My kind of hike!

Today I got to visit the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary and went on a hike with some new friends and a guide. It was definitely my kind of hike and I’m looking forward to exploring other trails. The sanctuary is located within the Western Area Peninsula National Park and is really just outside Freetown. It is an oasis of wildland increasingly surrounded by deforestation and rampant development. The guide was a former soldier turned environmental advocate and ambassador. The sanctuary cares for orphaned chimpanzees that cannot be returned to the wild but also has a more diverse conservation mission. Hunting or capturing chimpanzees is now illegal in Sierra Leone but the park rangers have to patrol to prevent illegal logging and hunting. The sanctuary conducts community education to promote conservation and discourage illegal logging and hunting of bushmeat.

Here are some photos from the hike.

This is the gbongbo tree above and it’s very cool seeds (the phone is in the picture for scale). I am thinking they’d make nice earring and necklace! The guide said they have to protect these trees from illegal loggers because they are prized for making boats.

Here is a termite mound with a tree growing out of it and some burrows of some type of large rat like creature – not sure what. The second picture shows where chimpanzees dug into the mound to find termites to eat and the their picture shows the guide demonstrating where the end of the tail of the python was that he found with its head in the mound trying to catch a rat to eat.

Here is another termite mound. This one is under a tree that I think is a locust. The second picture is the guide climbing the tree to pick the seed pods and last is what the inside of the pod looks like. We ate the inside of the pod. Really you just eat the yellow part and spit out the seeds. It’s slightly sweet. Note Phillip’s African print pants – pretty cool. Can’t wait to get some clothes made out of the gara cloth I bought.

This mushroom looks like the cross section of a tree.

Some flowers – it’s the end of the dry season so many plants are dried out.

A man-made lake with little water given the time of year – it is full and overflowing during the rainy season. Check out my awesome picture of a vulture flying over.

These are hard to see but they’re beehives. They are supposed to contain medicinal honey and these bees don’t sting.

Old chimpanzee nests in a tree.

You can see in this view what is happening to land outside the park – completely deforested.

Here are some things I collected on the hike – so many fascinating fruits and seed pods.

Protecting the environment is luxury that many people here cannot afford. Unfortunately, those that can afford it are some of the most destructive. The small conservation efforts like the sanctuary and park are well worth supporting. They assure that at least a limited area on the rapidly developing peninsula is preserved.