This was the trip we had planned to make. This time we were heading downstream
from Mayonami towards the Mouambi tributary with two local lads, Frank and Igg,
as guides.
They knew the area well, and were quite happy to park the pirogue (dugout) and
take us on a couple of walks. One walk was through some forest where we found
evidence of recent elephant activity, and another took us through a bit of
jungle and into some savannah where we met a woman Frank knew. She lived in a
nearby village, the Baloumbou village of Panga, and this was her place of work.
She came here with her pet dog to
catch fish.
We saw two new things on this trip but unfortunately I didn't catch them on
camera. These were the putty-nosed monkey and the African Manatee (actually,
Frank saw a tail but I just saw the boils of water).
This sequence shows a Palmiste vulture (Palm-nut Vulture in English) leaving its perch and flying off. We saw a dead one of these at Mayonami, destined to become bush meat. Ru is asking if they're good to eat (C'est bon a mange?). I saw a menu from a restaurant in another part of Gabon which had crocodile on it.
This is typical riverside scenery.
Here we see Frank and Igg on the first of our walkabouts.
This giant kingfisher and Hammerkop are just two of the many birds we saw.
This was the second of our walkabouts. The fisher woman in her "office" doesn't show up very well in the center right of the little picture, but she's there.
It was a climb over the Mangrove roots to the boat, and back to the Nyanga.
This is the ferry we were thinking about catching the day before.
We had a brief stop to do something with the outboard, which is when we watched this mud skipper, and it was then down to the mouth of the Nyanga for a walk to the end of the spit of sand between the river and the sea. The ship has been stranded on a sandbank out at sea for several months now and is waiting for a big tide. Ru belives it has some of his stuff in transit from Port Gentil on it.
