An amazing two days of hiking!

Andrew and I just got back from two days of hiking in the Wolkberg mountain range looking for blue swallows. In total, we hiked about 22km-14km in Wolkberg Nature Reserve and then another 8 in Lekgalameetse Nature Reserve. The swallow's natural habitat is high montane grasslands, so spent a lot of time hiking up steep mountains to get to the top and along the way we got an endless series of unbelievable views. To say these two parks are remote would be an understatement. We didn't see anyone in either park in vehicles or on foot. Today, we came out the back side of Lekgalameetse and it took us over two hours to crawl along 10km in Andrew's Land Cruiser. In the end, I have to say the Wolkberg range is an amazing place and one I hope to see again. I didn't carry my camera much because of the terrain, but I'll post what pictures I did take in the next few days.

The holidays are finally over, now more travelling

I spent my Christmas running around Pilanesberg Game Reserve chasing elephants in an Audi...not a bad way to spend the break I guess. I haven't had great internet service since I've been back, so I've been slow getting pictures on Flickr. The completely empty building has, however, made work more efficient and I've managed to get a long ways on a couple of manuscripts.

Andrew and I leave early next week for Lekgalameetse Nature Reserve to look for highly endangered blue swallows. Lekgalameetse is apparently in a beautiful mountainous area and will definitely be unlike any of the other places I've visited in southern Africa. Poland still looks like it will happen at the end of the month, but we have to work out some funding issues before I can make definite plans.