Our last day in Odzala-Kokoua National Park. At a civilised time we walked down to breakfast in the main dining/entertaining area of the Mboko camp. It was warm and the morning was lighting up giving us a great view across a section of savanna down towards the Lekoli river. Breakfast was a sumptuous affair and once sated we drove down to the boats to cruise down the river and walk in a few areas of the forest we had not yet seen.

“The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”~Eleanor Roosevelt

The light was low down among the trees where the boats were moored. About fifty metres upstream of the boats, were heard an elephant breaking branches.

“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”~ Oprah Winfrey

We quietly made our way up the river on foot to get a decent view of this forest elephant bull without disturbing him. After seven days in Odzala you do not get precious about getting wet.

We watched this one tusk forest elephant bull happily feeding undisturbed at the edge of the river. This must have been paradise for him with abundant food, water and protection of the reserve.

After watching the bull elephant for about half an a hour we left him in peace and wandered back down the river to the boats. From there our Odzala guides, Daniella and Adi, took us by boat down the Lekoli river to explore further. The forest was alive with wildlife. This male Forest buffalo heard our boat and looked up to ensure we were just passing.

“One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.”~William Feather

We stopped at one of the small inlets along the river to go walking in some of the drier parts of the forest. There were forest openings, not quite the size of a bai, but do not be fooled, these marshy areas can be problematic if you do not know what you are doing. This next image shows Adi wading through the marshy area which got deep and difficult to get through in places .

Further on in a drier section, the walking was easier and the area opened up into beautiful glades.

It was clear to see that Wild Eye’s Andrew Beck was in his element.

We carried on walking through the open sections along the side of the forest finding these stunning areas with grey parrots calling all around us.

Around lunchtime, much to our surprise, Daniella and Adi produced a picnic lunch on some rocks by the edge of a beautiful open area next to the forest. We spent a happy hour or so relaxing and chatting over lunch. The bird life all around was spectacular with many Grey parrots and different species of hornbills continuously flying past.

After lunch we walked back towards the boat but this time through the long savanna grasses. I am no entomologist but even I was intrigued by the variety of insect life we found on the way. One species of insect that caught my imagination was a stunning rainbow shield bug on some yellow berries on a shrub along side the path.

Along the animal paths there were sprinklings of shrubs with beautiful wild flowers such as this Melastromastrum segregatum.

Verdant vegetation overhanging the river. This looked to be a species of wisteria fighting for light with another tree with beautiful white flowers. There is so much food for the monkeys, parrots and nectar feeders. The forest also provides abundant fruit resources for frugivores such as parrots, hornbills, turacos and barbets.

“People don’t take trips, trips take people.” ~John Steinbeck

Once back in the boat we travelled back upstream towards the Mboko camp. When we drew level with the Lango bai entrance, Adi got a fleeting glimpse of a Forest elephant. He reckoned that we may be able to get into a position where we could see the Forest elephant in the open and get some good images. We went up the Lango tributary as far as we could and it soon got too shallow for the boat so we hopped out and proceeded on foot through water. Adi was 100% right we got to see this bull Forest elephant come into the open.

This bull immediately saw us and was not happy. After walking a few paces he stopped and accessed what we were doing and decided to give us a mock charge. It was just for show as we were not close to him and there was plenty of thick mud between us.

After telling us that he did not want us any closer he backed away and walked through the bush and made his way down river. We walked back to our boat and managed to get some decent images of the bull crossing the Lango tributary.

“There is a language going on out there – the language of the wild. Roars, snorts, trumpets, squeals, whoops and chirps have meaning derived over eons of expression…we have yet to become fluent in the language – and music – of the wild.”~Boyd Norton

Not far from where the bull crossed the Lango tributary there was a feeding frenzy in an adjacent small section of the swamp which attracted Little egrets, Yellow-billed egrets, and a Palm-nut vulture.

“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them.”~ Aldo Leopold

After the the sighting of the elephant bull, the light was starting to fade as the evening quietly crept in. We celebrated the end of what was a fascinating day sitting in the boat with a sundowner and watched mother nature’s spectacular light show at sunset.

“Man is but part of the community of nature on our blue planet. Our arrogance and ignorance blinds us into thinking we are superior. Humility and inquisitiveness reveals that we have much still to learn about the natural intelligence in our wild community and how to live in harmony with it.”~ Mike Haworth

A special thank you to the team at Odzala for your hospitality and showing us your incredible wild place. To our guide in Odzala, Daniella Kueck thank you for showing us around your vast piece of tropical heaven. Your knowledge and enthusiasm were inspiring. To Andrew Beck from Wild Eye, thank you for putting together an absolutely fascinating trip which turned into an adventure with cameras. Many more to come.

“If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.”~ Maya Angelou

I am always so impressed by the quality of people, their dedication and clear conceptual approach to building a tourist destination without compromising the wildness and balance of the area. To the Congo Conservation Company and African Parks you are doing wonderful pioneering work in combining conservation, tourism, wildlife research and community integration into what looks to be an effective sustainable model and blueprint for recovering many of our decimated wild areas in Africa. Hats off to you for your great work!!!

https://www.africanparks.org/about-us/our-story

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun, Mike

From Lango we moved to Mboko camp, the third and last leg of our Odzala adventure. We drove through a section of savanna to a drop off point on the opposite side of the Lekoli river to the Mboko camp. The vehicle bridge had been swept away by the previous year’s rains so access to Mboko was via a boardwalk and over a wooden pedestrian bridge. This walk was about 20 minutes through thick vegetation next to the Lekoli river. The boardwalk was necessary because it was very marshy. As we walked across the wooden pedestrian bridge, in the water below us was a Tiger fish hunting. The light shining into the crystal clear water showed the Tiger’s colours beautifully.

“I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”
-Eric Roth,

Once we got to Mboko, we found a camp with wide open spaces – something different after having been in the rainforest. Mboko looked over an open section of savanna grassland with the Lekoli river flowing along its right hand side.

The beauty of this camp was that it was open to all the breezes which float by in this humid forest environment. Mboko boasts 12 comfortable bungalows all linked to the main dining and bar area via gravel paths.

As with all the camps in Odazala, Mboko’s cuisine was excellent and even more impressive given it was so far from civilisation.

Around Mboko camp there are numerous termite mounds. These are a feature of the savannas. These termite mounds play a vital role in the ecosystem as thickets of vegetation start to develop on or around them helped by the concentration of nitrates accumulated in these nests. In turn, the vegetation attracts the elephants who deposit their dung which is filled with germinating seeds and they also start to grow nearby.

After wandering around the waterways you are likely to be wet and muddy but never cold. There is nothing better than a hot shower to wash away the day’s bushwacking. Refreshed, we met for sundowners which developed into story telling around the camp fire on one of the ample elevated wooden decks.

In 2010, park management was taken over by the Odzala Foundation, a partnership between the not-for-profit African Parks and the Congolese government. The lack of tourism infrastructure in the park was addressed by the Congo Conservation Company, an initiative of German businesswoman and philanthropist, Sabine Plattner. Two new camps (Ngaga and Lango) were constructed in the park, and an existing camp (Mboko) refurbished.

Primate research at Ngaga embraced a new approach with the support of Sabine Plattner, African Charities, and the Congo Conservation Company. The philosophy was to join communities, science and tourism on the grounds of conservation. Then, two more camps were built within Odzala- Kokoua National Park, each within a distinct biome. A part of the gorilla research was opened to tourism. The combination created an unique destination rooted in conservation, creating awareness and spiced with adventure.

On our first afternoon at Mboko we went down to the river and climbed aboard a flat bottomed aluminium boat to wander down the Lekoli river.

Sections of the Lekoli river had the forest bulging into the waterway.

“While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.” ~ David Hume

A few kilometres down the Lekoli river there are patches that opened up. Here you were likely to see herons, Palm-nut vultures and kingfishers.

The water in the Lekoli river is crystal clear but has a brown hue to it. This comes from the tannin and organic acids released during the decomposition of the vegetation in the river. There are sections of the river bank with groves of wild Date-palms overhanging the river.

From the boat we saw a small family group of Forest elephant browsing on the grass near the river. We were careful to go downwind and got out of the boat and walked along the edge of a marsh area to where the elephants were feeding on the grasses. After we were watching them for a while, this bull forest elephant must have picked up a swirl of our scent and he quickly turned around and crashed through the grass back into the forest. You will notice that the forest elephants eyes are much lighter than their African elephant cousins.

Traditionally, the Forest and Savanna elephants have been classified as subspecies of the African elephant. The two have very different DNAs. They also look very different. The Savanna elephant weighs on average 7 tonnes which is about double the weight of the Forest elephant. A team of scientists looked back into elephant ancestry and found by comparing their genomes that the Forest and Savanna elephants diverged into separate species about the same time as African and Asian elephants split into separate species, according to lead author on the study, David Reich who is a population geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

According to our guides Daniella and Adi, the female Forest elephant can be altogether more dangerous than the male, especially when she has a calf. Once they get your scent they have been known to follow it and are persistent. Needless to say once she was alerted, we quickly got out of the way of this now wide awake female Forest elephant and left her in peace with her youngsters.

“It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.” ~Alfred North Whitehead

After being encouraged to leave the area by the female elephant we climbed back on board our boat and started to slowly wander our way back up stream towards our camp. On the way we came upon this small family herd of Forest buffalo who were enjoying a late afternoon bath.

The buffaloes have nothing to fear from the crocodiles in the Lekoli river . There are two types of crocodile found in the rivers and bais of Odzala, the Long-snouted crocodile and Dwarf crocodile. The Long-snouted crocodile can grow up to four metres in length but eats mainly a fish, snake and small mammals. When we were walking around in the water in the rivers and bais this was one of the first questions I asked, coming from southern Africa, where we humans are definitely on the Nile crocodile’s menu. The Dwarf crocodile is nocturnal and rarely seen during the day..

We followed this family herd of Forest buffalo for a hundred metres or so along the edge of the river before they disappeared down one of the small tributaries.

“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

It was getting progressively darker. At a particular section of the Lekoli river we found a herd of forest elephants blowing bubbles in the water. Elephants do this to obtain essential salts,deficient in their diet. The salts lie in solution at the bottom of water-filled holes. The elephants access these salts by digging or blowing air into these underwater holes to clear out any debris then they can suck up the mineral-rich water using their trunks.

As it got even darker, the nocturnal wildlife started to reveal itself. Below is a White-backed Night heron. We only had a fleeing glimpse of it as the spot light disturbed it.

Evenings in Africa are usually spectacular. Odzala was no different. After some of the overcast and misty weather and the gloom of the forest it was perfect to sit on the boat having a sundowner. It was still hot and the air was still. There was hardly a ripple on the golden water surface and just the sounds of the forest all around – sublime!

“Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” ~Chief Seattle

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun, Mike

On our second morning at Lango we set off early into the bai. It was very misty which gave the place a mysterious feel. Everything around Lango is accessed by walking through the bai.

“The answer is simple. If we lose the world’s forests, we lose the fight against climate change. Rainforests are our Earth’s greatest utility – our planet’s lungs, thermostat and air-conditioning system.” ~ Michael Somare

This particular morning we set off towards Bongo saline in the hopes of seeing one or more Bongos and Red river hogs. Sadly our hopes were not fulfilled as we saw neither. The particular area of the bai we walked in was to find a rare antelope called Bongo. I am not sure why it was called a saline but I presume it had a geomorphological origin and was probably the more saline section of the bai.

The Bongo is an antelope of the genus Tragelaphus which are spiral horned antelopes. They are in the same family as the Greater Kudu, Mountain Nyala and Sitatunga. The Bongo is a large solidly built antelope not too much smaller than an Eland. The Bongo is a nocturnal ungulate and browses on leaves, bushes, bark, pith of rotting trees, grasses, roots, and fruits. Bongos require salt in their diet so come into the salines to eat the mineral rich soil for the same reason the green pigeons and parrots.

Our walk to the Bongo saline was along the waterways in the bai which the wildlife use. These underwater paths are firm underfoot from years of wildlife traffic. Although misty, it was warm and so humid. When we went for our walks around the Lango bai area we were accompanied by a Congo Conservation eco guide, Mathieu.

The mist was thick and only lifted quite late in the morning. It gave an altogether more mysterious sense to the place.

As you can see moving away from the game trails involved getting through thick mud, the kind of depth mud that wants to suck your shoes off your feet.

Ann got well and truly stuck on occasions and lost her shoes deep in the mud which Mathieu managed to find each time. Just as well because there were thickets of thorn bushes at the edge of some of these muddy patches. Getting stuck led to all sorts of comments and great humour.

“Bais are an inbetween place in the forest. Not forest, not savanna but rather swamp lands. This inbetween place reveals some of the forests secrets. It is a feeding and gathering place for many creatures in the forest community. It displays a blaze of greens, spiced with swirls of multi-coloured wings. You can wander through these bais along elephant boulevards. Here you are a visitor.”~ Mike Haworth

Once we got onto an “elephant boulevard” it was easy walking. Although you walked through the water it was firm underfoot. The “elephant boulevards” have been formed over hundreds of years of elephants walking in and out of the bai.

A bush lily on the verge of the elephant boulevard.

The “elephant boulevard” can be quite wide in places but sticks to the central sand paths. If you stray to the edges you are likely to sink calf or knee deep in mud. One of the things I love about the bush is that the locals come up with romantic expressions to describe some of the features of the area such as “elephant boulevards”, it is highly evocative.

The elephants seem to play a similar role in the Odzala rainforest that the hippos do in the Okavango delta. They create waterways and game trails which other wildlife follow. These game trails also seem to function like streams and help drain areas of the forest. These “elephant boulevards” also attract plant life which seek the sun such as the plant below which I think looks like an ipomoea or morning glory creeper.

“The more we urbanise, the more we grow out of touch with the natural systems and rhythms. The more we leave libraries of natural intelligence undiscovered. It is only in adventures back into the wilds we reignite our senses and become spellbound by the wonder and beauty of mother nature’s community.” ~ Mike Haworth

As you walk along these “elephant boulevards” you expect to see a forest elephant or forest buffalo or one of the antelopes any moment step out from around the corner. Like all game trails they do not follow a straight line but meander through the forest.

These Swamp lilies made a colourful display along the “elephant boulevard”, nature’s natural colourful garden.

For part of the walk we wandered through the close canopy forest. This was one of the immense African Greenheart trees which reach heights of 40 to 50 metres and have their characteristic large buttresses at their base. These buttresses can extend out over four metres. It is a sight to behold to look up into such a large old member of the forest community.

After walking through the dry closed canopy forest for a while we came to this waterway. This was the way back to Lango camp.

Later in the morning the mist cleared and the sun came out. The air was still and the reflection in the water was perfect.

“I see the day in our own lifetime that reverence for the natural systems, the oceans, the rainforests, the soil, the grasslands, and all other living things will be so strong that no narrow ideology based upon politics or economics will overcome it.” ~ Jerry Brown

We walked waist deep along this water way for about a hundred or so metres. It was exquisitely beautiful.

At the end of the waterway walk we disturbed a forest buffalo bull who was munching on some succulent vegetation below the water surface.

He stood and looked at us for a few seconds wondering what to do then bolted for the water’s edge at which point he stopped to turn around and have one last look at us.

Our morning walk did not serve up Bongos or Red river hogs but it was a fascinating and a beautiful, mysterious walk through the elephant boulevards, closed canopy forest, waterways and the thick mist and sunshine.

After exiting the waist deep waterway and short walk through the forest the path opened out onto the bai giving us a wonderful view of Lango camp and its surrounds. Lango and Ngaga camps could not have been more different and the experiences and walks could also not have been more different. The bais provide a very different view of the forest.

“The world’s forests need to be seen for what they are – giant global utilities, providing essential public services to humanity on a vast scale. They store carbon, which is lost to the atmosphere when they burn, increasing global warming. The life they support cleans the atmosphere of pollutants and feeds it with moisture. They act as a natural thermostat, helping to regulate our climate and sustain the lives of 1.4 billion of the poorest people on this Earth.” ~ Prince Charles

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun, Mike

On the third morning, after a special hour spent with the the western lowland gorillas close to the Ngaga camp, it was time to decamp and move onto our second camp.

“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”~ Ernest Hemingway

Our trip to the new camp was split into two parts. The first stage was a drive by game vehicle to the Mboko camp where we were given a superb lunch. We had no idea what was coming next. After a short relaxation time, we started the second part of our journey to the second camp. From Mboko we drove down to the Lekoli river where we climbed onto kayaks. Daniella, our Odzala guide, took us down the river to exit some distance further down at the entrance to the Lango bai.

We had a wonderful hour gliding down the Lekoli river in peace and quiet watching all the wildlife along the river. The forest bulges right onto the river bank. We had fleeting glimpse of several kingfishers, Palm nut vultures, hornbills and a few Cattle egrets.

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”~ Saint Augustine

We paddled part the way up a tributary into the Lango bai until it got too shallow. We then beached the kayaks on a sand bank and started to walk deeper into the bai. All our kit had been taken by vehicle via a back route through the forest and along the edge of a savanna opening. After walking for about half an hour this was the view in front of us – Lango bai.

A bai is natural forest clearing which is unique to the lowland of central Africa. It is a swampy grassy like meadow in the middle of the rainforest. These bais have several important roles to play from a wildlife, forest and human point of view.

These bais are effectively swamps. To course your way through the bai you must follow game trails. You will walk knee deep in water, mud and decomposing vegetation. The marshy water has slightly sulphury smell due to all the rotting vegetation but its coolness is refreshing in the tropical heat. It was like walking into a Jurassic unknown. After some time we entered the main open area of the bai and there on our right hand side was a camp nestled on the edge of the bai in the forest.

“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself .”~ Viktor E Frankl

The Lango camp overlooks the Lango bai. The main area is an elevated wooden deck with a large viewing area, spacious dining and a very comfortable open air lounge. The building’s superstructure is made of natural materials with the roof made of interwoven local raffia palm fronds.

These areas in the camp need to be open because the rainforest is hot and humid. The elevated deck catches every passing breeze and in the evenings with a gentle sundowner in hand together gazing over this opening in the forest the experience is magical.

The camp has six separate rooms all connected via elevated wooden deck walkways

These walkways were elevated about 15 foot above the forest floor. This gives you an opportunity to see the resident birds and monkeys.

On several occasions I just stopped on my way to my room or back to the lounge area just to listen and take in all the sounds and the sense of being immersed in the canopy.

Several members of the Lango community came out to greet us. These nimble Guereza Colobus monkeys managed their way through the trees with breathtaking ease, stopping to pick edible leaves and ripe fruit. The forest is bountiful for these vegans.

The Guereza Colobus monkeys were as interested in us as we were in them.

My friend Ann contorting herself on the shoe drying rack to get the shot. After a walking session in the bai we took off our shoes and socks and left them to dry of the rack ready for the next walk in the bai.

After lunch we sat for a while chilling on the deck just gazing out over the bai and watching the world go by. This lone female bushbuck was quietly grazing on this side of the the Lango river when something spooked her and she skipped across the river and disappeared into the bushes on the far side.

I took this next image to illustrate the height of the trees in the forest relative to a forest buffalo bull grazing in the bai opening.

A view of Lango camp from the middle of the bai. The camp has been carefully built so as not to protrude into the bai.

Our group walking in the bai. The game paths that we followed were shallow and under foot the sand was firm compacted by years of nature’s traffic. Interestingly, if you ventured off these pathways you stepped into very soft bog like conditions.

The open bai is an swampy forest clearing which provides not only a gathering ground for animals and birds alike but also provides some important nutritional ingredients for animals and birds.

” It is you, inquisitive, in a wild world that is older than man, seeking greater understanding and finding not only an endless interest but a tranquility that comes, most of the time, to all nature?s wild creatures.” ~ Lee Wulff

I was very interested in seeing flocks of grey parrots and green pigeons which are a feature of the Lango bai.

We were not fortunate enough to see these large flocks of grey parrots land in the bai. Nevertheless, it was wonderful to see this flock of around 1000 wild grey parrots doing what they are supposed to do in the wild. I will never be able to look at a pet grey parrot the same way again.

Only once we were parked in the make-shift hide waiting for the grey parrots to land did Daniella start telling us of the plight of the grey parrots in the Congo Basin. Every year, poachers steal tens of thousands of grey parrot fledgings and chicks from their nests in Africa’s rainforests to meet international demand. Even more disturbing is that only a small fraction of those young grey parrots harvested from their nests survive. This practice started aggressively in the 1990s. The population collapsed as a result. The flocks of a thousand or so grey parrots that you can see flying wild in Odzala today is less than a tenth of what was seen 20 to 30 years ago.

While we only got to see the historically small flocks of grey parrots from a distance, our patience in the hide was rewarded and we were privileged to see a large flock of green pigeons. They landed in the bai to feed on the mineral rich soil for nutrients certain times of the year. This behaviour is called geophagy.

Geophagy has been found in a number of bird species, but its adaptive functions remain much debated. Avian species showing geophagy can be broadly divided into those feeding on grit and those feeding on clay.

There are two main hypotheses as to why birds practice geophagy — the intentional consumption of soil. The first is that clay is a natural detox treatment. Fruit eating birds such as parrots and green pigeons regularly eat seeds and unripe fruits containing alkaloids and other toxins which make the seeds and fruits bitter and even lethal. When food is limited and safer plants are in short supply, clay could help birds eat the more toxic plants that remain. Laboratory experiments have shown that clay could bind to toxins, keeping them out of a bird’s bloodstream.

The second hypothesis is that clay contributes vital minerals that a frugivore’s plant-based diet lacks. Parrot and pigeon geophagy is amply evident in moist tropical forests areas where sodium is flushed from the ecosystem, but retained in hard clay. Sodium is needed for nerve function and muscle contraction.

To see this enormous flock of green pigeons is spellbinding. When not breeding, African green pigeons gather in flocks referred to a passel of pigeons.

While the male and female of many bird species look different, both sexes of the African green pigeon wear the same colourful feathers. The juvenile birds are somewhat duller without the lilac carpal patches.

I only really began to understand why bais and wetlands are so important after watching a video by ornithologist Dr Steve Boyes and his research team who went in search of the source and course of the water that flows into Okavango delta to better understand its sustainability. Only then did I realise the vital role these wetland areas play in the ecosystem. They control floods and act as sponges allowing water to flow consistently long after the rain has stopped. They form a crucial component of the flow control and water purification of the hydrological system of water catchment areas.

These bais also provide an opening in the thick rainforest for animals and birds to gather. This gives researchers and tourists a chance to catch a glimpse beyond the ‘green curtain’ into the lives of the forest dwellers. In this regard, the forest elephants have a vital role to play. They create game trails in the waterways, romantically called “elephant boulevards’. These are paths ways created over hundreds of years. The sand under foot is firm, albeit underwater. If you were to step a metre to one side you would probably sink down to your knees or even deeper in bog like conditions.

Along the rivers and in the bai openings you will frequently see Palm-nut vultures. They have distinctive colouring and red facial skin quite unlike an African Fish eagle. They are large vulturine raptors but what makes them unusual for birds of prey is they feed mainly on the fleshy fruit-husks of the oil-palm and on the palm-fruits. These fruits make up over 60% of the adult bird’s diet. The balance of these diet varies from crabs, molluscs, frogs, fish, locusts, small mammals, even reptiles’ eggs and even carrion.

“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.” ~ William Blake

The fresh water is continually draining from the bai via the many rivulets and streams. The water in these streams is crystal clear.

Another first for me was seeing a small herd of forest buffalo which ventured out onto the bai to graze on the grasses in the late afternoon.

The African forest buffalo is the smallest subspecies of the African buffalo. Although related to the Cape buffalo, West African savanna buffalo and Central African savanna buffalo, it is much smaller.

The African forest buffalo is distinguished from the other subspecies by its reddish brown hide that is darker in the facial area. The shape and size of their horns are more like water buffalo that African buffalo and they have glamorous ear tuffs.

“My wealth is not measured in how much time I have to do what I want, rather, how much meaning I’m able to derive from the time I have.”

The forest buffaloes rarely venture from the forest into the open areas but they do so to graze on the grasses and sedges in the bai. They also like to wallow in the waterways.

At the end of our first day at Lango camp we were walking back to the wooden jetty which leads via a wooden walk way back to the camp. We had been watching the forest buffalo herd but we noticed they were progressively wandering in our direction. If these were African buffalo we would have got out of there quickly. Our Odzala guide Daniella and Andrew from Wild Eye suggested we stop at the jetty. The light was fading so we decided to sit waist deep in the water next to the jetty and see what the buffaloes did. The next image was of the matriarch who was very inquisitive. She brought the whole herd up to within 10 metres of us. We were very still and quiet and they seemed not to be able to figure out what we were. At no time did any of the forest buffalo show any aggression towards us. After a short while the buffaloes lost interest in us and wandered passed us upstream. During this encounter in the fading light with hot humid temperatures, it was if time stood still. It was a remarkable experience and one which I will never forget.

The more you get to understand the ecology and dynamics of these bais the more fascinating they become. They are a gathering place, a source of vital nutrients and a crucial hydrological feature of the ecology of the rainforest. Best of all they provide us humans get an opportunity to see the rare and unusual wildlife which is normally hidden in the rainforest.

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimension.” ~ Wendell Holmes

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun, Mike