Last night was a little rough. I think I got a total of 3 hours of sleep, although surprisingly, I feel fine with that low amount of sleep and hopefully I will crash tonight. This lack of sleep was because it was so windy, so the tent sounded like a banging drum throughout the whole night, and also half the tent walls are made out of mesh so all the sand came into my tent. At one point during the night I had to put on a face mask to get the sand out of my eye and ear plugs to block out the noise. I also may have have traveler’s sickness so I woke up every hour and had to sprint to the bathroom. It was horrible.
However today we were able to go to the Olbalbal flood plain and we set up 6 cameras to catch photos of the wildlife. Our hypothesis was that closer to the water, there will be higher biodiversity and richness. So we set up two cameras 120 feet from the water, two cameras 0.13 miles from the water, and two cameras 0.59 miles from the water. We will collect these cameras one day before we leave for Nairobi. We did not see any hippos as this is not their habitat, and we did see some cape buffalo.
On the drive back we were able to see giant herd of giraffes. There were upwards of 54-61 giraffes. It was really perfect, not only because I have never dreamed of seeing so many giraffes in one place, but because it was also world giraffe day. There were 2 babies that I could see, and a bunch of the giraffes were laying on the ground in the tall yellow grass. We made it back to camp and had lunch, a couple hours of rest time, 4 presentations, relocated our tents, and ended with dinner. Until tomorrow (with hopefully more sleep)
Isabella-2024-Bovini
(giant herd of up to 64 giraffes)
