Day 6

Instead of working down at Hopewell today, we took a trip over to Addo National Elephant Park with Zander, Kuzuko's Head Ranger, to see how they do things and to get some ideas for the Barn. Even after only a few days in the bush it felt a little strange to be going back into 'civilisation'. The journey itself was a bit like driving through a huge game park though, as we passed lots of monkeys and baboons on the side of the road and saw ostriches, zebras and kudus in the fields. It was interesting to see that monkeys are even more ubiquitous than rabbits in England!

Monkeys. Monkeys everywhere!

We met up with Gerhard and Catharina who took us around Addo's information centre and we all talked about what we liked about their setup. It's very professional and somewhat more mainstream than the more intimate and naturally rustic feel of Kuzuko, but has some nice touches that we think might work here, particularly some of the interactive exhibits. Gerhard and Catharina were kind enough to arrange a drive around their game park too, where again we saw lots of interesting animals very close up, including a tortoise, zebras, a flamingo, warthogs (mmmm...warthog...) and three young male elephants shoving each other around by a waterhole. The noise they made sucking up and drinking the water sounded like a dozen toilets being flushed at the same time!

Poor flamingo. He only had one leg ;)

A short stop at a typical african town shop to grab some food and drink, and a quick chat with the shop's parakeet, and it was back home to Kuzuko. As there wasn't enough time left to get any serious work done we went to the lodge to try transferring all the fundraising money from the UK once again (despite many attempts using the online banking service to transfer the funds it kept refusing to send it). After a few rather frustrating phone calls we finally got through to someone who seemed to know what they were doing, (thank you, Cathy!) and hopefully should all be sorted out tomorrow.

On the way back to our quarters we were amazingly lucky to see either Matt or Kalahari (it was a bit too dark to tell which) tucking into a  kudu! We sat in the car less than ten metres transfixed and fascinated watching the lion tearing into his just recently killed lunch. It was brilliant, but even more brilliant was just as we were pulling away and he started running towards us ready to attack! The speed and stealth of a lion coming for you protecting his kill was something that will stay with us always!