August 28, 2016

Today was the best day.

The main thing that happened today was that I saw wild elephants. 

We woke up earlier than normal in order to start out on our 3.5 hour road trip to Kasungu. It was just me and four other girls. I loved the drive. We passed through tons of little towns and villages. Alma's driving scared me. 

We drove 2 hours on a paved road before we diverted to a dirt road. Malawi reportedly has 5 main paved roads shooting throughout the country. The rest are dirt offshoots. We drove another 1.5 hours on this dirt road. That's a total of 3.5 hours and 1 turn. Alma and Mandy switched driving in the meantime.

Arriving in the park we crossed a single security guard and his little fence. No problems there, Mandy is in and out of the park all the time. She has started a huge research project to monitor the Centre's radio-collared vervet monkey group that was released from rehab care recently. 

As we pull up to the research camp (that doubles as a tourist spot that virtually zero tourists visit), we notice that we are supremely in the bush. Very remote, very secluded.

 I think there are monkeys fighting on my roof right now. 

Which would be fine! But as we do the house tour, Mandy instructs us to not walk the 70 yards to the communal bathrooms in the middle of the night, but instead to pee outside of our hut if we must go. 

The reason, as it turns out, is that this camp is a very popular spot for animals including the following in order of my fear level: Elephants, jaguars, hippos, hyenas, wild pigs, and of course monkeys.

My roommate and I stayed together in a twin room/hut/chalet that was quite comfy. Open air and mosquito nets provided. Two twin beds, one waste basket, one candle, and zero anything else literally. Very clean though!!! So, I was pretty stoked to camp! 

The hut was about 20 yards from the bank of a large body of water. 

No joke, the first animal I saw, before I even made it to my chalet, was an elephant. A wild elephant in the wilderness. And actually when I really looked, there were six! And they were SWIMMING! Swimming and playing and wrestling! This one juvenile was real annoyed by birds! He would run and chase them off, but they would just land on another side of him. He would run swinging his trunk amuck! Probably one of the top five best things I've ever seen in my life. The whole family was basically just relaxing and playing. AND I WAS WATCHING THIS ON THE FRONT PORCH OF MY ROOM. 

Turning my head a little to the right- hippos. I counted 10 at a point. All submerged and being fat and shiny. They also made noises that were very calming.

Then I dumped my stuff in my room returned to the main community area. This was a large open air concrete structure with a straw roof. The kitchen was rudimentary, no fridge, but you could drink from the tap! That made things a lot easier than at the Centre. 

There were a couple of wooden tables and many chairs. The whole park uses this area for guests, but like I said, there were never any guests. So we basically had it to ourselves on this excursion. The bathrooms I mentioned are communal, two working toilets and apparently hot water showers if the fire was lit long enough. No lights, so you have to bring your torch if you pee after dark.

I'm saying that not ten minutes after we got this tour, an elephant stomped by us. He walked right past our cars, right up the road, right past our porch. Grabbing leaves and branches off trees all the way. He paid us no mind, but simply walked on by. I lost my breath. Apparently this is normal. Sometimes, multiple elephants stroll by at once and the researchers are stuck in the kitchen! 

It's not quite the idea you get from watching 'Dumbo', but elephants can be pretty dangerous. Especially adult bulls and mommas with babies. Trampling and such can be a risk. We felt safe on this occasion. 

After the first ele walked by, ANOTHER ONE CAME THROUGH!!! This one, same deal- moseyed on by swiping yummy leaves. These creatures are obviously big, but one notable characteristic about them is their SLOW SPEED. So incredibly slow. It was humorous! 

I obviously couldn't focus well on Mandy's lecture directly after this occasion... But she spoke about GPS/radio/satellite collars, and habitat assessment techniques. Two lectures. Then, it was time to adventure. 

We hopped in the back of what you can probably picture as a typical African bush wildlife research vehicle. 

Then, with Mandy driving, we zoomed all over the park kicking up dust and bouncing all around. But our first stop was to pick up our scout. Scouts are provided to tourists/researchers for accompaniment on treks or missions out in the park. This guy was BAD ASS. He had a rifle with camo clothes (featuring a British flag logo) and army boots. Stern face, strong jaw, probably 40 years old. Unforgettable look of seriousness. His job was to shoot threats, wrestle jaguars, and probably carry us over his shoulder to safety if need be. 

After we got Scout we drove all around some more and even stopped to get out and see some things. The first thing we saw was the most recent vervet monkey release enclosure. One of the last steps of the rehab/release process is to build an enclosure in the wilderness to house the animals for the very last time in the exact environment they will be released in. So, with stray branches and chicken wire, the Centre built a huge enclosure in the middle of the woods. Mandy would feed them for a few weeks, then just let them loose! This is what's called a 'soft release'. It gives the animals time to adjust to the new environment. I think it's kind of like when you get a new fish for your fish tank from the store and place its bag of store water into the tank with your home water in order to slowly let the fish adjust to the new temperature. After released, they feed the animals in their same location for just a little while as they wean them off of support! Pretty neat! 

After this, we tried to FIND those released monkeys! Mandy pulled out her handy dandy telemetry machine and we tried to hone in on the group's exact location. Each of the monkeys is wearing a fashionable radio collar that can be picked up by Mandy's antenna. The general rule is that the collars should weigh less than 5% of the animal's body weight.

We drove down the road, antenna in hand, but it just turned out that they were too far away :-(. 

That's ok!

Next we set up some CAMERA TRAPS! They were Browning hunting cams. We got a nice little tutorial about settings and general rules of thumb. We planned to check them the next morning. 

They NEXT step was my favorite.... The Climbing of Black Rock. We had to ride back to camp to grab Mandy's researcher friend Rob. When I asked, Rob said his PhD was "on jaguars." This meant that literally everything about Jaguars was included in his project because, turns out, not much is known about jaguars in Africa. I think more specifically, he wants to see how these animals are coping with the disastrous man-made shift in their environment. Poaching and deforestation (Malawi has one of the world's worst deforestation rates in the world). 

Anyways, we got Rob. Rob got us drinks aka "sundowners." The plan was for us to climb this black rock and drink a sundowner.

The trip in the pack of that truck hurt my butt. It's two days later and my butt bone still hurts. 

The rock was GINORMOUS. And black, really. We pulled up and parked, but I couldn't figure out how tf we were going to climb the sucker because the edge was straight up! Like, 80 degree incline for the first 20 meters! I was wearing Toms. But Lord knows I didn't express fear. I knew for a FACT that I wasn't going to make it up.

Ok but then I tried and that black rock was so gripping that it actually bobbled my mind fully. I sprinted up! It was more grippy than skateboard grip tape. That's the grippiest surface I've ever experienced in my life. 

Anyways, climbed up that rock and made it to the top and again my breath was taken away. A STUNNINGLY wonderful view of miles and miles and miles of forest. Mesmerizing. And we popped some tops and sat admiring the lowering sun. On the western horizon was Zambia, a bordering country. The mountains in my photos are all in Zambia. That was neat enough on its own. The sun was blood red at a point. We had a great time up there. And our scout was protecting us.

Then, dinner at the camp. Rice with stewed veggies. It got cold. I peed a million times before I went back to my hut because of all the warnings about peeing in the night!! I brushed my teeth with my water bottle on the porch with the stars. The hippos made lovely noises as we slept. Haha and the candle was a hoot.

That was my favorite day so far