How to pack lightly for a long trip

It was Friday, the last working day of the week. As I ate breakfast, I was thrilled to discover that I had two very exciting activities lined up for the day. The first of which was patrolling the enclosures of some of the key animals in the reserve: the African Wild Dogs and Lucky, the three-legged cheetah. The purpose of the patrols was to check the fencing was all in order and to check that the voltage on the electric fences is high enough. It was a long, tiring walk that took several hours but it was exciting, all the same. It was great to see African wild dogs. African wild dogs are incredibly endangered with around 5,000 left in the wild. They are pack animals and formidable hunters, succeeding in around 80% off hunts. These particular wild dogs were rescued from an early age and so can never live a life truly in the wild. After patrolling the wild dog enclosure, we trekked to Lucky the cheetah's enclo...

I awoke to my third day in Namibia, again at 6.30. It's not so bad getting up early when you know the day ahead of you is going to be an adventure. I got up and headed down to the volunteer base area where I have my morning cup of tea and some breakfast. I cannot function in a day without my morning brew! It's whilst having breakfast that we find out what our activities are for the day. I was so excited that today I was going on a caracal walk! What is a caracal? In case you didn't already know, a caracal is one of Africa's smallest cats. It's also one of Africa's rarest. Caracals can easily be distinguished by their sandy, brown pelts and also their black, tufty ears. They're considerably larger than a domesticated cat but nowhere near the size of a cheetah or a leopard. So, we jumped on our truck and drove to the caracal enclosures to pick up Alex the caracal. I'm not sure what Alex's story is but my guess is he was brought to N/a...