Tuesday 1st April 2014

We had another early morning work out with Bruce. Today it included the bench press which is never fun, least of all when you have a closer look as to what may be living on the underside. We found sac spider, violin spider and brown button spider, three of the most venomous spiders in the world. Knowing that they were there made you rush through this part of the work out.

Jomi and I then headed up to Sand Pad road to meet Sarah from Outpost for a bit of road maintenance. This is the road that’s been closed for the last two or three weeks and it’s in a real mess. The only way to repair it was with rocks so we filled the trailer and then starting filling in the two main tyre ruts where vehicles had been getting stuck. During the two hours before breakfast we managed one trailer load and we reckoned that it’s going to take another four trailer loads to complete the job, this works out at 24 man hours.

I then finished clearing the outer firebreak of the main growth which meant I could start running it again. I did 10k which was hard work after the active morning and in the midday heat. The run gave me the opportunity to note the little bits that I need to go back to with my panga (machete) to finish the job completely.

In the afternoon I took Sarah and Eve, a previous back up who’d been helping lead walks this week, out on a drive towards Crooks Corner where we were able to get down to the banks of the Limpopo. This was a fun jaunt out, we saw an ele bull and on the way back buffalo and a hyena. Because the lights don’t work on the green landy it made for an interesting drive back with only the slightest sliver of moonlight and Eve sitting on the tracker seat with her head torch for illumination.