Wild, Beauty, FUN!

I absolutely loved my time at Oana, easily one of the best trips of my life. It balanced work with play perfectly and I never felt bored for one moment, with every activity having a clear purpose it made it even more satisfying. However by far the most enjoyable aspect of my time at Oana was the atmosphere, at no time did I feel like I was a tourist, Dre and Red made camp a home for us in our brief stay and I cant thank them enough. My top two activities are probably rafting and the camera traps, but its hard to say with certainty as I enjoyed every activity. The three words to describe Oana would be wild, beauty, FUN!

( Still can’t believe I fell for the helicopter pizza delivery )

 

James Allsop

 

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Week One: New set of Volunteers

From aardvarks to herds of 66 springbok, cold showers to Fred’s cooking, the first week at Oana has been a blast. Our mission for the three weeks is to try to capture the enigmatic leopard: so far we have set up 14 camera traps, James has butchered a donkey (its halves affectionately known as Denis and Denise), and the aim is to document the leopards’ identities through photos. We have also joined forces with Kali, an overenthusiastic scat dog, who in the near future will help us on our endeavours.

So far, around Oana we have hiked up volcanos, had sundowners looking across the vast plains, and been (temporarily) abandoned in the dark due to the challenges of driving without a sat nav. Our morning mountain biking proved to be better suited to the adrenaline junkies, whereas our efforts at yoga provided a calming antidote. In camp, the biscuit jar is never full, hakuna matata is sung late into the night, and the bird bath we created is a beautiful rock feature.

Our excursions from the farm have involved creating netball courts for the local school in Warmbad, and we have done a two day trip to Fish River. While there we swam in natural hot springs, saw the largest canyon in Africa, and ate our first gemsbok steak.

Wish us luck for week 2!

Biltong, White Water Rafting, Campfire Moments and of course Big Bunny!

Our week started with a two-day hike across the conservancy to the Orange River, something we had all been looking forward to and dreading at the same time. The night before we set off, we scaled up the side of a hill for a sundowner, where we were told by Red and Dre that our hike over the next day would be a chilled three hour walk and wouldn’t be too strenuous, relief to both mine and Mia’s ears who were struggling to even get to up the slope for the sundowner. The start of the hike was early next morning, and we all set off at a good pace with plenty of scaling up mountains, and nibbling on the biltong we had made with Karlene earlier in the week. Red had the treat of carrying two mattresses on his back the whole way, and Max managed to leave his water bottle a few hundred metres back which led to a sprint there and back from him, but on the whole, it was a smooth start.