Completing of Poe's

The next two weeks we completed our POE for both conservation and Provincial guiding. We did some work books and logbookd which needed to be signed of by the right person. On the 3rd of December I'm getting assesed for the Tour guiding. During this time we have to learn all related history to Limpopo and the necessary history to S.A.

Anti Poaching

The 4th we started with anti poaching, by learning to adapt your eye sight to see smaller objects in nature which don't belong there. We did some excercises to practice it. After this we learned about different positions for fire (standing, kneeling, sitting and lying down) and how to handle a rifel. We learned some hand signs and some patrol formations. Later on we also did some drills (dash, drop, crawl, observe, sights, fire) regarding to the patrols and what to do when a shot is fired to you. The afternoon we learned more about camouflage and actually camouflagged ourselfs with mud and grasses. Out of the whole excercise I've learned a lot for instance not to assume that a object is just by accident lying in a certain position. We also started to talk a bit about what to do once you noticed something is not right for eg. a fence wire being cut, that you observe the area around you and report back to management.

5 Day Limpopo Tour

From the 12-16 October 2009 we went on a Limpopo tour. The 1st day we went to Mapungubwe National park, on the 2nd day we had an accident, on the 3rd day we passed through the Kruger National Park , on the 4th day we moved through Wolkberg and the 5th day we returned to Sondèla. We gained a lot of knowledge on the tour and learned how to handle a accident scene. We saw a lot of things and place and now have an idea on how to handle a tour like this.

Fire on neighbouring farm

Sondèla's neighbouring farm got burned down by a fire coming from Marble Hall. Our fire teams were all fighting for more then 15 hours against it. The next day we all moved next to the fence to fix the fences. A lot of fences were cut from bottom to top and had to be fixed ASAP.

Tour to Thabazimbi

We went to Thabazimbi and on the way there we did a bit of tour guiding, each one having a piece to say about the road. Our end point was at Marakele National Park, where we drove through the park and went up to the Vulture Restaurant. We learned a lot about the different biomes and birding life in the area.

Combat Soil Erosion

This week we did a lot of planning on combatting soil erosion on the Sprinbokflats. After the planning we collected all the equipment needed for the task. We divided the piece of land into 8 blocks which was treated in a different way, for instance one block was thrown with Couch grass seeds and covered with branches were the next was only covered with branches. We monitored all of this actions and the grass in some of the blocks are really growing fast.