Weekend report by Darian de Bruin
The geology weekend has always been known for being one of the coldest weekends we will experience this year, and so far, it is living up to its reputation.
Arriving at Fish Eagle camp on Friday afternoon, the atmosphere was stressed and different to the usual atmosphere as we had to submit our first written assignment of the year.
Unfortunately, we weren’t at full capacity for our group, with only five of us attending the Geology weekend. Without a doubt, we also still had to make our way to the Admin centre to write our mammals test that evening.
On Saturday morning, we had to brave the cold and get out of our warm sleeping bags to a freezing temperature of -1℃ to prepare for the day of Geology lectures and practical work.
We arrived at our lecture room and were introduced to our young and very well-educated and enthusiastic lecturer, Patrick Richards.
After our morning session, we headed back to camp for our lunch break. We celebrated two birthday girls during our lunch break, Megan and Janine. After having a piece of lovely cake, we returned to the Admin centre to continue our lectures. Once the course was done, we went into the field and did some practical work. This entailed breaking open rocks and looking at the different minerals that make up the rock.
After all the work we did during the day, we went back to camp and sat around the fire, enjoying everyone’s company.
We woke to a misty cold Sunday morning, experiencing the same temperature as Saturday morning, even though it felt much colder. The water pump had stopped through the night, so Pieter, Ulrich, Andre, Jack and I went to start the motor again. After multiple attempts to start the engine with the crank, we got it going and headed back to camp.
As we got back to camp, there was more life, and everyone was getting started with coffee and defrosting their car windscreens while Maeva was busy writing her Mammals test as she did not come through on Friday evening.
We carried on with the day having our morning lectures and learning a lot of interesting information about metamorphic rocks. Once we were done with the lectures, we headed back to camp to clean up and travel back home after a cold but yet again very interesting weekend!