Stay at Moka Coming to a Close

I've been having a blast at Moka for the past couple of weeks. ^^This is an erythrotis; 96% of the primates I've seen here are these guys (it's very difficult to take pictures of monkeys by the way). For my project I censused 5 different trails about 3 times. One of those trails is called the cascades, and it was absolutely gorgeous! More pictures are to come. But yeah my project has turned out to be slightly depressing as the diversity of primates around Moka has decreased a lot in recent years. Also my guide and I were censusing this one trail, San Joaquin, and about 3/5 of the way through I hear this really loud construction noise. We had to stop census, but we walked to the end of the trail. They had cut down about 1/5 of the trail and were in the process of building a road through it! Also on another day we ran into a hunter mid census. And when we get back to Malabo we are going to the bushmeat market. So yeah, not looking forward to going back. Classes start on Wednesday. Yet again, I would rather not leave.

The Moka wildlife center is mostly for visitors. We sleep outside in tents and listen to tree hyrax's calling all night. There are trails that branch off from the center and up the road a bit. The town near by is really tiny, consisting of one store, one bar, and one church. The houses are all little shacks with tin roofs and dirt floors.

Besides primates I have seen a ton of awesome birds, frogs, duikers, and butterflies. For a couple of nights I went out bushbaby and chameleon hunting with the 2 kids doing those projects. My heart lies with the monkeys and I don't feel content, like I saw enough. Supposedly we will be going on "field trips" when we get back to Malabo, so hopefully we can come back. They are turning the generator off so I will talk to you all soon.