Being off the grid, Makuleke Camp runs on solar power and gas, with backup generator power for days like today. It’s heavily overcast and drizzling today, so the generator is buzzing reassuringly in the background. The camp is in a beautifully remote northern Kruger National Park, unfenced and off the cellphone reception grid. It’s a world of its own.
Take our EcoTraining Quiz this week and test your knowledge of tortoises.
These shelled evolutionary wonders play an essential role in keeping their ecosystems healthy. Tortoises and freshwater turtles are important seed and spore dispersers for many plants, trees and fungi.
German backup Felix Hesse finished high school in 2021 and wasn’t clear about what he wanted to study. It was his parents who suggested he do a course with EcoTraining. Felix went camping with his parents in France. Other than that, he hadn’t done much in the great outdoors. Everything quickly changed when he arrived in South Africa in September of last year to do the 1-year Field Guide course.
Life as a backup at Pridelands couldn’t be more different than the one Jule Friehs was living in Germany just a year ago. Jule was working as a biological laboratory assistant. Then she came to South Africa on a volunteering trip, which changed everything for her.
Before arriving in remote northern Kruger National Park at Makuleke Camp, first-year student Bella Villaveva had never left the state of Nebraska. “Everything is exciting here,” she says with resounding enthusiasm, “because I had only ever been in the mid-west. I was a little scared as I didn’t know anything about what I was coming to, but it wasn’t for long because the instructors created a base for us, and our common interests united us.
Take our EcoTraining Quiz this week and test your knowledge of reptiles.
The fundamental role that reptiles play in the ecosystem is a simple one. As one part of the more fabulous food chain, they prevent overpopulation and provide food for hungry predators, especially when they are young.
Katie Campbell – study abroad student from the University of Nebraska Lincoln and completed the online Field Guide course via Zoom in August 2021. Now she’s happily on the ground at the remote Makuleke Camp.
“TK is simpler for foreigners to pronounce,” smiles Pridelands’ cook, Tsakani Masango. She’s happily been with EcoTraining since 2012 and is the permanent cook at Selati camp, but she also travels between camps when needed. “I love the bush, I love nature,” says vibrant TK, “and I love meeting people from so many different places in the world. It is very amazing.”
In this third blog in our series, we are following David Ullmann, from Germany, who is embarking on his dream of becoming a field guide. From deciding to become a field guide to touching down in South Africa to start with EcoTraining.
I used to be a city girl through and through, growing up in Munich, Germany. The older I got, the lesser I enjoyed the city life’s merits. I was looking for something else. I did not know what that was until I found it: reconnecting with nature in the African wilderness.
Study wildlife conservation and accredited field guide courses at any of our pioneering African training camps.
Located on the banks of the Mara river,
the camp is nestled between communities
and wildlife conservancies.
Explore the untamed wilderness of Kruger
National Park’s Makuleke Concession
with EcoTraining.
Located at the confluence of the Limpopo
and Shashe Rivers, in the eastern
corner of Botswana.
A natural wonderland with free-roaming
elephants located in the Limpopo
Province of South Africa.
A unique safari destination that offers
visitors an immersive and unforgettable
experience.
Offering a diverse and rewarding
learning environment, teeming with life
and rich in ecological variety.
Want to become a field or nature guide? Explore our immersive courses and training programmes for professional safari guides and guardians of nature, taught and led by experts in the industry.
EcoTraining offers career and accredited courses, wildlife enthusiast courses, gap year programmes and customised group travel courses.
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