17FEB2007 “Arobuko Sokoke P2 – Close Encounters”

The next morning we were drenched in dew. We got up before the sun to go back to the park headquarters and meet our guide for a morning walk. I quickly broke camp while Patrick made some coffee, slightly more challenging with only one headlamp between the two of us. We set off on the same road by which we had arrived the night before. Less than a half a kilometer away, we stopped in front of a large tree down across the road. We got out of the car, circled the tree, circled the car, scratched our heads and then heard an elephant crashing through the trees just to our right. The elephant dung next to the tree was still steaming. Patrick immediately started in the direction of the noise and I immediately shouted at him to move back towards the car. We conferred for a few minutes about whether to go on foot (and give up any hope of seeing an elusive elephant shrew during our pre-dawn walk), try to move the tree out of the road (impossible) or drive over/under the tree (clearly our only option). I took the wheel and Patrick grabbed the biggest branch and bent it back away from the car with all his might. I squeezed the car between the tree and a large rock on the shoulder of the road, as the branches made contact with the side of the car and made a horrible screeching sound. We made it around the tree feeling very proud of ourselves and both relieved and disappointed that the elephant didn’t reappear.

We thought we were home free, but just a few hundred meters later, an even larger tree blocked the road, this time with no room to squeeze by on either side. We spent a bit more time going over the options (see above), the pros and cons (stuck here versus a toss-up between not stuck and stuck worse somewhere under or over a tree). We (stupidly in hindsight) opted for the gamble. This time, we ignored the elephant trumpeting a few meters away and Patrick positioned himself under the tree. When he gave the signal, he heaved the tree as high as he could (about 18 inches!) and I gunned the car. The bottom branches of the tree just cleared the hood and our trusty Subaru wagon muscled its way under the tree like a wedge. The tree protested by gouging and scraping at us. The prolonged “SCREEEEEEEEEECCHHHHH” made all my metal fillings tingle. But we made it (thank goodness for the dew covered car & branches!). Overall, it took us over an hour to go less than 5 km. We were late for our walk.

The sun was well up after we had re-paid our entry fees (once for the previous day and once for the current day- but that’s another story!) and started our guided walk back into the forest. There were dozens of different kinds of butterflies swirling everywhere. There were at least as many different birds, but I could hear them more often than I could see them. (Apologies to anyone who loves bird watching. We can take you to the forest but I would be hard-pressed at the moment to remember a single name that our guide told us!) We saw hundreds of buffalo spiders who had webs just about at Patrick’s eye level. He narrowly missed having one of those crawling on his face. They are harmless, but still… In the dense forest, we heard some rustling and Patrick caught a glimpse of the golden rump of the elephant shrew of the same name. But alas, I did not see it. It was almost made up for by a sighting (too close!) of a puff adder. He was a baby, but the guide was still a bit aghast that Patrick wanted to take a picture.

After our walk, we went to the other side of the little town of Gede to visit the Kipipeo butterfly project. Local villagers are allowed to catch butterflies in the forest. They then raise the butterflies until they lay eggs, feed the caterpillars and sell the chrysalises to the butterfly project. The project, in turn, sells them to collectors in Europe at a mark-up. So far, they have generated 8 million Kenyan shillings for the local community, they sponsor a school and best of all give the local people an incentive to protect the forest. However, the butterfly farm garden and visitor center was very, very sad. It was like the old-home for butterflies. There were about 10 butterflies in the indoor garden and they were all missing bits of wing and flying in circles because they couldn’t navigate. There were hundreds of chrysalises glued to sticks and carefully hung in cages. It seems like keeping a few of the hatchlings for an interesting visitor display would have been logical. (By the way, I had no idea that butterfly chrysalises were as beautiful as the butterflies. Some were bright green and the tips looked like they had been decorated with gold leaf. Others had the most exquisite fingerprint-like swirls on them).
We also learned that they have recently started a similar project with exotic preying mantises. They raise them in little netted cages. They are the most extraordinary looking things you have ever seen- something in between an alien and a leaf. They have a voracious appetite for butterflies, thus explaining the paucity of butterflies in the visitors’ garden!