Today it has been exactly two weeks since the last entry here. It was again two exciting weeks on the Mauritian mainland. In the first week one of the highlights was definitely the hike from down here on the beach up to one of the field stations in the National Park, which was about a 5 hour hike. After getting out of the village of Grande Rivičre Noire the way takes you through sugar cane fields until you get to the Lower Gorges visitor centre. The first surprising thing when entering the national park was a sign saying “Gate locked at 6 pm”, which gave me a strange feeling. Imagine you set out in the late afternoon and walk the path in the other direction, and then you get to this gate with barbed wire and it’s locked. That would be a real pain! Luckily, I was on the way early enough and in the right direction. The visitor centre was beyond what I had expected after following the narrow, lonely road for almost an hour, big carpark, a picnic area, and information centre. Strange enough, they were just about to close the information centre at the time I arrived, which was early afternoon. But when I asked I was politely given a map with hiking trails in the national park. The 5 Rupies (equal to 0.20 Swiss francs!) were definitely well invested. I was carrying a hand-drawn map and a road map on me, both of which turned out to have their weaknesses in the national park. At the visitor centre everything was so well signposted. But later on the trail it was mainly common sense and a look again and again at the hiking trail map that kept me on the right track. In the end I still managed to turn off in the wrong direction, and only the trail map revealed where I was and prevented me from having to go back quite a way. The way I then followed was a bit longer but very scenic. It took me along a nicely forested slope into one of the valleys of the Black River gorges. Once I even came across a Java deer. These were brought to Mauritius by some of the early colonizers as good game for hunting. They are still widespread, but other than wild pigs, cats, or monkeys are not so much seen as a problem species. They track I was on was supposed to be a 4 wheel drive track. In some places I was just wondering how it was possible to manage up a steep passage in a jeep. Then again big boulders were lying in the way, which made it very likely that the track had not been used by drivers recently. Then again there were parts were the ground looked like a well-maintained lawn and had exactly the width to allow a vehicle to get through. After about a couple of hours uphill, and after coming across only for other hikers, I finally crossed the ridge at the end of “Colophanes Trail” and arrived on the upland plateau that makes up a big chunk of the national park. This also meant being on a well-maintained 4WD track, which was going to take me towards the field station. One of the trickiest experiences was when I tried to get over the gate to “Camp”. I really thought “bullocks” when I was up on the gate, the barbed wire between my legs, and the rain suddenly pouring down. I couldn’t believe it, it had been a beautiful day all day. But it reminded me of being in a RAINforest now “Camp” is an experience of its own. It was the first MWF field station, and well into the 90s field workers lived in tents there and cooking was done in proper field manner under a tarpaulin. That’s what people told me. These days there is a spacious house there; the kitchen remained outside however. Under a tin roof there is a common cooking facility, which has in a way its own spirit. Because of the rats that are common in that area all food needs to locked away. You can so well see how talented people with love to the detail crafted everything. Take the door to the wooden fruit box, instead of just taking a permanent marker and labeling it “fruits”, someone cut out an apple from the wood even with a worm in it and coloured it all. Looks really nice.
What I was surprised to experience the next day was the temperature difference between upland rainforest and the coastal areas. Waking up in “Camp” the first thing I did was just get into my socks, trousers, and put on the jumper. Down in Black River it’s short and T-shirt time pretty much all day or night. It was good to finally be up in the national park. I had heard so much from the guys on the weekend, but I couldn’t really imagine what it would look like. There was even a good reason to hike all the way. One of the volunteers had her last day and we all met up at the field station “Pigeon Wood” to have dinner and sit together, and say goodbye to her. A lively evening! The next day it was mountain-to-beach time. Starting from the view point (where I took the photo of the view down to the sea) it was an experience to hike downhill, arriving muddy up to the knees, and then swap the boots for flip flops. The swim in the sea was most relaxing. Maybe even a bit too relaxing, because I just couldn’t be asked to get back to work that afternoon. Besides hiking I was mostly dedicated to getting ahead with the study. It turned out that there was still plenty to organize for the last two weeks on Round Island. There are still 4 tagged animals on Round Island, which I hope to be able to follow again. Additionally, I would also like to use the chance and do behavioural observations to get more insight into their activities and find out when exactly they are active. Fitting this and some other tasks into a reasonable timetable for the 2 weeks on Round Island I experienced as a big challenge. So, the hike on Wednesday and Thursday was just the right sort of motivator. And then it turned out that on Friday afternoon there would even be an another event, MWF had invited guests from the Comores and Guam to give talks about their work on dugongs and birds. It was wicked to get the chance to speak to Paul Wenninger, who works on the Guam rails, and hear about his first-hand experience there.
Last weekend’s photos of the beach party you saw already. Wicked as well. We were invited to the wedding anniversary of a friend of Jannie. We were welcomed all as if we all had been friends for a long time. After dinner we went down to the beach, simple and yet awesome, a fire, a few people who like singing and making music, and a few drinks, voilŕ.
This week I was no mostly preparing all things that needed to done to go back to Round on Friday. But we had to change our plans, because there was not possible to get a helicopter changeover. Now, I and the others are pretty much on standby, just hoping that the changeover will take place soon. Maybe, I will also have to change the plans for further data collection. But that I can only decide when we know more about the helicopter flight. At the moment, 3 people are stuck on the island. It’s not a big worry because they should be doing fine when it comes to food stocks. But I can imagine that it’s kind of a weird feeling to be on the island, ready to go home but not knowing when it’s gonna be.
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