Dr Nancy Priston

After a few days acclimatising in the village, catching up with the families here and discussing the education project plans with the village elders I decided to have a go at trekking in to a more remote area of the forest to see how it was looking. To access this bit of the forest I had to first drive about 40 minutes to the village of Lawele. This village is on the mangroves in a small estuary. It’s the site of the main Market for the area so every Tuesday, Thursday an Sunday morning it’s busy with local people buying and selling produce.

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I met up with my guide Safiron and we set off into the forest

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It was an 8 km trek or so into the forest. As we started in we saw evidence of rattan collection and some small scale timber extraction. The rattan palm canes are taken out the forest and left to soak on the rivers until they're ready to carry them out to be loaded on to trucks.
Once a few km in though there was little disturbance. Nice big trees and some stunning sights. The trek involves a good few river crossings so it’s wet boots and feet all day but it’s worth it. I saw evidence of wild pig, saw hornbills and other birds, but no monkeys on the walk in sadly. It’s not all about the big animals though. I saw some amazing fungi and some cool insects too And of course the ubiquitous leach! The camp site is beautiful, truly stunning, what a place to wake up to 🙂 This area of the forest is called Bala, after the parasitic fungus found there – balanophora. A very cool little fungus that seems to pop up all over the place in this part of the forest. The walk out was nice but uneventful- apart from some more big trees, a big tree fall and some mahoosive leaves! Oh and a glimpse of some monkeys 🙂 they were high up and very skittish so we couldn’t follow them but it’s good to know they’re there! 🙂 Finally we walked back out through the coffee and cocoa plantations and back to the village 🙂 a great trek through some great forest, with great monkey potential!