Sainte Luce

So much has happened in the last 10 days I barely know where to start! We headed up to Sainte Luce, where the ACP camp is based. It's where I spent most of my time back in 2002. It has changed a bit, but not much. A new campsite, on the other side of the road to the one I knew.

To get to Ste Luce we took a camion, a sort of truck, which we all piled into the back of with whichever of our possessions didn't fit on the roof. There were quite a few of us, both the ACP crowd and the Pioneer lot. We traveled north, along a bumpy road with the sea just out of sight to our right and the mountains on our left. It took three hours of being bounced about in the heat to get there.

The work started straight away with a visit of the office of the head of Ste Luce, the Chef de Cartier. Sainte Luce is made up of three villages in a row. The campsite is based in the village furthest from the sea called Ambandrika. 10 minutes walk away is Ampanasatombiky. Then a few minutes further along is Manafiafy, right on the coast. Each village has it's own head and then one who is in charge of all three. We had a meeting with the whole group, along with the equivalent of the police chief, a secretary and other representatives. We went over the last few plans for World Environment Day. This will be the third WED to be held in Ste Luce, a celebration of the wildlife of the area and the achievements of the different environmentally aware groups that have been set up within the villages (such as tree planting and street cleaning). The meeting ended with a ceremonialised drink of bonbon Anglaise, which is like cream soda with extra sugar! It gets dark by 6 here at the moment because it is winter, so we headed home and had dinner and I got settled into my tent (which is dinky but I love it). I know I have mentioned how cold it is before and I don't want to repeat myself, but it is really very cold at night! Luckily I have my "cadeau" hat from the nice lady on the frip stall. I am living in it!


Over the weekend we held the kids conservation club, club Atsatsaky (it means gecko). Lots of kids, lots of singing and a lot of chaos over the pencils for the drawing competition. Lots of fun. I also went for a walk with Lisa (ACP coordinator) and Abi (same job as me) to Manafiafy and then back along the beach. The weather wasn't great so we didn't swim, but it was still gorgeous. I seriously love my job!

I wasn't well for a couple of days at the start of the week so didn't manage to do much. I did finally get into the forest, starting with lemur behaviour. We entered the forest just on the other side of the road from the campsite with our guide Solo. It was barely 10 minutes before he spotted a  brown collared lemur. We took data every 5 minutes for the next hour and half. The original lemur was joined by others and soon we were following a group of 7 in the trees above us. Springing from trunk to trunk and leaping across branches.

We also went on a night walk. It was 45 minutes before we got to the transect. The aim was to walk along the transect and spot lemurs and then you can use this data to estimate their density. The lemurs we were looking for were woolly lemurs. The first one we saw, though, was a mouse lemur. These should be in hibernation, but this one was out and about just a couple of feet above the path. There ware also sleeping birds - birds of paradise with long white tails and  a kingfisher with a stubby orange tail and bright blue wings, both with their feathers puffed against the cold. We were looking up in the trees for animals but also down to our feet to watch for things we could trip over and the giant snails (Mum you would NOT like these) which were mostly avoided although a few were less lucky and ended as a faint crunch-squelch. Oops. We spotted a few lemurs. I even managed to spot some myself. Their eyes reflect the light of our torches back as a blazing orange - visible 50 odd metres away. Love it!

My third and final trip to the forest for this visit was in the morning when we went looking for herpetofauna (frogs and reptiles). Six of us walked in a line through a swamp recording everything we found. This is a lot harder than it sounds when there are giant pandanus plants 10 feet across in the way with their sharp, toothed leaves. I found some teeny tiny frogs that could sit on a finger nail. One of the pioneers was determined to find a snake and broke off from the official line. It paid off and after a while he found one. It's great to finally be in a country where the snakes aren't venomous and you can actually handle them.

Enough for now. I'll write the rest of my week tomorrow. The big party for World environment day...