Short stint in the crows' nest this morning, from where I saw lots of monkeys in the trees. Two huge bull baboons crossed the road in front of us, prominent white stripes on their faces. And then we were in pygmy country and started seeing people with slightly disproportionately larger heads and torsos with shorter limbs. (Africa's populations of pygmies, people with endemic short stature rather than isolated cases of dwarfism, are centred on Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Gabon. They are traditionally forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers.)
We stopped at a roadside village whose residents wanted money from us to photograph them so we just wandered through the tiny collection of domed palm-frond huts, all very low and some connecting with the one next door. Within we saw low-lying beds of sticks bound with grass that looked rickety but then they have to support much less weight than us heavyweight tourists. Warm ashes still smoked inside some huts and must be smoke traps. The headman showed us some pipes used for smoking pot: lengths of bamboo open at both ends with a bowl near the top.
We arrived at Station de Capture d’Epulu to find Encounter Overland camped there and their passengers up with the pygmies, so we delayed our visit until tomorrow and embarked on a welcome day of rest. We visited the famous okapi, a lone brown, black and white animal in a compound. Endemic to Zaire/DRC, this "forest giraffe" looks like it was designed by committee. (Established as a "capture" station for exporting the exotic animals to overseas zoos, it remained a capture station until a rebel attack in 2012 killed several staff and all the captured animals. It then focussed on preserving the wild okapis and is now part of the World Heritage listed but troubled Okapi Wildlife Reserve, Okapis are listed as endangered.)
We shopped in the amazing metropolis of Epulu, buying seven small loaves of bread and ordering fifty more for 3pm.
In the afternoon we lounged in the river just below foaming rapids, lolling in pools and drying our clothes on the rocks. Didn’t want to get out and Bob and I felt like telling everyone to get their own dinner. So wonderful to totally relax in privacy and companionship rather than the in the rowdiness of the Hotel Olympia Bar. Dragged ourselves out to walk into town and collect our fresh bread. Ate one each on our walk back to camp, a beautiful spot surrounded by greenery and with the constant background music of crashing and churning rapids.
Sat back at Beach de Bobbles to write but didn’t get much writing done. Watched storm clouds roll across the sky and lay back on still-warm riverside rocks and dozed while Bob pottered among the stones and pools. Sad that this is our last cooking detail together, because his lady is joining us soon. Cooked our last dinner of stew and banana cake and ate on a crowded truck peering out at the deluge, with everyone making optimistic comments about the rain easing.
We took a post-dinner vote on whether we take up the option to stay overnight with the pygmies tomorrow although we don't know much about what that would entail. Needed a casting vote from Geoff but he had disappeared to the local disco and we weren't expecting much sense from him. He fulfilled those expectations when he returned drunk and stoned, and voted no. Who knows what decisions tomorrow will bring?
Just about to head off for a wash when Ben returned from the river with a pot full of frogs' legs. We browned them with garlic and red wine to a chorus of drooling and enjoyed a delicious late feast to a crescendo of bullfrog croaks from the river.
The endangered okapi looks like it was designed by committee.
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