This place is paradise. I live right on the edge of the savannah. Our camp is like a resort. There are large raised wooden platforms, kibondas, with big tents in them. The view from my tent is spectacular. There are trees just a few 100m from my tent which are frequented by baboons and black and white colobus monkeys. The trail comes from our camp and slopes down into the forest. The forest follows the Mugiri River and the trails cross it back and forth. Savannah lies on the other side. Past that there is a huge escarpment which I will get to climb when the chimps go up it. I have already seen so much. Chimps on the first day, at least 10. Eagles, vultures, geckos everywhere, skinks, butterflies, a jenet. Buffalo and elephant are all around but I havet seen any yet. A leopard sleeps under one of the kibondas in the wet season. Lions and chimps are heard at night. The bugs are not too bad here.

The camp is really over crowded because construction is going on so we have carpenters and grass cutters here. Rene has a friend here too, Sam. They are both from California and I get along with them really well. They are the outdoors type. Tomorrow we are going to climb to Kijura which is apparently a difficult climb but the sunrise in the morning is breathtaking. We will camp out there and follow chimps from there in the morning. I am learnig alot already about tracking the chimps. What they eat, where it is, prints, calls, etc. One of my main tasks will be to identify and catalog all males in the reserve since they are just to the point now when multiple hours of observations can be done in one day. There may be up to 30 in this reserve which is the largest in any site. Identifying that alone could be a research paper. 16 have been id'ed already.

I am trying to get proper authorization through IU to make a suvrey to take of local people's view of the wildlife, park, and how it is run. Sam and I are going to work on it together and see where that leads.

We came to Fort Portal today for food and supplies. The open market is incredible. Crowded, vibrant. Pineapples here are the best ive ever had. They slice them and have them out to snack on for about 5cents. Women are lined up for at least 2 blocks on the ground with their food.

The men in camp are great. Most of them work really hard. They are all friendly. All of them speak swahili. I would like to get to the point where I speak mostly that with them, we will see. They are all willing. No pictures uploaded yet. Connection here is like dial-up and really slow. Some great photos that Rene took will be put on a flickr site so I will let you know when that is made, but I will give a few hopefully next time. I love it here. Hope all of you are ok.