Bilijo Forest Park, Senegambia

Today I went with Marian, David and Brenda to Bijilo, a Senegambian monkey reserve. Again, getting there was fun- David drove us in his refitted (not fitted) army four-wheeler-even jumping in and out of the vehicle was exciting :)). Well, I was just getting ready to meet the monkeys! Brenda works for the American Peace Corps, and acted as our decoy for mosquitoes (really, they love her, and we're not complaining!). David, an Immunology post-doc, also has a background in zoology, so he doubled as a knoweldgable guide. The park receives very few visitors at this time of year- we were the only people there- so there were monkeys in abudance, and they came incredibly close to us- we didn't even feed them. I thought visitors would have the opposite effect, ie: that the animals would come close when they see lots of people every day and therefore get used to us, but David is a regular visitor and had never had such a great view of them. The most stunning sights were a group who were excitedly cartwheeling at our feet, and a baby suckling (see the photo). I hope the former group weren't part of an experiment or something. Someone has been telling me about their studies of the effects of various drugs on ants. We also managed to see some elusive butterflies and birds, and frighten ourselves silly about spiders.














Where's Wally (there are four)?