The end of the line, for now. I’m back under the grey skies of England, far, far away from the warmth of the equator. I have had a marvellous time on the whole trip and I have some fantastic memories of the places I have seen and the people I have shared some time with. The last part of the trip was the part I had been looking forward to all the way round the Southern hemisphere; the Galapagos Islands. I had carried the “Diary of the Beagle” all the way and kept dipping in to the Galapagos pages everywhere I [View Full Entry]

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Four weeks in Ecuador and I am one week away from home. I am writing this in my Hostel in Quito, waiting to fly off to the Galapagos Islands tomorrow until I return to Quito on Saturday, This has been an unsettling experience in some ways, Ecuador ties with Mozambique as the poorest country that I have been to and the project I have been on is the only one where the conditions I have stayed in have reflected this. After an 11 hour long and very confusing flight to Santiago in Chile, I had a four hour wait for my [View Full Entry]

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Well, it’s that time again and I’m off to a new country on Sunday. New Zealand has been very satisfying in some ways, I feel that the work I’ve helped in has been of real value, but I’ve not been as thrilled by the country as I thought I would be. This may have been due to my restricted abilities as my arm was in plaster for the first three weeks and is still weak and stiff as I write this, so many of the activities that NZ is famous for have been beyond my strength(as well as my wallet). I [View Full Entry]

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I leave Australia for New Zealand on Saturday, so I thought I’d better update my blog. The highlight of my time in Australia has been my tussle with a pine log on my fourth working day, that left me with a broken arm. It’s ironic that in all my battles with the killer trees of Africa, I have suffered no serious injury (just lost gallons of blood), but a soft Aussie tree gets the better of me. It has also meant that I have been unable to use the long lens on my camera to get wildlife shots. The best of [View Full Entry]

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Well, here I am in Australia and settled into my project in Bathurst, near Sydney, (only four hours away). I’ve been in Oz for twelve days now and I’ve got another four weeks to do. Still, the convicts had to stay for a lot longer, so it’s not so bad. Up to now, I’ve just been doing the tourist thing with Anna, which has been a wonderful time. Where to start on my first Aussie blog? I know, South Africa. There were a few interesting things that happened after my last blog, (well they were interesting to me, anyway) so behave [View Full Entry]

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Well, I’ve been here for a long time, but now it’s time for Australia. There have been several highlights this month starting with my first sighting of African Wild Dog. We got the call to go to Singwe camp, (a neighbouring property and we rolled up to a dry river bed to see three dogs resting in the sand after eating. You can see from the pictures that their bellies resemble beer barrels, so we didn’t see much action from them. Wewatched for about half an hour before leaving them to digest their meal. On the night of 9th of June, [View Full Entry]

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Well here I am again. It has been a quiet three weeks on Campfire, as most of the game seems for a while to have deserted us. We have spent a bit of time working, mostly erosion control and clearing the firebreak around the fence. People have come and gone, but I have stayed and I’m now the old timer here in more ways than one. We had a trip out to camp by the Oliphants river, which was a pleasant change, but the expected hippo and crocodiles stayed away, so I photgraphed lizards and dragonflies instead. On 13th, we came [View Full Entry]

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It’s been a quiet couple of weeks. I’ve not done any trips and no elephants have invaded the compound. The photos are, I think getting better as I am taking the camera out twice a day. On Monday, 27th April, we spotted a young giraffe with a snare round it’s back leg. As you can see from the pix it had not started cutting in yet, but unless it falls off soon, the result will be a slow and painful death, probably from gangrene. Campfire tried to get a vet organised to dart the animal and free it, but the Baluleh [View Full Entry]

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Hello again, Excitng times for me again in South Africa. Last week I sent photos of the Kruger National Park, but couldn't fit on the pictures from the panorama trail. I'm putting on a couple, but not too many or I won't be able to place all the shots i want to show you from everything else. Where to start? Saturday. Went for a late night game drive and saw two lionesses with their cubs in the dark. Watched them for a while, but it is quite scary, because while we were watching one lioness with the spotlight, the other is [View Full Entry]

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Hello again, My second entry from South Africa, and a splendid week it has been. I have lots of photos to show you, much more than I can really put on the blog, but I'll see what I can fit on. Did erosion control work on Monday, which basically was pulling logs and prickly branches together to stop vehicles from neighbouring properties from taking unauthorised shortcuts through the bush. By the time the branches have rotted down in five years or so, the grasses have grown through and provide good grazing for the wildlife. On Tuesday, four of us went on [View Full Entry]

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