After another long bus ride I am sitting in a café in the hot, dusty desert town of Nazca. It is mid-late afternoon. There are flowering acacia trees, Latin music blasting from every corner of the plaza, political banners and demonstrations, car horns and hundreds of people enjoying their Saturday. This is what I love …
An uneventful trip back to Medan is followed by a further seven days of travel, of meetings and of forming new elephant conservation research partnerships. The first is a trip to Banda Aceh to meet colleagues at the Universitas Syiah Kuala. Banda Aceh is a clean and bright coastal town famous for the 2004 tsunami which was the first …
Heavy rain and thunder overnight leaves the air dense with humidity. Mandy, Ross and I are to trek north through the old, overgrown logging trails. We dress and pack accordingly but as we set off, I decide that today I would let them trek with the guides and I would go alone to explore the …
We awake at 7am, hot and cramped in our tiny tent after torrential rain had disturbed our sleep as we rescued boots and shoes from under the tent flaps. Breakfast of smoked fish, chillies and rice is already prepared for us and we savour this before packing up our tents and equipment for our journey …
Continue reading Day 6: Back to the fieldstation at Sicundur…
The rainforest around the riverbed is, by its very nature, secondary forest; not only cleared for logging in the 1970s but also by virtue of the fact that it lines the ever-changing riverbed. The seasons and monsoons change the river’s mood from shallow fast flowing to deep and full flow, sweeping away riverbanks, trees and …
After a hot, hard and uncomfortable night at Sikundur research station, we awake at six and are greeted with an amazing breakfast in the kitchen. We finish packing our rucksacks for the journey upriver. Today we are heading north to find a specific location in the forest where previous research on forest structure and …
the real adventure begins…….Up at 8am with a five hour drive ahead of us to the river at Tekong. We pack up all our belongings and set off for a bumpy ride. Our aggressive and somewhat unpleasant driver dodged the sea of transport that managed to somehow occupy the narrow main road with its usual array …
Up at 6am awoken by the exotic calls of the Thomas Langur monkeys and the meaner looking long-tailed macaques. These were accompanied by the myriad of birdcalls and the arrival of the rainforest day-shifters.... it is impossible to sleep on. Time for a cold shower and to gather our kit wearing our forest clothes (to …
Today we travel from Medan to Bukit Lawang which is a village situated on the banks of the Bohorok river and on the edge of the Unesco world heritage listed Gerung Leuser National Park. Lonely Planet describe the park as one of the world’s most important and biologically diverse conservation areas; often described as a …
This is an extract from my wildlife travel diary - Sumatra 15-31st January 2016 on an expedition with the LEAP programme: For more information about LEAP (Landscape, Ecology and Primatology) project visit: http://go-leap.wix.com/home ............................. Preparation time between New Year and the date of departure rapidly disappeared. Kit gathered, arrangements made and now the journey ahead begins. I am …
Rewilding journeys 