Hello again!

This is going to be our last blog entry from South Africa and will probably be the last one for a week or so due to a lack of internet access! Hopefully a selection of photos will be appearing on the blog in the next couple of days.

Yesterday was our last working day at the foundation and luckily we were able to spend most of it with the baby orphans. They've grown loads and are twice the size they were a month ago! Sadly, Star, the premature baby that was brought in a couple of weeks ago died earlier this week which was a bit of a shock as she seemed to be doing really well. However, the baby brought in with the injured arm is recovering really well and should have full use of its arm in the future. We also began integrating Sabi with some possible surrogate mothers in Saav enclosure and it went really well. Bobby, in particular, seemed to really take to her, although I think Sabi was more interested in exploring the forest as it was her first time out of the baby enclosure!

We've been very busy on construction this week as work has begun on two new intro cages for Saav enclosure. These will be for the 1 year old orphans in Disneyland, and will then enable us to then use Disneyland as a new babycare centre for the new orphans. Although we won't be here to see it completed it should be finished in the next week or so.

This week we have been busy socially as well as at the foundation! On Wednesday we had a treasure hunt at half human (the local pub/backpackers). It was really fun, but our team finished 4th which meant we didn't win anything! However, there were a number of comedy moments including the dog running off with one of our clues (which we never got back!) and the girls following me and Gavin into the toilets after they thought we had gone in looking for a clue (when actually we just needed the toilet!)! We've also had a number of big bonfires this week, including one for Arnaud's last night which ended up with a drag show and a very drunk Gys playing chicken with a poisonous black scorpion (we later toasted it on the fire!)! Luckily Gys didn't get stung but a number of people haven't been quite so lucky at avoiding injury this week! Angela got attacked by monkeys in Goliath enclosure and they ripped a tendon out of the back of her knee and Gys (again!) managed to stick a machete in his shin! Both subsequently spent the afternoon in A&E! Debs also had fun in Disneyland this week when Karuls and Marula decided to bite her several times, she now has multi-coloured bruises on her arms from 20 or so bites (but is ok!!).

And so concludes the last South African blog entry! We've had an awesome time and don't really want to leave but at the same time we're really excited about China! We've still got another week here yet though and we're gonna be staying at half human with Matt and Chesa (who arrive tomorrow). We're off on Safari on Tuesday for 3 days and then we've got a few more days to hopefully visit Graskop and Debengeni before we fly out to Shanghai on the 10th December.

Bye for now!

P.S. My beard is beginning to get really long (and itchy!). See the new beard watch coming soon for more details!!