Congo-Nile Divide

This blog post is a little overdue, but back on the holiday weekend in Rwanda, July 1-3, I joined some friends and we hiked along the Congo-Nile Divide Trail in Nyungwe National Park. 

This trail covers 42.2 km across the park - and we completed it in 3 days - camping for 2 nights in the forest. This trail takes you across different habitat types within the park - up and down the hills - with some great view points from the top of each hill. In addition, this trail goes by the Source of the Nile. Though not everyone agrees - the source of the nile is located in Nyungwe.

Source of the Nile

Doesn't start as much - but eventually this turns into the longest river in the world!

Here is some of our group walking on one of the few relatively flat parts along the trail. But don't worry we stopped for breaks many times throughout the day for a snack - including my favorite 'amandazi' - Rwandan donuts (aka fried dough).

And now I leave you with a series of photos from the summit of different hills along the hike - you will see the different habitat types and the hundreds of hills in the distance!

This is a view of part of the trail 

You'll notice all the ferns along the trails - this is an area of the park that burned in a fire and the forest has not been able to regenerate.

Look at the hundreds of hills in the distance!

Wandering off into the forest :)

Steps away from DRC

On my day off, I decided to explore the town of Kamembe, located on the edge of Lake Kivu. Now if you know your geography of these region, you’ll know that Lake Kivu is the border between Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo. So our first stop in town was the border to DRC. As you can see below – the border is just a bridge with people wandering back and forth. Apparently a lot of people cross everyday to sell or buy supplies in the other country. However, I don’t think they would be very happy if I decided to walk across – so I stayed safely on the Rwanda side.

Bridge over to Congo


Next objective, put my feet into Lake Kivu (much too cold for swimming but not for dangling my feet into the water!). We visited a hotel down by the water and took in the view of the massive lake, as well as of the houses along the Rwandan and Congo sides of the lake. In addition, there were many people in canoes in the lake pulling in their fishing nets – it looked like very hard work!

Putting my feet into the lake

View of Lake Kivu 

Island with Congo in the distance

Lake Kivu

Fishing boats

Fishing Boat

Kamembe is also the closest town to where I live that has a supermarket, so we are able to buy a lot of food here that we can’t get in the village by the research station. It is even possible to buy Corn Flakes, Pringles, and Cadbury chocolate bars!

Land of a Thousand Hills

It has definitely been a while - and not for lack of adventures and visits to Africa!

Currently I am working on my dissertation through the University of Florida in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, and the lab of Dr. Madan Oli. For my dissertation work, I am working in Rwanda, a small country in east central Africa, at the center of the Albertine Rift, a biodiversity hotspot.

Specifically, I am working in Nyungwe National Park, a montane rainforest located in southwestern Rwanda on the border of Burundi. I am primarily studying mammal species within the forest, and how their abundance and distribution has changed over time. In addition, I am looking at the anthropogenic threats to wildlife, and how these threats have affected their abundance and distribution.

Last summer was my first time in Rwanda and Nyungwe, but I am now back again for the next three months. Since I've only just arrived last week, I'll share some pictures from last summer, and then will continue to update as I head out to the forest this year. This summer I will be placing a series of camera traps throughout the forest, so hopefully some exciting and potentially funny pictures will be to follow as the summer goes on.

The view from the top of Mt. Bigugu (the highest peak in the park)

Out on a hike through the forest (a fun day off!)

A view of Kamiranzovu swamp

Some of the transects where we collect data on mammal species around the park are very steep!

And of course here are some primate pictures! Vervet monkey (with a baby!), Black and White Colobus (also with a baby!), and Eastern Chimpanzee.

10 months in Central Africa

It has been about 5 months since I left Gabon and came back to the US, and I've finally found some time to reflect back on my experiences there. Everything about living in Gabon from the moment I arrived to the moment that I left was extremely difficult. Living and working in a country like this where the language is not my own, consists of a series of struggles each and every day. Now don't get me wrong, I don't regret a minute I spent over there, but doesn't mean that it was easy.

By the time I left 10 months after first arriving in the country, a lot had been accomplished.

- We established about 28 or so transects in and around the National Park, and surrounding villages. They were each 2.5 km in length, and took 2-3 to cut open, with 3 guides cutting. Our job was to direct the guides in a straight line using a compass. This took about 4-5 months to get done!

- We began walking each of these transects 1-2 times a month to look for animals, and signs of animals (dung, nests, etc.)

- We also set up 6 or so tree phenology routes in and around the research station to look at when each trees grew news leaves, fruited, etc. 

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But on to the fun stuff - anecdotes and pictures!!

A couple quick anecdotes of my favorite memories!

- Best animal sighting 

     We were out in the forest one day cutting a new transect. There were 3 guides cutting up in front, I was following directing with the compass, another research assistant was behind me with the GPS and flagging tape, and then the 4th guide was about the back with a hip chain. If you are not familiar with that a hip chain is essentially a box with thread in it, so you tie the thread to a tree at the beginning and then as you walk you leave thread behind, and then on the box there is a counter telling you how many meters you have walked. So it is how we measure the transects. Anyway the 4th guide was walking along pulling the hip chain and something pulls on the thread, he turns around and there is nothing there. He keeps going and it happens again, so he turns around and sees something moving. He quietly turns to me then and says gorilla (in my mind I'm thinking how can you calmly say gorilla!!!!!!) so I quickly run back up the hill behind me in the direction that he sees the gorilla and there in the distance down our transect is a gorilla just sitting there holding onto the thread. It sits there and just watches us for a couple seconds then runs away. BEST SIGHTING EVER!

- Scariest elephant encounter

     One of my guides and I were in the forest working on a phenology route. I was directing him between trees, and then we were stop at each one and record how much fruit is on the tree, and how many leaves, etc. We are just wandering around following our route and we hear branches falling (aka an elephant). We quickly run the other direction back towards camp. After a couple hundred meters we stop and listen. It seems the elephant has moved away so we head back to our route to finish it up. We get close to the same tree again and we hear branches again so we run back towards camp a second time. At this point I'm thinking I'm not going back to that tree - its bad luck. So I persuade my guide that we can finish that route another day and we should just go work on the next one. So we head back towards camp to another route. This route was closer to camp but in a section of dense forest, without any paths nearby. So we head on it (my guide has a machete to cut our path) and start recording data, and then once again we heard branches breaking, but pretty close to us. We run away from the noise, but we get stopped by fallen trees since we are in a dense part of the forest. And unfortunately we can still hear the elephants, and it sounds like it is getting closer! We hide behind a tree and duck down, my guide protecting me and we sit there together shaking while we listen to the elephant moving around. We stayed there FOREVER (though prob less than a minute) and finally we hear silence the elephant has moved away. As soon as I hear silence I turn to my guide and I said cut us a path!! so he starts just cutting straight through the dense foliage towards the camp, so he is cutting while we are both running as quick as we can back to the research camp. We finally emerge frantically, and we get to the opening of the research camp out of breath and shaking and there is a group of entomologists just standing in the middle of the camp just staring at us like we are out of our mind. I'm sure we looked like crazy people how quickly we were running out of there! After that I told my guide I was done for the day and he could go home because I wasn't going back into the forest.

And some pictures!! (sorry the order makes no sense - but some animals, people, and random other things)

confiscated ivory, elephant tails, and guns - a huge problem in Gabon

my best friend in Gabon - my driver Marius (wearing the ecoguard uniform - ecoguards are the equivalent of park rangers)

going away party for the Gabonese students - middle person on the left is my 2nd driver Jacque!

Me and my boat driver, Lucien

Me and my favorite eco guard, Laundry

Me with two of the Gabonese students, Julia and Andrea

One of our study sites, Kongou Falls

Day off on the beach.

Though he is looking the wrong way, my guide, Stephane, doing some fishing

If you look really closely right in front of that rock, there is an otter head!

If you look up in that tree you'll see a monkey! (so hard to take pictures of these guys!)

an eagle

sun going down.

Those are the highlights, but if you want more stories or more pictures i'm happy to share :)

The Island of Lemurs

I know it has been a while, but without a good internet connection, updating my blog was not really possible. But have no fear, my next couple of posts will be an update of the last 9 months.

First I'm going back to August 2013 and my trip to Madagascar.

I headed to Madagascar to attend the Prosimian Congress 2013, and to present my research from Marojejy National Park.

However, afterwards my mom joined me and we traveled around the island of Madagascar to visit many parks and many different lemur species. I took many pictures along the way and here are the best of different animals and different landscapes. 

Taking photos!

Coquerel's Sifaka

I like chameleons too!

And cute little tenrecs!

 Spent a day exploring Andisbe National Park!

Diademed Sifaka

Indri

I know this picture is bad, but if you look closely you'll see the baby Indri!!!

 We did spend one day away from the national parks to meet some friendly lemurs. This one became my best friend.

Couldn't go to Madagascar without checking out Parc Ivoloina!

 After Tamatave, we moved onto Tulear and stopped at Zombitse-Vohibasia National Park on our drive to Isalo National Park. On our stop by guide found this woolly lemur sleeping in the tree.

And now to Isalo, probably one of the most fascinating places I've ever visited.

Enjoying the sunshine!

Verreaux's Sifaka

Red-fronted Brown Lemur - too cool to actually look at me, but not too cool to copy one another.

So you might have heard about the locusts in Madagascar this past August. This picture does not really do it justice, but each of those black specks is a locust. We were swarmed by them!

And just to end on a most positive note, who could resist this little guy?!