Mon 15th March - day 15;

After the excitement of the weekend it was a slower start to Monday morning than previous - many of the other volunteers still recovering from their eventful trip to Jeffrey's Bay.

So the prospect of our group attacking the alien trees all morning and most of the afternoon seemed more of a challenge than usual. But we did. And as it was a cooler day we got through quite a few.

We were all cheered by the news of the arrival of two 4 week old lions cubs and after lunch we got to feed them. Unlike the 2 week old ones I held at the Lion Park these ones are a bit more robust with, obviously, bigger claws but still quite dependant and always tired. Could have stayed with them all day but decided to cut our time short to give them a rest since it was their first day away from mum.

We filled the extra hour or so before dinner doing a bit of reading in the sun and afterwards played a few rounds of cards before bed.

Tues 16th - day 16;
Bottle feeding the cubbies again this morning before breakfast. After a much needed cup of coffee (the monkeys had been on the roof most of the night) it was off to the elephant sanctuary where we tracked the elephants in the bush, burnt out some broken down trees, gathered hay from the fields, made their beds and mixed up their food. Nudlovu - an 11 year old elephant - treated me to a ride in the middle of it all too.

The sanctuary is one of the places on the reserve that I am guaranteed to get Blackberry signal so was also able to check up on things back home, much to the amusement of the others. My bberry dependence is well known and Meg and Simon have been trying, unsuccessfully, to wean me off it for 2 weeks now. Today they challenged me to a 24 cold turkey from 7.30am tomorrow. If I fail and ask for it more than twice in that time my penalty is buying them Chrunchie's and crisps for them for the rest of the week. The others think this is hilarious and it may not sound much of a challenge but when you're as much of a news junkie as I am and your bberry is as good a friend as mine it will take some doing. We'll see what happens.

Any road I'll obviously not be able to post now until Thursday so will have to amuse myself in our free time in other ways - time to write the postcards for those without access to the blog me thinks!

Hope all's well back there.

Love
Jox