So, it’s official… I’m in the last year of my twenties – and it’s going to be a great year too! ;-) Just as the clock turned midnight, Heiko (my Husband) came to join me on the sofa to wish me a Happy Birthday – and he had a surprise for me too, a fabulous gift.
It was already past midnight so it was officially my birthday and I was allowed to open it :-)
He handed me a large brown envelope; it was addressed to me but with a friend’s address (so that I couldn’t intercept the mail lol). As I turned the envelope over I saw there was a return address written on the back. But before I had time to blink let alone read it, Heiko had taken the envelope off me to check if it was safe for me to read. I wouldn’t have guessed who the sender was so he gave the envelope back to me.
Inside were letters, photographs, a CD, postcards and… an adoption certificate. A smile spread across my face as I made an attempt to translate the (Dutch) text.
Through the local organisation Stichting SPOTS (Save & Protect Our TreasureS), my wonderful and thoughtful husband has adopted a cheetah in my name, a cheetah named Klein.
For several years we have gifted each other with wildlife adoptions on birthdays and Christmases, but this one is different from the rest. It’s not a yearly adoption with a small fee, it’s not a symbolic adoption either, it’s a REAL adoption. I’m one of 40 adoptive parents for Klein, supporting him his entire life at the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) Namibia. The adoption programme, set up by Stichting SPOTS, helps to care for the resident cheetahs at CCF which in turn, frees up more of CCF’s budget for use on their programmes for the protection of the wild cheetah population. Klein is the 3rd cheetah adopted by adoption parents in the Netherlands.
Are you wondering why his name is Klein? I thought it meant “small” but it doesn’t! In fact, he is far from small, he’s the largest of the male cheetahs at CCF. Klein was born in May 2000 and has two siblings; a brother named Calvin (who unfortunately passed away in 2002), and a sister named Chanel. Therefore, the trio: Calvin, Klein and Chanel. That explains his name a little better, hey? :-)
Klein and his siblings arrived at CCF when they were just one year old following the death of their mother – she was shot on a game farm and afterwards her skin was used to capture the three cubs. When CCF rescued them 3 weeks later, the cubs were in a very poor condition. Thankfully, following an intensive treatment for bleeding stomach ulcers, they recovered completely.
And here he is, now 10 years old:
:-) And now of course, I’m longing to travel to Namibia to visit Klein and all his cheetah friends! Especially after watching the small video clips of him that came in my adoption package! Heiko, thank you sooooooooo very much! I love it! The most perfect birthday gift ever! :-)))))
The day gets better too, I’m just back from spending a wonderful afternoon with my dear friend, Vinita. We indulged in a fabulous pedicure at the Dutch Oriental Spa in Scheveningen and oh boy, what an indulgence! It was the first time I’ve ever had a pedicure and with my ticklish feet I was so worried I was going to giggle and squirm…. which of course I did, but only a little, it was really lovely! Definitely recommend it! Afterwards we had a late lunch on the beach – nope, no spare ribs this time. Surprised you didn’t I?! But we did have ice cream. Unfortunately, they were out of After Eight so I doubled up on the white chocolate instead mmmm ;-)
And now.. Heiko is home from work and we’re about to leave for a behind the scenes visit to Blijdorp Zoo. *happy happy* :-)
ps. thank you to everyone that left such lovely birthday wishes on my Facebook page, I didn’t quite manage to reply to everyone yet, but I will :-)
Slowly but surely I’m making progress on my travel journal, which documents our trip to Kenya and Tanzania last month. I’m on the final edit so hopefully I will be able to share it with you soon. In the meantime, I’d like to tell you about our visit to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT).
I think the very first time I heard about the DSWT was from the CBBC children’s program ‘The Really Wild Show’ but I can’t be sure as it was a long long time ago when I watched that programme! More recently, I know the organisation from the BBC series ‘The Elephant Diaries‘, and maybe you do too?
Through the zoocrew.eu project, I discovered the website of DSWT and also found they have a Twitter page, and a Facebook Fan Page. They are regularly posting updates and photos of the orphaned elephants and rhinos; the work they are doing is just incredible – go check them out!
When my husband’s birthday came around, I decided to foster an elephant from the DSWT in his name, but when I was browsing the website it was Maalim that stole my heart; a little black rhino, born prematurely and abandoned by his mother. He had just turned one year old and was absolutely adorable in the photos. I couldn’t have picked a more perfect gift. We have LOVED receiving updates on his progress, and if you didn’t already read his ‘Maalim and the Mattress‘ update then you must do. I know I’ve written about it before, but it really is a must-read! :-)
During the planning of our safari adventure to Kenya and Tanzania, it worked out that on our way home we’d be spending a number of hours in Nairobi, Kenya, waiting for the overnight flight back to Amsterdam. If only we could arrive in Nairobi a bit earlier so we could visit the DSWT and see Maalim! It was difficult to arrange because we first had to fly to Nairobi from Ndutu in the Southern Serengeti/Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania. But Karin, the Director at Wild Times Safaris, worked her magic and with some careful planning we were able to visit the orphanage in the afternoon on our last day. Thank you SO much Karin!
So the day came. Our first plane was late and we had three small flights before we would arrive in Nairobi. We were very nervous as we waited; we absolutely did not want to miss our visit to the DSWT. When our plane landed on the airstrip we both let out a big sigh of relief. Three flights later, all on small aircraft (and the last flight was a very bumpy ride!) we arrived in Nairobi.
We had some time to spare before our appointment at the DSWT so we first visited the Giraffe Centre – but I’ll blog about the Giraffe Centre another time ;-)
The DSWT is adjoined to Nairobi National Park; we entered via the ‘Kenya Wildlife Service’ gate and followed the signs for ‘Sheldrick’. We were so happy to be able to visit and couldn’t wait to meet with the keepers and see the orphaned elephants and rhinos; most of all we couldn’t wait to meet Maalim!
We waited patiently whilst the keepers locked Shida, a large male rhino, in his enclosure. Shida left the Trust two years ago but often comes back to visit. He can sometimes be aggresive so for safety reasons he had to be put in his enclosure before the visitors were allowed into the area.
Little Maalim was the first to appear. He was still so tiny and so cute as well!
It was wonderful to see him and we watched almost in amazement as he happily made his way to his night stable. He knew exactly where to go!
In his stable area, one of the keepers wrapped a blanket around him whilst he greedily drank his milk from a bottle. He was so adorable to watch and we stroked his face just above his upper lip.
Now for a video share:
Look, you can see his mattress :-) he sleeps underneath it with his head poking out one side and his tail out of the other! lol
The elephants were the next to enter their night enclosures and stables. They all walked very close to us and each knew exactly where to go. The very last elephant was little Mawenzi. She literally crept around the corner and slowly and cautiously made her way towards us, then she trundled off to her night stable. When you watch the video you’ll know exactly which one shy Mawenzi is ;-) Meanwhile, we heard a commotion in Olare and Sabachi’s enclosure. They were playing a game of push and shove, you’ll also see this on the video! This time Olare had started it (the one without a blanket on) but one of the keeper’s told us that often it’s Sabachi that’s the “naughty boy”.
Once they had settled we walked over to Olare and Sabachi and stayed with them for a long time. Sabachi was very friendly and came to say hello, waving his trunk in circles and placing it in our hands. He would lift up his trunk and rest it on the top of his head so that we could stoke the underside. He also nudged my hand to find my finger to suck on it! All of the elephants liked to do that, it’s comforting for them. Sabachi put his trunk through a gap in the fence to reach the water trough; we knew what was coming next so we both took a step back. Sure enough, Sabachi squirted water through the gate in our direction – cheeky! He was really quite a character and before long he had my right hand and arm covered in the dust and dirt that he was covered in from his dirt baths.
We asked the keeper why some of them shared an enclosure and others didn’t; Olare and Sabachi are good friends and spend their days together when they are outside their enclosures in the Park. When elephants become good friends they will share the same night enclosure. In June this year, all the elephants in the same row of enclosures as Olare and Sabachi will go to Tsavo National Park to join a wild herd of elephants and once again live in the wild.
Next door to Olare and Sabachi was Dida (you probably heard the two children shouting her name in the video, they were excited to see her!). Though still young she is the oldest female; this makes her the boss and all the other elephants know she has the matriachal role of the group. When she lifted up her trunk we could see two tiny tusks growing; she looked so sweet and adorable! Dida will also be going to Tsavo in June.
We walked accross to visit Malia in another row of stables. She was enjoying some tasty leaves from the tree branch in her stable. Her keeper was telling us that the elephants are very good time keepers. If you are just a minute late with the milk the elephants let you know. The keepers sleep inside the stable with the younger elephants, and if they don’t wake up in time for the morning milk feed, the elephants will steal the blanket off the keeper to wake them up!
When we popped our head through the stable door of Mawenzi, next door to Malia, we found her hiding her head amongst the branches. She didn’t move, even when her keeper called her; apparently she is not nearly this shy when she is out playing with the other elephants in the park.
The guide came over to tell us that we had only five minutes left of our visit so we went to say goodbye to Maalim but his top stable door was now closed. So instead, we peeked in on the youngest elephant, Shukuru. She was only a few months old, still very small with a tiny little trunk and short little legs. So sweet.
Visiting the DSWT was certainly one of the highlights of our trip and totally made our day. Since we’ve returned home, we’re now also fostering Sabachi and Shukuru too. It is a wonderful thing that they are doing there. It must be very special for each of the keepers to be such a big a part of these elephants lives; certainly we wish we were in their shoes.
If you’re interested in fostering an orphaned elephant or rhino, head over to the DSWT website for more information and to learn about their fostering program.
And one last video share:
Founder and Chair of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Dr Dame Daphne Sheldrick, reflects on the DSWT’s wildlife conservation projects and how this life saving work is possible only thanks to the charity’s global network of supporters and foster parents.
I have some exciting news to share! Some of you will know that my husband, Heiko, and I are very passionate about wildlife and in an effort to raise awareness for wildlife conservation we set up a website: www.zoocrew.eu Please do stop by to check it out, you’ll find zoo news/reviews, conservation articles, forums and photo galleries. We also have a Facebook fan page and you can follow us on Twitter too :-) But before you go off exploring, let’s first get back to my exciting news, it starts with a short story…
In August 2008, Heiko and I visited the Painted Dog Conservation project in Zimbabwe. Their efforts to educate the local community and involve them in the protection of Africa’s Painted Dogs is just brilliant. We were impressed!
There are very few Painted Dogs (also known as Wild Dogs) remaining in the wild. Being nomadic, they travel great distances, only staying in the same location when they have pups. So when we came across a pack of 24 dogs during our trip to Tanzania in February 2009, it was incredible; we could not believe our eyes. It was one of the highlights of our trip! I’ve blogged about our sighting in a previous post and you can see some of my photos here.
In March 2009 after we returned home, we visited Beekse Bergen Safaripark to attend a talk given by Greg Rasmussen and Peter Blinston from the Painted Dog Conservation project and it was great to see how the project was progressing. We also learned that a lot of the support for the project comes from the Netherlands, there is a foundation here: Stichting Painted Dog Conservation.
We wrote an article about the talk on our website (here’s the link) and not long after, we received an email from the Chairman of Stichting PDC and our support of the Painted Dogs snowballed, as did their support of zoocrew.eu.
When it came time to design the Painted Dog Conservation 2010 Calendar, Stichting PDC asked if they could use the photos we had taken in Tanzania and we sent off several high resolution images to their designer/printer.
Last week I went to visit the Chairman to collect several of the calendars for our own distribution. We weren’t sure what to expect but we knew that one of our images had been selected. I assumed it would be a standard wall calendar with 12 images, one for each month. What I discovered was a 100x70cm poster-size wall calendar, with only one image: mine! And the image credit is for zoocrew.eu! So exciting!
I know some of you have been waiting to see what it looks like, and it’s so hard to give a sense of scale in a photo… but here you go, here’s a peek:
The last couple of days I’ve been wondering if I should also post wildlife photos on my blog… since I usually only post sneak peaks from my latest portrait sessions. And today, I decided: yes, I should!
So…… six months after our wedding and honeymoon in Tanzania, I finally started the lengthy process of viewing and selecting images from our trip. So far I’ve made it through 3 days worth of photos.. and the following images are my faves so far… I hope you enjoy them! :-)
Lake Manyara – this was taken on our first day of safaris, we watched this lioness for a long long time.. in 40C full sun… since we were totally oblivious to the time, Heiko and I got pretty badly sunburnt – and just days before our wedding too!
Baboons in Ngorongoro Crater – the babies are so cute, I loved watching them play and explore. They have such human expressions at times, it’s quite facinating!
These two (above and below) were taken in the Ngorongoro Crater. These two young lions were lazing by the side of the road with full bellies… you can tell they are young by the spots on their legs. I just love the reflection in the one above, and their interaction in the one below .
In the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, just a few hundred metres from Olduvai Camp (where we were married), we had the most AMAZING sighting of African Painted Dogs (aka Wild Dogs). There are less than 5000 in the wild, and since they are nomadic, sightings are incrediably rare. We had the pleasure of spending time watching a pack of 24 dogs, play, run, snooze, play some more… it was just incredible. A dream. We could hardly believe what we were seeing. It was magic!
Do you see the Painted Dogs above? There are a few resting in the shade of a tree. The landscape in this area was just beautiful. In the Ngorongoro Conservation Area we were allowed to drive off road since we were there during the wet season (the rains quickly cover vehicle tracks, although we are not allowed to double back on a track in order to prevent damage to the vegetation). But driving off road gave us the perfect opportunity to get closer to this pack of Painted Dogs, we would have missed them otherwise.
Watching them run and play was just amazing! :)
The next day, we were again very lucky with our sightings. Our driver (amazingly) spotted a leopard, far in the distance, but since we were allowed to drive off-road, we were able to get fairly close. He was pretty shy, so we still had to keep our distance. Just look at his sleek coat and bulging belly in the image below – he was certainly well fed. There were herds and herds of migrating wildebeest in this area and our driver commented “the supermarket is open” – certainly, this leopard was doing a lot of supermarket shopping! ;)
This next couple of photos, I love:
Here’s a short extract from my journal:
“We followed him [the leopard] for about 2-3 km. On one occasion he ran out from a tree to attack our vehicle, watching him do this through my large lens, close up, gave me two conflicting thoughts simultaneously
1) Sh*t, he’s going to charge, and
2) Excellent, great photo opportunity”
luckily only a mock charge.. and thankfully, got the photos too! ;)
This last one was taken just moments after his mock charge!
Hope you enjoyed this small selection… I promise there will be more to come! ;)
I received a lovely surprise email today which really made me smile a big happy smile! So… as a follow up to my wedding blog post please indulge me while I share some very special photographs that were taken by another couple that were staying at Olduvai Camp the same time as us. We met Doug and Jude over dinner on our first night at Olduvai but we didn’t mention a thing about our wedding plans. Imagine their surprise when, a couple of days later, they took “the sunset walk” to the top of some nearby kopjes to find Heiko and I celebrating our wedding! We waved across to each other and then Jude was quick to take some photos. It was really lovely to receive an email from her today with copies of the photos, and I LOVE them so much that I just had to share a few… :-)
*giggles* at the last one! I love them all but these three were my absolute faves! Thank you so much Doug and Jude, they were the best surprise!!
Wow! Do I have some news for you!! Remember this blog post? I know so many of you have been waiting to hear news of our wedding and to see photos… well, Mr and Mrs Carstens have returned home, and there is plenty to share with you all!
What an incredibly, amazing trip we had! We were so lucky with our sightings, the highlights being a large pack of wild dogs basking in the late afternoon light, tracking a big male leopard and having him charge our vehicle, eating our lunch right next to a cheetah family snacking on theirs, listening in the darkness to a huge heard of buffalo pass through camp followed by a pride of very hungry lions, spending the whole day with a family of lions with young cubs and watching seven of them (adults and cubs!) jump up into a small fig tree for an afternoon snooze! There is more, much more… and I promise you another must-read travel journal! But first, so many of you are wanting to hear of our wedding day in the African wilderness…
Our morning started very early with a game drive in the surrounding Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Because of the rainy season we were able to drive off road in this area and go wherever the wildlife was, since if it rained, our tracks would disappear. We didn’t see any of the cats on this particular morning, but we certainly found the wildebeest migration, a couple of leopard tortoise and we laughed at the dung beetles we saw, quickly rolling their dung in an area sparse of grass! We ate our picnic lunch under the shade of a large acacia tree and headed back to camp mid-afternoon to relax and get ready for our wedding ceremony later that afternoon.
Heiko was wearing a cream linen suit with an open-neck ivory shirt; he stepped outside our tent to wait for me whilst I got ready. My dress was a beautiful full length halter-neck with a fitted embroidered bodice, made from pure ivory textured silk. Fabric gathered in the front and tapered in at my feet with a ‘cloud of silk’ flowing behind me. I stepped out of the tent to hear Heiko say “wow” :-)
Chris, our driver/guide who was with us for the whole trip, took us to some nearby kopjes (rocky outcrop) where we met our registrar, photographer, the camp staff, as well as a group of local maasai, two of whom were our witnesses, Francis and Kadogo. At the foot of the kopjes cream fabric had been tied around some trees and there was a large table with an arrangement of cream roses as the centre piece. It was here that we had our ceremony, not far from Olduvai Camp where we were staying, with breath-taking views over the Ngorongoro Conservation Area; we could see for miles and miles over the open plains.
After we said our vows the maasai cheered and sang to us and we exchanged our rings and signed our marriage certificate. Every one of us there smiling huge grins! Our registrar congratulated us on our marriage and rose petals were thrown over us. The chef brought out our wedding cake for us to cut the first piece together and we had fun feeding each other and our maasai witnesses too. It was a delicious tiered chocolate cake with cream icing, with the top tier in the shape of a heart.
After our ceremony, and wedding cake, we all went to the highest point on the kopjes for sundowners (champagne!) but the setting sun was hidden by a thunderstorm on the horizon – which was the reason it was so windy that afternoon! The views around us were just amazing, in all directions you could see for miles and miles, we saw the dust trails of migrating wildebeest and zebra, and we spotted groups of Thomson gazelle too. Heiko and I stayed at the top of the kopjes a little longer, chatting with our maasai witnesses and looking out over the plains.
When we returned to the camp, lanterns were brought to the entrance of our tent and we shared a delicious candle lit dinner-for-two.
Our wedding day was perfect! :-)
I know many of you want to see more photos than just the two I include here, and you can! You can visit our wedding gallery. Log in with the username “guest” and password “wedding”. Enjoy!
Interesting fact for you: Olduvai was the place where fossils of the very first human footprints were discovered, made more than three million years ago by three of our human ancestors walking along a riverbank: the Leotoli Footprints. Not all that far from where we were married!
“This year we decided to go on an organised group safari aimed at photographers; we chose the ‘Ultimate Africa’ photo safari with Chris Weston (it was the opportunity to ‘walk with lions’ that totally reeled us in!) Now, where to start?! Honestly, this trip was incredible….”
Want to read more? My travel journal is now available on my website… whoohoo!!
