Me, Baru and Msigwa left for a 5 day Safari on the 22nd. Safari in Swahili simply means journey. It really has nothing to do with seeing animals in a park. So when I say Safari I mean journey. The aim of this safari was to expand our presence in the forest and collect data to get a better idea of the vast wilderness that our valley is only a small part of. There are 6 or so different places that are visited on safari and are alternated between. Its basically a camping trip into the bush. Quite exciting really if not a little hard work. As you can imagine the bags are pretty heavy, the terrain steep and as the bird flies, the place we pitched up was 15km from the big camp. This campsite became our base camp for the next 3 days from which we explored in 3 opposite directions looking for chimp and human activity. Unfortunately there wasn’t much water near base camp save for what can only be called a muddy puddle. However it was the only source of water and beggars cant be choosers..
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| drinking water, washing water, cooking water |
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| Out makeshift camp |
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| this is the outline of what happens when we discover a poacher camp |
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| Female boomslang |
From the top of some of the mountains we had some spectacular views from which we could see valleys 20 km away.
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In the evenings there is very little to do which is nice because only when you know that there is literally no work you can do, can you truly relax. Back in big camp there is always some kind of work I should be doing which weighs on you. Out there though it is very relaxing at night, just lying on your back, next to a fire, in the middle of nowhere staring at the stars. Needless to say ive put myself down to do next months safari again which will be 22km from big camp, a big one!
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| An early evening mist over the valley marsh next to camp |
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