9th April

Can you believe I've been here over a week already. The temperature has generally been around 30/35 degrees but this morning I woke up freezing as my little clock was registering 10 degrees. When I was reading in bed (by torchlight) at 9pm it was 27 degrees so a bit of a shock  and of course my fleece was at the bottom of my tin trunk/wardrobe. To make it worse the shower was cold, as the solar powered tank had lost heat during the night.
I got up at 5am yesterday to go tracking with Phale (as in Parlay) who is from Botswana and has worked for CCB for three years as a researcher like Jane. Tracking consists of driving slowly along rough overgrown tracks with the two trackers sitting on the bonnet looking for spoor or scat. When they see something they signal to stop, hop off and study it then come back to Phale and say something like brown hyena or black backed jackal, one male or two females or whatever. Phale checks the GPS coordinates reads them out and I record it all on a sheet including distance travelled between each sighting. This goes on the whole day usually about eleven hours sometimes seeing nothing. The guys are sat on the bonnet braced on the bull bars, it was hot enough inside the truck they must have been fried. Strangely they still wear long heavy overcoats and one wore a very fetching pink knitted bonnet with a white rabbit  on it.  His name was an unpronounceable series of clicks so we called him Cho.
At about 7.30 great excitement - a heap of cheetah poo, not quite steaming but very fresh. It was still soft, I felt it (through a CSI type plastic bag) and yes you have to see it people that's the reason I'm here. 
I also saw some kudu - antelope about the size of a horse grey and white with long straight but spiral horns. I was looking at the small stuff too, more weird and scary insects, dragonflies, tiny green frogs who chose an unfortunate moment to cross that particular track and a lovely little leopard tortoise no bigger than my palm. Still looking at birds I saw right beside us a Kori Busted, a magnificent bird in the style of a heron but much bigger. They prefer to walk and this one was walking only a few feet away.
So it was a fascinating day but not something I would want to do two days running, it was exhausting and bone - shaking.
Getting dark so that's all for now. More next time...