Oh! You pretty things.

Wearily she opened her eyes and peered across the tiny room. Even the dim light of the single, smoky, kerosene lamp could neither hide nor romanticise the squalor. Dirty walls struggled to hold the low bare ceiling up, as the rain ricocheted off the rusty corrugated iron roof. The floor was about 70% covered by torn, darkly-patterned linoleum, and the single window had neither curtains nor glass, just some corroded iron bars. At least the receptionist hadn’t asked questions. Two US dollars for the room, and a guest list to sign (name, passport number and so on) but it didn’t matter how many boxes she left blank or made up. She realised that sooner or later she must again make the short but long walk, under fog and thunderstorms, across the muddy yard to the stinking communal squat toilet – communal with any other paying guests as well as with the crawling things that she couldn’t name. How long could she live – exist – like this? Was it any better than the prison she sought to avoid?

Alright, I suppose we’re unlikely to be locked up for the crime of me taking occasional turns to drive while we await my licence, especially as our car has the almost unique combination of seat belts, brakes and 4 good tyres. But the above is a faithful description of the double room we shared last weekend at the edge of the rather beautiful Rondo Forest Reserve. To be fair, it had looked for an hour or so like we would have to sleep in the back of the Suzuki, so we were grateful to find anything, and we slept pretty well on the tatty sheets. Besides, the thrill of the place was the scenery not the comfort. About 40km sq of almost-pristine, closed canopy montane forest (the Brit’s in their wisdom, ordered sections of it cut down and replaced with a commercial teak plantation, but this has since reverted more or less back to natural growth) is only about 3 hours by 4x4 from our house. It was an adventure of a journey (quite literally a “Safari”) in itself; the unmade roads changed from loose rock to rutted stream bed to sand with little warning, and even many of the flat sections would have been impassable to any other car we’ve owned. When we stopped the car for longer than the few seconds it takes to shift into the low-ratio gear box, various locals would trot out of thin air and beg us to move them and their child/sister/box of chipped crockery to the next village, anything from 1-15km away. I think we helped about 5 of them in total, but when all your concentration is focussed on reacting to the next pot-hole, drop-off, rock or ford (and I mean this without any hint of racism) the guys in the back seat all blur into one.

We went on two long-ish walks through the forest tracks. The first day a local guy who was an uncanny likeness of a short, un-tattooed Mike Tyson, and seemed to be the village elder/forest warden, spent about 3 hours showing us where to drive in, park and walk. He was a lovely bloke, knew a bit about the forest wildlife and spoke decent English, and genuinely seemed to be pleased and surprised to receive a couple of quid after giving us an afternoon of his time and knowledge. I guess we were a little disappointed not to see more of the big famous animals which are known to frequent the forest, such as leopard, lion, elephant, various antelope etc. But we did see tracks of at least one carnivore, I suspect a rattel, as well as all sorts of small pretty stuff: colourful birds, butterflies, bombardier beetles and chameleons. We don’t yet have our “Spotter’s guide” books, but there are about 11 butterflies and 4-5 chameleon species that haven’t been seen anywhere else on earth except in this forest! For me it was just relaxing to walk in the shade of the varied and venerable trees, listening to things calling. I think if we go back, we’ll take a tent and maybe we’ll see more by keeping still and letting stuff come to us.