Heading back to the States

Well the last few weeks have been exceedingly pedestrian for me...no trips to the bush, just too many hours staring at a computer screen. It has been relatively productive and I've caught up on quite a bit of work that I had put off while I was buggering around the Kalahari.

The main reason for this post is to update everyone on my schedule the next few weeks. I leave South Africa for the ridiculously long trip back to the States on Sunday afternoon. I arrive in Cincinnati on Monday afternoon and will be teaching bat ID to ESI's crew until Monday, November 2nd, when I fly to Missouri. I'll be in Missouri until I fly back to South Africa on the 18th. As of now, I have nothing planned for my time in Missouri, so if anything exciting is happening, let me know. I won't have a phone while I'm there, but I should be checking my e-mail regularly.

Tswalu was a blast!

What a couple of weeks. Two days after getting back from Madikwe, we turned around and headed back out. Our first stop was the Kalahari Oryx game ranch where one of Andrew's students is working on a pangolin project. Unfortunately, three nights of searching turned up no pangolins, but the area was beautiful and we saw a bunch of other species, including one very close run in with a male lion in the dark. No worries though, Andrew was the one that most likely would have been eaten.

From there, we traveled to Tswalu Nature Reserve in north central South Africa. All I can say is the place is stunning...maybe the coolest habitat I've seen in Africa. It's true Kalahari desert/savanna and it's just made for panoramic shots. We spent most days looking for sites for Ben to do his Ph.D. research. Several evenings were spent on dunes with sundowners watching the sunset on the mountains. Andrew said it best when he opined "It's just another shit day in Africa".

I will be back in Pretoria for a couple of weeks and then I'm heading back to the States for a few weeks. I'll be in Cincinnati for a week training some biologists to identify bat calls before heading back to Missouri to see my parents for two weeks.

I have a ton of pictures that still need to be uploaded going at least back to Madikwe. I have to give a department seminar to the genetics department on Thursday, so I'll be a little swamped getting that ready, but I'll try to catch up soon.