The Baobab Forest with a few friends

We decided to take a walk to the Baobab forest. The trees are absolutely fascinating. They have huge trunks which store water and are leafless for nine months of the year. As the zebu carts really are quite uncomfortable to ride in and these forests aren't really very far away it seemed a good idea to walk and our plan was to play 'distressed bird' calls and watch the birds come in to defend their distressed but very digital friend.

Baobabs are always very charismatic and it was a nice long walk into the forest until one of my walking sandals broke! Well, it had got me there at least, but then I was a bit stuck. Thankfully a drawstring belt came to my rescue and I was able
to hobble about on the really sharp limestone. There were lots of butterflies, a few
birds (very upset!) and a couple of snakes which were definitely the highlight. Of
course they really aren't that different from the ones that we occasionally see
around site, but it is just great to see them (a large male and a mini female) and even being black and white they are still well camouflaged. They weren't really phased by our presence at all, or the fact that I was trying to get my camera as close into their face as possible (to try and get it into focus.)

However, if this had been a Boa (a 3m long one has been seen in the spiny forest before) I would be reacting in a completely different manner, but little harmless snakes are different. Thankfully there are no venomous ones here.

My previous comment about the Zebu carts being very uncomfortable now had a new significance as with a broken shoe I had to take one back to the village. To be fair these were the healthiest Zebus I have seen since being here, with nice shiny coats and big round bellies. But the ride was still uncomfortable, almost even more so as we were sitting on the edge of the cart and we literally galloped down a rocky
broken path. So much so that Clio (who was with me in the cart) was quite another shade of pale as every now and again she would nearly fall out backwards. It was actually a bit scary, so at the end we tried to sit inside the cart. But then we were afraid that the whole thing might just topple over! However, on the bright side although we were going so fast we thought that we might beat the others back and be able to go for a swim! But they actually walked in a direct path and only took 5 more mins than us even though we were going at full pelt on the windy road.

But hey, it was just another little adventure.