15th April

The half way point. Sun back again today so nice warm shower after another day tracking. I got up at 5am to go tracking again with Phale so I'll tell you about that although I still have to tell you about Friday. The Internet was down all Sunday and Monday so I have been feeling out of touch. As we were going to be about 40k away we picked up the trackers Cho and Manga at their village which is about 20k the other side of Ghanzi and called D'kar. Sadly Cho didn't have his bunny hat on today but was wearing an on trend striped trilby, with aviators natch. We were on a game farm which has animals not necessarily indigenous but able to survive. They are bred for meat,  licensed hunting and tourism but these places are vast and there's lots of cover. Anyway we found some cheetah spoor but not before the truck had plunged into an aardvark burrow so hard it pitched poor Manga clean off the bonnet. After that they added traffic directions to their skills to help Phale avoid the many burrows which they dig in the track because it's soft sand
Back to cheetahs,  at the first marking tree the camera had been chewed probably by a hyena but the chip was ok. At the second tree the camera was missing altogether which was such a shame as there was lots of scat and there would have been some good photos. Hyenas again probably they have immensely strong jaws.  Four of us looked for half an hour but didn't find it. The next two were fine and Jane has since shown me some lovely images which I'll upload when I can. We had a lunch break at a pan which is a natural shallow bowl in the terrain which fills only when it rains and is then a watering hole.
On the way back I saw two pairs of Gemsbok a very striking antelope,  two wildebeest, two impala and two ostrich. I saw some Friday as well and took a photo but they were legging it as  only ostrich can so it wasn't very good. At the entrance to camp a couple of warthog were drinking from the goats' trough, so all in all a very good day.
I'll send you a taster for Friday which involved the goats.
More later...