Bags packed.... ready for the off!

Well it has been a few weeks since my last post - not much to report until now what with Christmas and New Year taking over.

I hope you all had a good one and have lots of adventures planned for the next year!

Hopefully your new year was better than this fellas!

So the time is nearly here for me to wave goodbye to the U.K. for the next 12 months. Looking back over the past year a lot has happened, some good, some bad and some just so-so, but I can confidently say that the next year should be a big improvement with a whole lot more adventure, excitement and breathtaking moments.

I don't really go in for New Years resolutions and the like, all I try to do is make sure each year takes me to new places and into new experiences and I have a feeling this year may top the past 24 by some way.

So everything is ready - bags packed today; those who know me well will find it no surprise that I have been in the process of sorting and packing for the last couple of weeks! Not that I like to procrastinate or anything - I just like to know the logistics of everything inside out, and believe me packing a year's worth of kit ranging from camping kit to casual clothes to a hammock to textbooks to field guiding clothes to laptops and phones and iPods to wilderness first aid kits to shoes to a folder full of paperwork etc etc is a task indeed. Even more so when you only have two 23kg baggage allowances to play with (saying it like that it sounds like a huge amount of space to play with but trust me it isn't!).

Anyway in the end I have managed to get MOST things in that I wanted to take and am well under my 46kg allowance at 42kg all in for my checked baggage.

I will be wearing my boots on the plane (to save 2kg out of my baggage allowance!).

So the only thing that remains now is to bid farewell to all my friends and family in the U.K. and prepare to say hello to my new temporary one in SA.

I know a little more now about the other people on my course - there are eight of us in total on the first year. I am the only British person with a mixture of South Africans and Germans making up the other 7. So far I have contacted one other person on the course and I am really looking forward to meeting the others.

From now on it would be nice to think I can start blogging about life as a trainee field guide on a weekly / fortnightly basis depending on the internet availability. We will have to wait and see though - I won't know until I'm out there just how feasible this will be.

I'm hoping this won't be me!

My first job to do on landing in O R Tambo in Joberg is to get myself a SA sim card and data plan. I should then be able to communicate with people in the UK via WhatsApp or Viber - if you have a smartphone and don't already have one of these apps then get it now!!!  :D

Bit of free advertising!

Bit of free advertising!

Then I am meeting with my friend Darlene - a fellow conservation volunteer who was on the same programme as me at Kariega Game Reserve in August 2013. This will mark the beginning of a great few days exploring Joberg and the surrounding area.

From there I fly from Joberg down to Port Elizabeth on the Sunday, get transferred to Ulovane Camp and the course begins in earnest on the Monday.

Ulovane camp borders Amakhala Game Reserve lying halfway between Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth.

I am hardly at Ulovane for two weeks before it is my birthday at the end of January and I think this is the first year when I can't say where I will be or what I'll be doing - for all I know I could be camping out under the African sky in the bush, on a field trip to a neighbouring reserve or just chilling out at our camp. Half the excitement for me is this not knowing - I like the surprises it brings!

Well that is all for now - for those who have been following my blog from the beginning, thank you, I hope they will start getting more interesting and informative from now on.

Take it easy peeps!