Thursday 15 September 2011

Maiden Gappers land in the Kingdom of Swaziland

Siyabonga to you all from the beautiful kingdom of Swaziland, it has been a week since most of us landed in the mountainous landscape of Swaziland safe and sound.

Our first 6 weeks are based in Lidwala Lodge where we are in a truly chilled out environment, nothing happens exceedingly fast and we are forced to live by ‘African Time’, which generally means an hour later than the norm. This lodge really does feel like a home away from home, Nisipho our Swazi coordinator has made us feel right at home apart from giving us the old AIDs talk, (similar to the good old Birds and the Bees chat) she like all the staff here at Lidwala are wonderful and extremely friendly.
We spent our first day at Lidwala having orientation, preparing ourselves for the adventures which lay ahead; First of which is our exploration into the Kruger National Park. Before starting our volunteer work, the Antips crew with a combination of Swedish, Danish, German and English volunteers jumped into vans and made the 3 hour journey in the Park. 

This trip into the park could not have been made any better without our handy dandy tour guide Psycology (purposely without the ‘h’), not only did this man love singing to Celine Dion but he also showed us things which you can’t see on the discovery channel, as he constantly reminded us. Within the first half an hour on Safari we saw giraffes, zebras, lions & of course saw A LOT of Impala.

 By the second day impala wore off as a novelty along with Pumbas also known as warthogs. The five days in the Park was mostly spent with camera’s in hand, eyes peeled and Katie’s depressing selection of music playing in the van, however with a little bit of patience some of the most amazing animals on the planet were seen. After one particularly hot African day sitting in the un-airconditioned van for 3hours, we spotted lions by the side of the road, minutes later while positioned less than 3metres away the larger lion begins mating with the lioness (as photographed). We continued our safari and with a little bit of patience we saw leopards up close, baby monkeys and baboons mating.

A message to the parents, no need to worry we are all in good health only one fainting incident where we had many qualified helpers at hand, apart from that some of us have suffered from vivid and obscure dreams thanks to Malaria prevention tablets. 

Luckily we have all very quickly felt right at home with each other some of us choosing to not shower for over 6 days. If the next 11 weeks are anything like this it will be an amazing and unforgettable experience. Don’t be deceived by all our good times, we are still missing you at home. 

Cheers, Lizzy

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