Tuesday 18 February 2014

Sunday Afternoon and Climbing Cats

The house feels a lot fuller now with the three new volunteers who arrived on Saturday afternoon. It is great to have some new company and some extra pairs of hands! Gemma, Hannah and Jeff are all lovely and it was nice to get through the jobs a bit quicker this morning. 

Last night we got to do something a bit different. About 20 minutes from the cheetah project is SunWa - Pieter and Estelle's river lodge. The American school group that did a day's work here last week are staying there and doing various activities. One of these was to have an astronomer come in with his telescopes and we were able to organise to join in. We got to go to the lodge early evening and relax first - see the photos below it is an absolutely stunning place. Right on the river. We were also able to eat dinner there which was a bit of a treat, a delicious buffet selection. Then Vince the astronomer first gave a talk and presentation for an hour or so - lots of fascinating stuff about our universe and how far away everything is, as well as just how tiny we really are!!

The time outside with the telescope wasn't as good as it could have been because the moon was amazingly bright which obscured the stars a lot. But we did get a great view of the moon itself, and a look at Jupiter with 4 moons clearly visible, plus various other star clusters and a nebula which was very interesting and cool to see. A really nice way to spend the evening and fun to get out and about!

Here are some photos taken by the lodge:






I also wanted to mention climbing cats! You sometimes read that cheetahs can't climb trees. However that is definitely not true. I've seen Jasmine climb the one in her enclosure a few times, and managed to snap a pic this weekend. I also caught Nala this morning on top of the new shelter that is being built - just enjoying the view! Apparently they are quite fond of leaving poos on top of shelters so we'll have to watch for that now. 














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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous18 February 2014 at 12:05

    hi mrs Lennon the astronomy course sounded amazing what was something interesting you learned about the universe?

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    Replies
    1. Unknown19 February 2014 at 00:08

      Hi Izzy, the course was very cool and the guy had lots of amazing facts about how big things are in space and how far away things are. One of my favourites though was a fact about how hot the sun is and how much energy it contains. He said that if you could somehow get a tiny piece of the sun's core the size of a pin head and bring it to earth, everything within a 60 mile area would instantly vapourise and disappear completely!! I also didn't realise that one of the pointer stars to the southern cross is actually 3 stars together, two bright ones and a dimmer one. With his powerful telescope you can JUST see a small gap if you squint your eyes, however that gap is actually about 6 billion kilometres!

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  2. Anonymous18 February 2014 at 12:29

    Hi miss Lennon hope you're enjoying your trip!
    We were wondering: where do Jemma, Hannah, Jeff come from?

    sincerely Reef, Bailey, Ben, Geena, Torrin.

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    Replies
    1. Unknown19 February 2014 at 00:12

      Hi guys,
      Gemma is from Brisbane in Australia so pretty close to home! Jeff is another one from America, but he is from New Jersey and Isabelle is from Montana. Hannah is from London. It is interesting talking to everybody about the different things they have in their own countries!

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