in Queenstown New Zealand
I am fortunate to be both a UK and Kiwi citizen meaning I can travel on two passports and get to live and work in Europe, New Zealand and Australia. I can not tell you how fortunate I feel and thank my lucky stars my beautiful Mum was born in New Zealand allowing me the gift of a treasured passport. I have been to New Zealand many times now I am approaching 30 but when I had just finished university back when I was 22 I felt like an adventure and where better to start in my second home new Zealand. I have always felt a strong connection to this wonderful, small country because of my family ties and now I was going back to explore from top to bottom.
By the way I studied Media at university...my vet nursing was to become later. In between university breaks in Bristol, UK I would hop on a plane to California to see my Mum and Dad which is where they were living at the time. Here I my existing passion for wildlife grew, I became obsessed with bears and mountain lions and rattle snakes, coming from the UK where nothing can hurt you to America was awesome to me. During my Californian holidays I shopped in new York, I camped, traveled up to Canada and British Columbia, skied in the mountains at Christmas always desperately hoping to see some dangerous wildlife but it never happened (apart from my first Black Widow spider), the scenery was breath taking though and I loved this place and I will return in my life I am sure of it.
I vividly remember landing in Auckland over Aotearoa , meaning land of the long white cloud in Maori. I felt instantly connected to this beautiful country and had wonderful times. I bonded with my very close cousins and aunty and travelled extensively on my own for the first time in my life, I still have this itch like it is born in my soul. I am very grateful I went to New Zealand as it was the start of a decade of travel which bought me to where I am today. I went out on my own, made lots of friends, saw wild dolphins up in the far North, jumped out of a plane, did the worlds third highest bungy jump over a canyon from a cable car, lived and worked in Queenstown on the South island, walked up a glacier and in general had a fun old time. I often get asked which is more scary bungy jumping or skydiving. I'm probably more likely to die skydiving but being strapped to someone means I have no choice they did the hard bit for me...jumping! I still do not know how I plucked up the nerve to jump of that tiny ledge off my own will to the depths below but it was a rush like no other! Lesson YOU can do whatever you PUT your mind too!
So when it was time for me to drag my sorry self back home, I decided to work and save, and work and save for another undecided adventure...but then love got in the way. Well actually it didn't for some reason in life I've always wanted to take the not so easy route the urge to move again over riding my feelings. This is exactly what happened when I decided my passion for animals was too strong to ignore. So I made a decision to go by myself to a third world country and work with animals, confronting my fears on a game reserve for a hypochondriac that is too nervous to walk through a field of cows at home is no easy feat! But I left my dull office job and my the safety of my happiness in love and got on a plane and flew away. Now leaving the then love of my life was an awful feeling and those feelings were ever present during my trip, naively I thought he would be there when I got home but eventually distance got the better of him and it fell apart. My memories of South Africa are mixed with painful reminders but strong feelings of getting up and doing something that I put my mind too and I look back of it with a grin on my face, for anyone who has traveled to Africa will tell you it has a heartbeat of its own that gets under your skin and when you leave you just want to return. I arrived in Cape Town and took up residency in Table View to start my first assignment working with the South African penguins who are in serious trouble due to over fishing and oil spills. These creatures stick in my heart, they are humerus and ever so cute, waddling around like little people in suits, with a beak to kill...seriously my arms looked like I was being severely beaten every night. Coming from an English winter to an African summer is a bit to get used to as wearing wellies and rubber overalls in 40 degree heat is quite simply horrible! I got so sunburnt one day I looked like I'd had a run in with a volcano. Cape town is a stunning city and coupled with the penguins and friends I made enriched the experience. Releasing the penguins back into the wild was emotional seeing them swim off will always be a happy memory. The work is hot, brutal and hard but that single moment makes it all worth it. Learning how to force feed a penguin is painful (they have sharp beaks and love pecking you in the arms as they can not fly this is their defense against predators) and frustrating. A kind and patient lady helped me and once you get the hang of it its like riding a bike and quite cathartic. I not only contended with penguins but also all sea birds including the unruly pelican, now when I see one swooping past looking so magnificent and strong I always remember sticking the entire length of my arm down one of their throats to feed him fish before one he was strong enough he just took off over the fence to join his mates.
I moved from Cape Town to Plettenberg Bay to do a whale and dolphin project, on the way I got to swim with great white sharks one of the greatest things that's ever happened in my life.
In the cage!
Swimming with the one of the worlds most top apex predator did not disappoint but was also not how I imagined. We set out on a stormy day with me swallowing sea sickness tablets and hoping for the best. we finally arrived at shark alley and it is easy to see why it has that ominous name with a large colony of seals, in the distance you can see surfers close to the shore. We saw 14 great whites that day and one longer than the viewing cage which was 4 meters long. When it was my turn to get in the cage I felt pretty nervous, even with a wet suit the shock of the waters cold temperature was overwhelming. There were lots of blue bottle jelly fish around that the crew were fishing out with a bucket, getting one of those wrapped around your snorkel is no fun they administer an excruciatingly painful sting so much so that when the bucked drifted off into an ocean full of sharks one of the crew members jumped in to get it, a split second after he got out a huge shark appeared at the surface. Now chumming for sharks is a difficult argument as it does change the natural behavior of the shark in the wild but this is what happened to attract the sharks along with a cut out seal replica.It is easy to realize why sharks are never spotted because you can hardly see them they dissolve into their surroundings perfectly something I often think about when I am swimming in my now home in Perth Western Australia.Within the cage you are allowed to come up for air and the crew members shout where the next shark is coming from and you hold your breath and go under. These creatures are remarkably graceful and nonthreatening, really beautiful to see. Under the surface of the water the sheer size and circumference of them is mind blowing the largest one looked like a small mini van. It was a surreal experience being this close to something so powerful, it almost felt like I was in a 3d cinema, of course I wasn't if I had reached out to touch the shark I could of but for obvious reasons i didn't. I had so much adrenalin pumping around that when it was time to get out I couldn't pull myself up on the ladder I was as weak as a baby and had to be pulled out by the crew, I then proceeded to drink large quantities of coke and inhaled a few sandwiches.
My last assignment was working at Kariega game reserve on the eastern cape. I am a coward when it comes to wildlife viewing I think that is why I love it so much so I spent the whole time here in perpetual and absolute fear gaining the nick name of squeal as that's precisely what I did the entire time, of course as quietly as my uncontrollable body would allow in the company of lions. In the wonderful jungle I canoed, we watched the humble elephants all day from the van and our house which had nothing but a small flimsy fence around it separating us from them. We did leopard cam and hiked all around, chopped down trees and went on game drives twice a day. We got stuck by the lions twice, once with a dead chicken in the jeep and once at night. These 'jeeps' are large open top vehicles and I can tell you, you feel mighty vulnerable at night surrounded by lions, like a canape on a tray at a cocktail party. My life pretty much flashed before my eyes, I thought "right this it it then", you see lions at night are a different animal. In the day they are lazy and playful at night they are deadly predators that can kill, and will kill they can take down an elephant in the dark. Like always and with a luck that seems never ending for the rangers we got out alive. We did game capture where the vet shot game with m99 a potent opioid that can take down a rhino. Once darted the animal takes off at speed to we follow in the jeep racing through unpredictable, hot and bumpy terrain. All the while the m99 darts precariously bounce around next to you, hell to health and safety in Africa (that's one of the reasons I love the place)! Once the animal has taken cover we had to follow on foot which is not fun at all when there are buffaloes about. Not to mention running through waist high grass every step surely thinking you will come to your death by innocently stepping on a black mamba. But no that didn't kill me neither did the bee hive just casually there in my bedroom. I went down to the rivers edge one day and a hippo lunged out so fast my friend said I jumped so high in the air and was back in the jeep with in a micro second. After a trek one day we drove home in the fading sunset and saw hippos on land where we had just been they are ginormous out of the water. In fact my most treasured possession is a hippo tooth an African boyfriend once bought home for me after a wild river trek in Zimbabwe. The ticks over there are unbelievable that was another thing I thought would kill me tick bite fever but despite hundreds of ticks finding there way in over tucked in trousers into socks and 100 percent deet I never surrendered to that one. The rangers that have had it say it is truly awful. I wrote extensively about the poaching and survival of the truly beautiful rhino in my other blog 'Girl meet kanger' here is a wonderful update to the story and where I will leave the chapter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGDQPOJ9Luw
