I went to the coastal forest today with the large mammal team. Hadrien had told me it was a beautiful place, plus I need photos and video of them working in the forest and with the camera traps they are using.
Wow, I really had no idea how pretty it is! An open forest with cool gnarly trees, and spots where all the trees are leaning one way, I assume because of the wind from the beach. I realized back at camp that the sound of the beach in the background that I thought would be nice, isn’t so nice in the video. But it may be the crappy headphones I have, back home I can listen to the audio with nice headphones and maybe it will be different.
Lots of traffic on the team’s camera traps. We also ran into a few monkeys, and I smelled that musky smell again, not sure if its chimps or the larger monkeys. It brings back memories of Goualougo, so I am thinking it’s chimps. It’s not the strong body odor smell you get with gorillas. I’ll ask around in camp, Chris (on the small mammal team) might know, he was also noticing it when we were in the forest.
I am reminded whenever I go into the forest how much Goualougo boot camp really taught me a lot. An amazing forest, pygmies, and Dave and Crickette, cannot really do better then that for teachers.