The Watch Tower

Poaching is one of the biggest problems facing wildlife in Southern Africa, with people paying thousands of dollars to shoot/kill game. Thus as one of our anti-poaching initiatives we have two watchtowers on the premises to prevent any poaching actions. Every other day 2 volunteers spend the night in one of the towers and patrol the area (from the tower) every hour. Poachers have been caught on the Na/an kuse reserve a couple of years ago, so there is a clear purpose.

The Watchtower

Beautiful Sunset

Anyway, on Monday Hannah and I decided to give it a go, and spend the night in the watch tower. At around 6:45pm we packed our bags and portable mattress and headed to the tower which is completely isolated. With radio’s, satellite phones, flashlights, and a lot of warm blankets we were ready!  For those that are scared of heights…. this would not be for you! From the photo you can see that the ladder is quite big, and that the tower stands around 15 meters high. Once inside we unpacked and turned a worn down shack of a tower into a nice cosy….no idea what to call it!

With every breeze of wind the tower swayed from left to right, I didn’t dare move a muscle as Hannah would yell at me to stay still! From the tower we had a spectacular view over the whole sanctuary. We could see hundreds of animals walk past whilst in the safety of our little tower. As the sunset Hannah and I would start our observations. She would stay up 2 hours whilst I slept and then I would stay up, and so on.

Hannah snuggled in her sleepbag

Yeah...nothing fancy!

12 hours later and the only thing we recorded was 3 cars passing by heading towards the lodge. Nothing too exciting but obviously thats a good sign. It felt like an adventure on its own. Will I do it again? Absolutely!