Remote Places
One of the reasons I love working in conservation is the remote places it brings you to sometimes. Although born in London I am not a city person and haven’t lived in something even as big as a town in around 20 years. I am happiest wandering around in the bush observing animals in all their splendour without the addition of people.
So believe me when I tell you that my assignment in Chinko nature reserve was remote.
To get there you take a 2hr 30 min flight by light aircraft from Bangui, the capital for nearly 1000km. Of course you could drive if you have the time and a strong sense of adventure, the roads, however are impassable in the wet season. Road blocks are rife in a country where ethnic tensions are high. The route takes you through towns that only UN convoys dare try and pass.
The last half hour or so you are actually flying over the reserve itself. At 17,600 sq km it is enormous. There are no settlements in the reserve boundaries and the nearest village, Bakouma, is a bone shattering 12 hour drive away that includes a ‘ferry’ across a wide river. This is the nearest place for any supplies and also where most of the staff comes from. Bearing in mind that again this road is all but impassable during the 5 month rainy season when mud can mean it takes three hours to drive 5 km. Watching the plane trundle down the dirt runway as you stand there with your bags can insight a momentary sense of panic in many first time visitors here.
Of course getting there is not the only problem. Moving around the reserve is just as difficult. The habitat is a mosaic of tropical lowland rainforest and forested savannah which translates to very tall grasses and many rivers with thick tangled vegetation, not at all easy to drive through let alone walk through.
On one occasion I set out with the resident biologist to put out camera-traps. We drove all morning, checking for likely spots. Around midday we had to ford yet another river; as the car gingerly entered the water it suddenly slew to the left and sank notably. We were stuck and guess what? we had been assigned a car with a winch that did not work. After an agonising hour or two trying to get ourselves unstuck Thierry decided it was time to call in a rescue only to find his sat phone was having network issues. There was nothing left for us to do but start walking. It would be a 25km walk back to base, with all the streams and rivers water at least was no issue.
As we had no choice but to walk, Thierry, ever resourceful, suggested we treat it as one very long transect and record all that we saw along the way. It certainly kept my mind off the heat and dust anyway. How wonderful to just walk and see no signs of humans anywhere, only nature. It was better than being in the car where you heard nothing over the engine. Somewhere out in the middle of that walk we stumbled on a massive sinkhole about 30 meters deep and 50 meters diameter. Buzzing all around was a large colony of red-throated bee-eaters, not known to breed in Central African Republic these birds had obviously not read the books because they were flitting in and out of nest holes in the walls of the sinkhole. As we watched the show the bee-eaters put on for us I reflected that perhaps we were the only humans, certainly in recent history to have observed this spot buried deep within a very large isolated corner of Africa. It is a humbling experience to discover nature in its undisturbed state and I never tired of exploring Chinko’s river systems and forest clearings. Stumbling upon giant trees or ancient salt licks carved by forest elephants or just watching troops of monkeys and flocks of hornbills passing through the canopy above was manna for the soul.
As we approached base camp and the noise of industry kicked in, generators, cars, people, I had to mentally re-adjust bolstering my courage to deal with everyday camp life again thankful that something as simple as a stuck car could have afforded me a little more time cocooned from the real world.
The biggest tree roots ever
Snapshot Serengeti 