Life at Ipassa ... Living in the forests of Gabon

It has been a while, but finally my first blog post from Gabon. I can't believe that it is already August!

I arrived in Gabon back in the middle of June, spent a little time in Libreville, and then moved out to Makakou. I now live (and will until next summer) at Ipassa Research Station in Invindo National Park. 

Ipassa from the River

My home (Case de Passage)

We have some luxurious conditions here, a building to live in, and even electricity! Yet no running water, and only minimal internet. I am back in Libreville for two days, which is why I can update my blog and even attach pictures!

The first month out at Ipassa has been hectic, but exciting. We have visited a couple different areas within the park, as well as explored the surrounding areas. We needed to figure out what was around, where villages were located, where there are roads, where there are rivers, etc. so that we could establish a study plan, and choose the sites where we will be working. Luckily for me, this involved many car and boat trips to see potential sites :)

Sunrise from Ipassa

My first forest elephant sighting!

The eagle is keeping watch

Kongou Falls (One of our study sites!!)

Another view of Kongou Falls

And you might ask how do you get down the river, and in what type of boat. Well here you go.

We spent 2 days each way sitting in this boat. There were 8 of us, plus all of our stuff for a week in the field. I'm glad we didn't sink...

This is all fine and well, except there are also rapids that you encounter along the river. If there is only a couple people in the boat you can get over them without too much trouble (depending on how big the rapids are) but we had so much stuff, that we had to get out of the boats at each rapids, and then the boat guides had to essentially pull the boat up the rapids.. They only flipped our boat over once, and it was on the way home, so I guess I should be thankful they didn't do it more often.

Our boat guides pulling the boat up the rapids

While the boat guides pulled our boat up the rapids, we had to walk through the forest to meet them again higher up the river. For some reason they thought the best place to pick us up after one set of rapids was a small rock positioned in the river. We had to wade our way to this rock, to await pick up. That is silly enough but then they passed us our bags to hold (since the boat was too heavy) and food for lunch. We stood on a rock in the middle of the river (5 of us) carrying our packs with everything for the week, while eating lunch... We demoted our boat team from the A team down to the D team for this.

The past month has been exciting. As you can see from the picture above we saw our first forest elephant. On the same trip we also saw forest buffalo, sitatunga, gray-cheeked mangabeys, white-nosed guenons, and crowned guenons. We have also seen moustached monkeys and an African palm civet. On our cameras we have also gotten pictures of duikers, mongoose, and giant rats! 

I'm still waiting for my first sighting of a gorilla, a chimpanzee, and of course the giant otter shrew!