Monday 7th October 2013 – part 2

The hyenas were a great start to my day of guiding and I enjoyed the first drive of the day. I was pleased with my interpretation with the hippos. My awareness needs to improve as I totally missed the crocodile. Instructor Henry was encouraging and gave me some very useful pointers

It’s really tough guiding the rest of the team as they have the same knowledge as you, if not more and have heard all the facts before.

Lots of off roading today which was quite literally a steep learning curve, at one point I thought I was going to roll the Landy.

Even when not off roading the roads in Karongwe are a real challenge which is probably down to the fact that this is a commercial reserve and therefore has lots of vehicles chewing up the tracks.

I didn’t enjoy the afternoon drive, it had the potential of being great as we were going after cats. However, this meant a long and fast drive north in the Landy with no breaks – a useful lesson in breaking via the gears though. Not sure what would have happened if I’d come round a corner to find elephant or rhino.

All in all there wasn’t much opportunity to guide in the afternoon and we didn’t see the cats and I didn’t shower myself in glory by forgetting the spotlight. But again a good lesson learnt, driving at night in the bush.