Moulondo Camp for 3 Days

Found my memory card! I'm going to let photos (and I guess some captions) speak for themselves about my time at the Smithsonian Moulondo camp with the CABalliance and Smithsonian teams.

The Macro Invertebrate Team crossing the Boumé

This was an eerie place. The river is the Boumé Boumé, and the bridge that is in the  background was (obviously) never finished. A small collection of shanties that can be seen in the background were built for the people working on the bridge. It's all deserted now, though. An unfortunate example of the many projects in Gabon that run out of money or interest. If/when the new road is built and a bridge is made, they will have to pull out the partially-existing bridge. The red thing in the foreground is a hand-pulled ferry that you can drive your car onto. There have been problems with people driving over the edge, or sinking it because they put too much weight on it.

The "road" on the other side leads to Panga and the coast.

Our driver in the front, Jean Noel, and our guide Kassa in the back.

Panga

This may or may not be a good picture but I love it because just a sliver of the coast can be seen, and the ocean meets the sky.

This mangrove swamp has been invaded with salt water, so all the trees are dying.

Jean Michel, the driver for the macro invertebrate team, standing on a mangrove branch.

The macro team at work.

The students from CABalliance and their guides. Nikki Anthony is the woman on the left with the fanny pack.

Gabe and Katy in the field.

Cute friends, Timmy and John.

Patrick, one of the senior scientists, looking for African puddle frogs.

The Stella wood mouse team. Unfortunately the red glare from the tent made my camera go haywire so it had to be in black and white. But you can sort of see the mouse that Nikki is holding. It actually wasn't the species they were looking for but they kept it for a little to identify it and then released it back where it was caught.

John and I. Camera faces and then what we actually look like.

Timmy and I. Timmy worked on the l'equipe des petites mammifiers.

Elephant tracks and hippo tracks in the sand.