So we’ve finished the rainforest section of Nigeria. We’ve been on the road and had little power or chance to write. My clothes smell sour, I’m covered in bites and a rash… Its been incredible.
When I was a kid, I watched every documentary available, Sunday night double hitter was my thing and I sat amazed at images of the wild world in which we live. Standing atop a 40m Ceiba tree looking down on the mist covered rainforest as the sun rose, I half expected the ever respectful whisper of David Attenborough to come piping from behind me and say something poignant like “the Picathertes is a bird like no other… eking out its existence on islands of rock in a sea of Forest”. But David didn’t speak to me and we were in fact sitting on the edge of a clearing watching Great blue turacos kok-kok-call to one another, and catching glimpses of untold numbers of other birds flitting through the undergrowth. On the drive back a red flanked duiker broke cover, a flash of russet before being reclaimed by the undergrowth. Its dark, its dense, its wet and you have to machete your way through….its incredible. Signs of elephant, droppings of forest buffalo, Mona monkeys scattering making the tell tale bark and the dancing of leaves. We’ve seen black and white Colobus on the Cameroonian border, Mona’s and Olive baboons, Putty nosed monkeys with their caught with their face in the sugar jar nose. We’ve walked in areas looking for wild chimp populations, and sat mesmerized at the largest roosting spot of swallows in west Africa. Nearly a million of these small birds come plummeting out of the sky into the grass, it literally rains birds, an awe inspiring sight. We’ve been to 5 parks which concentrate on forest conservation now. Okumo, cross River South, Rhoko Forest, Afi Mountain Sanctuary and Cross River North. We have then also been to Gashaka Gumpti, a savanna-Forest park in the hills on the Cameroonian border. All of them are incredibly beautiful, but all of them are seriously threatened. That’ll be the topic of another blog I’m sure, but right now I’m still trying to get rid of the multiple rashes I managed to get in my short time in the forests. The rainforests are set up for trekking, not driving. Trails often need to be re-cut and a machete or “cutlass” will be swung by your guide as he blazes a trail through the undergrowth. Its great fun, pre dawn, finding your way through the forest, super lost, following a man chopping his way through, everything wet, and your shirt soaked with sweat. Nigerian hospitality is such that its very difficult to convince the guides that you want to try a bit of machete wielding yourself, but its harder that they make it look. They chopped roads clear for our cars and we chopped paths clear for ourselves. Wonderful times. We’ve been on night walks looking for Potto ( a slow moving arboreal primate, weird looking thing), we saw different species of galago an listened to tree hyrax barking. We swim in streams in all the parks, and camp in the undergrowth. It reminds me of the trips I used to take with my uncle Mike when I was younger…looking for crocodiles before we swim, sleeping under trees in the bush. Rainforests themselves are incredible, the rashes are not. For some reason I seem to attract insects and bites. Don doesn’t, neither do C-baz or Greg. I bet David Attenborough did though. “Rashes” I can here him say, “are the ever present companion of the forest dweller, eking out there existence on islands of unsuspecting tourists in a sea of forest”. (By island of tourists, I may mean my nether regions). But we’re back in savannahs now, the comforting heat and the call of the scops owl. Too many sights to relay, too many images to conjure up. Its been a trip, these last three weeks…its been a trip
When I was a kid, I watched every documentary available, Sunday night double hitter was my thing and I sat amazed at images of the wild world in which we live. Standing atop a 40m Ceiba tree looking down on the mist covered rainforest as the sun rose, I half expected the ever respectful whisper of David Attenborough to come piping from behind me and say something poignant like “the Picathertes is a bird like no other… eking out its existence on islands of rock in a sea of Forest”. But David didn’t speak to me and we were in fact sitting on the edge of a clearing watching Great blue turacos kok-kok-call to one another, and catching glimpses of untold numbers of other birds flitting through the undergrowth. On the drive back a red flanked duiker broke cover, a flash of russet before being reclaimed by the undergrowth. Its dark, its dense, its wet and you have to machete your way through….its incredible. Signs of elephant, droppings of forest buffalo, Mona monkeys scattering making the tell tale bark and the dancing of leaves. We’ve seen black and white Colobus on the Cameroonian border, Mona’s and Olive baboons, Putty nosed monkeys with their caught with their face in the sugar jar nose. We’ve walked in areas looking for wild chimp populations, and sat mesmerized at the largest roosting spot of swallows in west Africa. Nearly a million of these small birds come plummeting out of the sky into the grass, it literally rains birds, an awe inspiring sight. We’ve been to 5 parks which concentrate on forest conservation now. Okumo, cross River South, Rhoko Forest, Afi Mountain Sanctuary and Cross River North. We have then also been to Gashaka Gumpti, a savanna-Forest park in the hills on the Cameroonian border. All of them are incredibly beautiful, but all of them are seriously threatened. That’ll be the topic of another blog I’m sure, but right now I’m still trying to get rid of the multiple rashes I managed to get in my short time in the forests. The rainforests are set up for trekking, not driving. Trails often need to be re-cut and a machete or “cutlass” will be swung by your guide as he blazes a trail through the undergrowth. Its great fun, pre dawn, finding your way through the forest, super lost, following a man chopping his way through, everything wet, and your shirt soaked with sweat. Nigerian hospitality is such that its very difficult to convince the guides that you want to try a bit of machete wielding yourself, but its harder that they make it look. They chopped roads clear for our cars and we chopped paths clear for ourselves. Wonderful times. We’ve been on night walks looking for Potto ( a slow moving arboreal primate, weird looking thing), we saw different species of galago an listened to tree hyrax barking. We swim in streams in all the parks, and camp in the undergrowth. It reminds me of the trips I used to take with my uncle Mike when I was younger…looking for crocodiles before we swim, sleeping under trees in the bush. Rainforests themselves are incredible, the rashes are not. For some reason I seem to attract insects and bites. Don doesn’t, neither do C-baz or Greg. I bet David Attenborough did though. “Rashes” I can here him say, “are the ever present companion of the forest dweller, eking out there existence on islands of unsuspecting tourists in a sea of forest”. (By island of tourists, I may mean my nether regions). But we’re back in savannahs now, the comforting heat and the call of the scops owl. Too many sights to relay, too many images to conjure up. Its been a trip, these last three weeks…its been a trip
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