I'm finally here!
After such a long time planning this trip and then 15 hours
in airports and in the sky it really did feel like I was never going to land,
especially when Frankfurt had an amazing lightning storm which prevented my
first plane from landing but thankfully delayed my second plane too.
I spent my first night at Shoestrings Lodge. It's located
only 10 minutes from the airport and the owner, Rob, picked me up from the
airport for free and dropped me of at the station the following day so that I
was able to catch my bus in time. The place was fairly basic, with communal
bathrooms and a kitchen if you wished to cook, I paid a little extra for my own
room and I'm glad I did as I ended up with a king size bed, exactly what
was needed after a long sleepless flight. If you are wanting a stopover place
with friendly people that is lots cheaper than a hotel and offers you lots of
advice then I would definitely recommend a stay, some people have stayed here
for a few weeks as they can get to everywhere they want, it really is super
convenient, plus the pizza that you can order in is pretty tasty as well!
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| My room at the Lodge |
On Monday morning I left the lodge by 6.30 in the morning to
catch the train to Park Station. The train was like the over ground in London,
but, amazingly has better disabled access to get on all the trains as the
platform to train is completely flat with small gaps. Once I had arrived at
Park Station I then collected my bus ticket and by 8am I had begun my 6 and a
half hour journey from Johannasburg to Louis Trichardt. The bus felt like it
lasted forever but thankfully I did manage to get some sleep. When I finally
arrived I met one of the project leaders, Sam, and then went to get my week's
worth of food. Thankfully they had a large supermarket to get everything I
could ever need!! After that we headed up to my new home, Lajuma, which took a
good hour due to the huge mountain climb on very bumpy roads that the car had
to undertake. I was then shown my little cabin and left to unpack along with
cook food. I met the 3 other girls on the project as well, Hannah, Oonika and
Phil before heading to bed.
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| My room at Lajuma |
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| My pretty picture chain |
Tuesday I got a lucky lie in until 8am and then given 2 talks, one on the project, and one on health and safety. After that I was given a tour of the housing etc before heading into the field to conduct vegetation plots where a 5x5 metre grid is taken at random coordinates and a small survey of the area is then taken out. To get to these points meant really wandering into the forest and so therefore being scratched and scraped by many varieties of thorn bushes and many other plants. We did get to enjoy lunch sat on a rock by a waterfall though which was lovely. After 7 hours out completing these plots in dense vegetation we finally made it back to the camp where I got to enjoy a hot shower (thank you sun and solar) along with a big bowl of pasta before heading to bed at the exotic time of 9pm!
On Wednesday morning I got given my real primate talk by
Caroline, who is in charge of all the primate projects at Lajuma. I was then
taken around and shown the 24 tree species
that I am required to learn along with the short codes used out here for next
Friday which is a little tough! This is needed as when you are in the field
making observations of the Samango monkeys you are required to note down what
food they are eating, which is most commonly one of the 24 species and so
knowing this from memory allows observations to be easier. After this I then
read all about the projects I will be helping with before heading out in the
afternoon to find the monkeys ready for following on Thursday, Friday and
Saturday.
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| The pretty waterfall |
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| A monkey feeding |
As the troop were slightly further away we were awake even
earlier but we thankfully found the troop and followed them to a beautiful
waterfall area and spent most of the day lazying around in the shade which was
lovely. On the way back to their sleeping site another male attempted to take
over the troop and we got to witness the attempted takeover which not many
people get to see. The fight was vicious with both monkeys making so much noise
and they were both crashing through the trees. Once they seperated we were
able to see that the male trying to take over the troop had gained a really bad
head injury that was bleeding alot! He kept lying down as if trying to get the
blood off, but it was thought he may have a concussion along with a pretty bad
limp! Scar, the troop leader had won the fight but had gained a really nasty
gash to his neck and a very deep bite mark on his arm. Not long after that we
left the troop and hoped that Scar was ok.
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| Scar feeling sorry for himself! |
On Saturday we yet again started early but the monkeys were nowhere
to be found at the sleeping site, after 2 hours of trying to find them we came
back and then went in search of the Vervet Monkeys by scanning for the collared
individual, Violet. We never managed to find them though as they were moving
pretty quickly away from the camp site. As there sleeping sites have been disrupted
quite a lot recently due to the Durham University field course, they may have been
moving away to get some quiet but we won't know this until we find them again
next week. On the way back after our unsuccessful trip, we came across the
Samango Monkeys which we had been unable to find that morning. We then spent the rest of
the day following them. Thankfully Scar seemed fine and healing well. When
6 o'clock came we said goodbye to the monkeys for a few days before heading up
to the Bri with the Durham Students for a meal which was really tasty.
Today I went to town and was able to upload this post,
internet at the camp is limited and so uploading documents is slow going.
I shall update you all on my travels in a few weeks as there
is lots of exciting things coming up!
1 comment:
This is fantastic loving the blog and the monkeys don't look too bad.
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