the crocs!

The week comes to an end and we are exhausted but exhilarated!  We celebrate with a typical South African brie (BBQ) and down a few drinks, glad that somehow we all got our assignments in on time and survived the week with our photography skills a little better than when we started!  

 Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.  ~Buddha

Settling in to St Lucia

I have arrived safely in St Lucia!  I am here to volunteer in the Conservation & Photography program run by African Impact, a group that runs many such worthwhile projects all over this continent.  There are 3 different projects being run here in St Lucia and this time they have so many volunteers that the main house is full and the photographers are put up in a separate house for the first week.

St Lucia is home to South Africa’s first natural World Heritage site, the iSimangaliso Park.  It is an amazing park, set right on the coast with great vistas and much biodiversity.  We will spend a fair amount of time here photographing the people,  landscapes and nature so I know I have an exciting month ahead.   

There are 6 of us in this program.  We are one male (Simon) and 5 females.  There are 2 girls from the UK -Hayley & Danni, two of us from Australia -Megan and myself, and Azu from Japan.  We get to know each other very quickly as our first week involves an intensive photography workshop.   I have become good friends with Megs my roommate, a fellow Australian who is originally from New Zealand.  She is the closest in age to me as the rest of the group are all in their twenties. Our first week is  spent working with Emil von Maltitz, a well known professional photographer from Durban.   www.lime.photo.co.za

Amongst the many things he does are tailor made photographic tours of South Africa, so if you are coming to this part of the world and are interested in photography, I would definitely recommend you look up his website.  A number of us have already signed up to do a 4 day tour of the Drakensburg Mountains with him and I am looking forward to that already! 

On our first day we are given an extensive orientation to the area and shown around town.  As we live close to a local park we are advised to look out for the hippos who wander the roads at night in search of lush grasses.  We are given instructions on what to do and what not to do in the event we run into one on our way back from a night out! 

I also learn there is still a bit of tension between the black Zulu community and the white South African locals.  I am also quite disturbed to learn that even 16 years after Apartheid the answer to petty theft in the area is that the supermarket here will ask a Zulu local to check their bags in a locker before entering the store.  No such requirements if you are white!  I ask if I may face any problems and I am told that the last black volunteer they had who was an African  Englishwoman had also been asked to check her bags! 

 

 

 

 

Fortunately (for their sake?) I have not been asked to check my bags yet and I’ve found everyone in town really friendly and helpful. 

We were also informed that if the local white South Africans see the volunteers hanging out with the local Zulus in a bar, they may cause issues and the Zulus will be asked to leave the bar.  Integration between the communities is still frowned on here!

I find all this disturbing but I am quite aware from my previous visit to South Africa that the tension between the black and white communities certainly does exist in parts of this country. 

“When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.” Albert Einstein

A Postcard from Johannesburg

I am so excited to be back in Africa!  Without a doubt this is my favourite continent. 

There is something in the air that really excites me about Africa.  Is it the smiles on the faces of the people here, the incredible wildlife that is just waiting to be discovered, the rhythm of this continent or the colours around me…I am not sure.  I am just happy to be back here. 

And what a difference a few years make.  When I first arrived in Jo’berg back in 2007 the airport was under construction and the place was a bit of a mess.  It looks fantastic now and still has reminders of the World Cup that has just finished.  The airport appears quite professional and I move through the customs and immigration quite swiftly.  

At the Jo’berg airport you have the option of taking either a regular metered taxi or an unmetered taxi run by private operators.  The unmetered taxis are cheaper over longer distances but I remember that on my first arrival I had been quite nervous about taking one of them and even more nervous when my driver had ushered me to the basement of the airport.  This time around I felt quite at home.  I knew the drill.  

As it turned around, the hotel I had booked online was almost an hours drive from the airport.  However, the time passed quickly as I found lots in common with Mduduzi, my driver that night!   He has given up his career in HR to chase his dreams and has started up his own business in the transport industry.  He does local tours and sometimes does the airport run.

Our conversation covers many topics from the recently concluded World Cup, to local ground water issues, politics and religion and our own personal lives.  I have made another one of those instant connections with a perfect stranger and I find it quite amazing. 

My hotel turns out to be in a really lovely part of town.  It is actually a lovely resort called Misty Hills in a lovely area called Muldersdrift and my room, with its thatched roof and sandstone floor is just my cup of tea. 

I am excited to spend a night here and more excited when I wake up to the sounds of Africa!  I leave that evening for my month of volunteering in St Lucia.  Mduduzi comes back to pick me up and we spend another hour chatting as we travel to the airport.  I think I may have just made my first new friend in Africa!

 The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart". ~ Helen Keller

Contrasts of Dubai – The City & the Desert

I spend my next morning on a city tour of Dubai and my afternoon on a desert safari!  There is much to see and learn about this place, the most well known state in the United Arab Emirates, so let me transport you there. 

Imagine a place slap bang in the desert with some of the world’s tallest buildings and most expensive real estate.  It is a place where the expatriates completely out number the locals at a ratio of 4:1.  A place where a litre of petrol will cost you $1 but a litre of water will cost you $2.  A place where it rains for just a few weeks in a year and where maximum temperatures can reach up to 50 degrees centigrade.  A place where you never wake up to the sound of birds singing, where there is no crime because the penalty for petty theft could involve losing your hands! 

We pass a construction site where the world’s largest airport is being constructed and will be operational in 2015.  We wonder why there is a need for a new one, when the current airport here is already so impressive.  Once complete, this airport will be capable of handling 1,400 flights at any one time!  Construction workers from the subcontinent will work long hours to ensure it is built in record time!   Buildings are constructed very fast as labourers work in shifts around the clock to get things done. 

This place has certainly suffered as part of the global financial crisis.  We pass construction sites that have been abandoned because the foreign investors ran out of money.  Yet the general impression I get is one of immense wealth. Oil, real estate, tourism are some of the industries that have funded this place that has virtually risen out of the desert in the last 25 years.

 

For the first time in my travels I feel I am in an alien culture, one that is so different and in many ways opposed to my own culture.  We pass by the local residential area and I am struck by the fact there is no disparity of wealth here!  Judging by the size of these houses, everyone is equally wealthy. 

We drive by many famous buildings including the world’s tallest, the Burj Dubai.  We check out some of the world’s most famous hotels including the seven star Atlantis and drive around Palm Island although we don’t really get an aerial view of this famous area.  My day tour comes to an end and I have certainly got a taste for the city.   Now it is time for my desert safari.

I am amazed at how quickly I am greeted by the wide expanse of the desert and how fast we leave the big city behind.  The sight of camels by the road side remind me of a very different desert safari I took in what now feels to me like almost another life.  Ah…Jaisalmeer….  

My travel companions this time around are a Muslim family from Pakistan.  There are quite a lot of travellers from the sub continent here in Dubai but I don’t really meet many backpackers although there must be some around. We get talking and I discover that Farooq (the dad) is also a Civil Engineer who did his Masters at AIT in Thailand.  He is surprised to discover that I am also an engineer and that I am travelling alone.  He tells me he has specialised in Geotechnical Engineering and in another, “ What a small world” moment, I discover that my cousin Rohan who now lives in Michigan and is also a Geotechnical Engineer, studied with Farook and was in the same year as he, at AIT.  We are both completely astounded and I spend the rest of the evening telling him about what Rohan has been up to since those years in Thailand!

We have lots of fun that evening.  Four wheeling in the dunes, riding camels and watching belly dancing while sampling a middle eastern feast.  We sit around on cushions, chat and eat off low tables placed on the desert floor.  It feels very exotic and I can’t believe I finally made it to the Middle East!  My time here has come to an end all too soon and tomorrow I will pack my bags once more.  Africa is calling!  All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did." T.E. Lawrence

A Postcard from Dubai & Abu Dhabi

Driving through the streets of Dubai I can hardly believe my eyes.  A stack of tall buildings on either side of the road welcome me to this city. This city is completely built up and there is little green in this concrete jungle.  My apartment hotel turns out to be quite nice.  The room is a far cry from anything I stayed in while backpacking South East Asia.   A large room, with a little kitchenette and dining table, it is almost  the size of a little studio apartment – and this was the budget option on the internet site I checked out!

It was afternoon when I arrived, so I decided to see Dubai by night and booked a cruise on a traditional Dhow down Dubai Creek.   My dining companion is an older  lady from Bendigo breaking up her journey with a few days in Dubai on her way back to Australia.   We start to chat and exchange stories about our journeys.  The cruise is a great way to see Dubai by night. The night air feels quite exotic and is filled with the sounds of the call to prayer from the local mosques close by.  We stand on the top deck as the hot air from the desert blows through and marvel at this display of wealth in the middle of the desert. 

I spend my second day in Dubai travelling to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.  My new travelling companions are a couple from New Zealand and a traveller from Taipei.  The roads here are amazing and we hurtle down the freeway at speeds that reach 170 kmh.  The couple from New Zealand, the lady in particular, is quite nervous but our driver is keen to reach the Shikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi before they shut out visitors for noon prayers. 

The mosque is the second (or third?) largest in the world and is certainly worth a visit.  I feel it is on par with the Taj Mahal and I am blown away by this building.  It is my first time inside a mosque and we are required to wear the burqa, before we are allowed to wander through!  The robe hangs long and I almost trip on the elevator!  It feels quite cumbersome to me..and is very unflattering (I guess that is the point) but then I am a girl who is happiest in a pair of shorts and a T shirt!  Occasionally one of the many guards on duty will tap someone on the shoulder to let them know their head covering has slipped or they’ve forgotten to remove their shoes in the outside patio..but the ground is burning hot in the 45 degree heat..but they make no allowances for that!     

We pass by the Emirates Palace and learn about the separate abodes and families of his two wives!  The palace is quite amazing and I wonder at the sort of people who live in such opulence and if they get ever get bored with their lives.  I also find it interesting that a culture that is so conservative and requires its women to be completely covered up still allows a man to have  multiple wives!  Definitely a man’s world out here.  

"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go."
-   Robert L. Stevenson