The arrival of the main staff group

It’s all very exciting as we now have a full staff team here in Namibia for the 10 week expedition. Everyone flew in on Friday’s night flight from Gatwick to start work straight away on Saturday morning (apart from Dave, John and Tim that is who had been lazing around in Windhoek for a few days!). We had a couple of intensive training days at Fieldbase before heading off to Daan Viljoen National Park for bush craft, radio communications and trekking practice. The self confessed kit anoraks (mentioning no names of course Charlie) got very into GPS systems and knot tying as the rest of us looked on in a slightly confused manner. However, with practice we learnt an awful lot and got almost as proficient as the experts.

We had a brilliant time and saw giraffe (baby ones too!!), zebra, wilderbeast, kudu and warthogs whilst trekking. Luckily the trek wasn’t against the clock as all three groups spent most of their time gazing in awe at the wildlife and the scenery.

The biggest challenge of the whole two days had to be crawling out of our sleeping bags at 5am each morning to find ice on our tents, inside and out! It actually dropped to -6% on Tuesday so it was only Andy’s fire lighting and Fionna’s porridge making skills that enabled us to start the day in any sort of active manner. We had a surprising (and reassuring!) number of creative and inventive cooks within the groups who turned rice, beans and lentils into a more than enjoyable alfresco dining experience.

The funniest moment of the trip had to be the remarkably enterprising baboon who invaded our campsite, probably after a lengthy stakeout, to steal a box of rusks (not the Farleys kind, more like biscotti and really very nice so he was obviously a discerning thief). He made off with them at high speed but failed to take into consideration our very own athlete Rob, who gave chase and in spite of a significant head start in the baboon’s favour, quickly gained on him. He returned (Rob that is, not the baboon) in semi triumphant fashion with the box, but unfortunately without its contents. He tipped off one of his friends the next day who came to attempt another raid, but thankfully our fearless leader Jim was on hand to escort him from the cooking area.