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?!

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!

Close Encounter of the Hyena Kind... plus the end of my Namibia Vacation

Before I share the hyena story let me catch up the activities up to that point.

So unfortunately, my Namibian holiday has come to an end. I haven't had internet for the last week so I've had no time to update.. but here are some pictures and short stories from the last week of my trip.

After the dunes we moved on to the Erongo Mountains. To reach our camp, we parked at the bottom of the rocks, and then a safari truck came to pick us up and drive us up to the camp. Our chalet was located up on the rocks. Around camp you could find hundreds of these critters! 

The Rock Dassie or Hyrax

 While at this camp I took a morning hike with the guide up to the top of the Baboon Mountain within the mountain range. I took some pictures of the landscape from the top as well as looking down over the camp (The large building is the dining area). 

After leaving here we moved onto Etosha National Park. We spent two days at their main camp, in an amazing chalet looking over the waterfall, and then another day in one of their smaller camps. We drove around during the days and went out on night drives 2 of the nights allowing us to see a wide assortment of wildlife! Here are some shots during the day.

Waterhole - Oryx, Kudu, and Springbok

Lone lioness walking away from the water

More zebras in one place than I've ever seen before

Now back to the night drives.. the first night was great we saw 3 male lions hanging out and better yet 2 aardwolves! (If you don't know what they look like - look them up! they are adorable)

The second night drive we took started off great. We saw a group of black rhinos (though more rare overall, they are more common than white rhinos in the park), as well as a cape fox. After this we drove along to another waterhole and as we drove up we couldn't see anything because there was so much dust everywhere and so much noise! Once the dust settled using our red spot light we saw a couple hyenas around their kill.. but as we scanned the light around the waterhole you could see the eyes of hyenas everywhere! They were coming out of the trees from all sides.. must have been close to 40 of them in total! They quickly finished off their prey (bones and all - hence their nickname "bone crushers") After the prey was gone the 40 or so hyenas were still hanging out.. and a group of them went down to the waterhole for a drink. Then one got in - and started swimming! - who knew hyenas could swim! Anyways it swam to the reeds in the center of the waterhole and disappeared inside.. a frenzy of birds flew away. The hyena then came back out with something in its mouth. The guide told us that it must have killed a small antelope - either a springbok or impala - that had been hiding in the reeds where it had run to escape the previous kill. Anyways hyena swam back out and back to shore (but with no kill!). The guide explained that the hyena would need help to carry the prey back to the land outside of the waterhole, so we sat in anticipation waiting for a group of hyenas to swim back in for their prey....

Anyways, we sat for a while and it seemed the hyenas were being lazy and lost interest in their prey so one got curious.. she came over to our safari truck and paced around in front of it. The guide looked on and kinda jokingly said its okay she won't do any harm unless she bites the tires and we end up with a flat.. so she wanders some more going over to the side of the truck where my sister was sitting probably closer than you'll ever want to be to a hyena.. 

Well this seemed like a good time to drive away. They weren't going back to the prey.. and this hyena was getting a little too close.

But overall it was fascinating. Watching the hyena kill and seeing them all appear out of the trees!


Moving on we spent the last two days at different cat conservation foundations. One night at AfriCat and one night at N/a'an ku'se. 

At AfriCat they take you out in a safari vehicle around their land to track their radiocollared animals. We tracked cheetahs, leopards, and wild dog! We found 4 cheetahs, a group of 4 wild dog, and got a glimpse of a leopard passing by. Here are the cheetahs and dogs!

And then at N/a'an ku'se we got a behind the scenes tour getting to see what goes on around their facility. We took a walk with Alex, their tame caracal.

We also visited the school to see the children, some of her animals - baboons, porcupine, warthogs, meerkats, mongooses, wild dog, and cheetahs, and then sat down and talking with someone within the research department to learn about the research they are currently working on. 

And then the trip came to the end with our last night at the Etango Farm Guesthouse. 

But now I have finally arrived in Gabon, flew in last night, and I'm ready for the adventures of living in this new country!

Dune 45 Conquered... In the Middle of a Wind Storm.

I said goodbye to the Kalahari desert, its resident oryx, Jackie, and its resident springbok, Skanky, and moved on to the next desert, the Namid.

But first a cheetah picture of him eating his tasty springbok.

We reached our "Desert Camp" late in the afternoon and relaxed before heading to dinner. Dinner at the lodge consisted of pretty much any bushmeat you could think of. We had the choice of springbok, kudu, zebra, warthog, oryx, blesbok, eland as well as beef, chicken, and lamb. Over the course of a couple of days we tested a few, with the best probably being springbok or zebra. When else are you going to get to try these various types of meat?!

Anyways went to bed that night and got awoken about 2 hours later with the wind. We were staying in a tent/building where half is a tent and half is a brick building. The wind was so powerful that is was blowing against the tent, which was whipping back and forth and banging around. This went on all night long, with the wind getting stronger and stronger. We found out later that a huge cold front was coming up from South Africa, bringing a very unusual strong wind. Needless to say we didn't get much sleep that night.. the next either.

During the day we went to visit Sossusvlei to see the iconic red sand dunes. Being in this area one cannot not climb Dune 45, so I set off to the top. Little did I realize just how windy it really was, especially when getting towards the top of the 170 m dune. You can see my footprints being blown away!

After getting back down from the dune we traveled further to Dead Vlei to see the 900 year old trees. Before we got there though, we came across another favorite animal of mine the black-backed jackal. 

After traveling down a bouncy sandy road and walking a kilometer or so through the trees you can reach Dead Vlei. I decided to do some climbing here, unfortunately it resulted in a hand full of splinters...

Minus the wind keeping us up all night, the Namib desert was a fun adventure up the dunes. We then started the drive down a horrible gravel road to the town of Solitaire to say hi to Moose (the head of the town and owner of the delicious bakery) and to visit the ground squirrels.

And now after spending a day and a half relaxing in the city of Swakopmund we are off again on the next adventure!

Next Safari... Namibian Style

Traveled over the border now to Namibia.

After a night in the capital city of Windhoek, moved onto the Bagatelle Kalahari Game Ranch, for my first Namibian safari.

Now a Namibian safari is quite the opposite of an Angolan safari. First off, there is actually wildlife here, and lots of it. And secondly, this safari truck was even more comfortable than my normal car. And the best part, we literally have the entire lodge to ourselves. I knew coming in that Namibia has a very low population, but June (being the winter) is not a popular tourist season either.

Anyways back to the safari. We set off at 3 in the afternoon, nice and sunny out, but not very warm! Its okay though, because they even gave us our own blankets! Well we set out with Pedro our guide, looking to find what wildlife we could find! Over the 2 hours we came across lots and lots of springbok, oryx, kudu, steenbok, red hartebeest, eland, wildebeest, zebra, giraffe, warthog, mongoose, meerkat, and my favorite bat-eared fox! If you want to be entertained for a few minutes, search springbok pronking... highly entertaining!

After this we headed over into the cheetah enclosure to feed the 3 cheetah their daily dinner of springbok, and then finally up to the top of the ridge to have a drink and watch the sunset!

Quite the opposite of an Angolan safari I'd say.

More Namibian adventures plus pictures to come in the next week!

A Safari... Angolan style.

Angola used to be home to vast amounts of wildlife just like its neighboring countries still have, but during the civil war all of the animals were killed. Angola is now home to only one functional (though semi-functional at best) national park, which is a fenced in area where some animals like elephants and giraffes have been reintroduced.

Quiçama National Park, located just outside of the capital city of Luanda has a lodge where visitors can stay, and offers safari drives a couple times throughout the day. In order to visit the park, my mom and I had to take two cars and drivers with us (just in case one breaks down), so we went out this past Wednesday with our drivers Antonio and Alberto, to visit the park.

To reach Quiçama, one has to drive outside the city, and then about 40 km down a dirt road to reach the entrance, and then even further once within the fence of the park to reach the lodge. We arrived around 10:30 ready to take the safari at 11 am.

The view from the restaurant at the lodge is absolutely beautiful, but you have to be careful while eating here because monkeys are everywhere!

The view from the lodge at Quiçama National Park

One of the many monkeys!

Now back to this safari drive, we head up to the main desk at 11 but there is not a safari truck in sight. Around 12 it finally returns so we finally set out at 12:15. This safari truck, like most, is completely open at the back, so that we have a good view of the wildlife (the few there are). However, once we got in we noticed how ripped up the edges of each seat was, and how banged up the sides of the truck were.. turns out the driver isn't one to avoid hitting trees as we drive along...

Anyways the drive starts off fine, with my mom and I, our two drivers, and three German tourists, and we set off down a dirt roads to hopefully see some animals. After a little while we come across some giraffes a little way off the path, so we figured we would stop and look from a distance, though the driver and his helper have another idea. And off the path we go into the bush driving straight for the giraffes.

Giraffes

After this brief detour we manage to get through some bushes and end up back on a dirt trail again. We venture on for another hour or so, we see some different types of antelopes like Bushbuck and Kudu, and we head down towards the water (I'm assuming looking for the elephants). Now you are probably thinking, well some off-roading, but not too bad, sounds like a pretty fun safari.

Our driver then decides we are leaving the trail again and heads off on another trail (or not trail as the case may be) into the bushes. We continue deeper and deeper into the bushes with trees coming in both sides of the truck. As we get deeper into the bushes, the 7 of us in the back are trying to avoid being hit by all the branches coming at us, and we get to the point where the 7 of us are kneeling down in the middle of the truck with our hands over our heads trying to protect ourselves from these trees branches coming at us from all sides. And then we suddenly stop. Here we are stuck in the bushes, with a tree pretty much inside the truck taking over half of our seats, and the truck has broken down. (I wish I had a better picture but the driver and his helper never talked to us during this whole ordeal so we weren't allowed out the back of the truck...)

The tree that joined us in the truck.

Anyways, so the driver's helper now gets out a screwdriver to open the front of the car, and proceeds to add some oil, to try and get us started again. Only problem being we are wedged between trees on both sides. But eventually we rock our way out and follow this helper who is walking around looking for a route out...

After this episode, you would assume that we would just get back on the main trail and follow it hoping that we might actually see some wildlife... However, this new trail that we were now on was getting muddier and muddier, and eventually turned into water hole of sorts. Stuck once again we turned around headed back on the main trail returning to the lodge almost 3 hours after we left... and alas we never found the elephants.

I guess I now know what it means to go on a safari in Angola.. and though it doesn't involve seeing much wildlife.. it definitely does involve a new adventure. You have been forewarned if you decide to come and visit the park!