Birds, warthogs, and other wildlife of Senegal and The Gambia

Senegal and The Gambia may not be known for big animals, but they are famous for bird-watching! The Dairhills are not serious bird-watchers, but we love going out with a guide who knows their birds and seeing some cool specimens. We did four bird-watching outings in the two countries, and were not disappointed.

But first, a lizard. You may remember Andy's lizard obsession from South America. He was excited to find this guy in St. Louis, northern Senegal, but the lizards only got bigger and better as we went further south.
Our first major birding outing was to the Parc National des Oiseaux de Djouj, about 70 kilometers from St. Louis. We organized a half-day trip through the St. Louis tourist office and got a great English-speaking guide named Ben.

The Parc is the third-largest bird reserve in the world--it's mostly wetland-ish, and you tour it by boat. Mostly you're there to see large numbers of migratory birds, rather than anything very exotic.

For example, we saw trees full of cormorants...whose poop apparently kills the trees!

The most spectacular sight was thousands upon thousands of pelicans all around us--in the water, in the air. Andy got this great shot, you can really see their colorful bills...
...and also this awesome action shot of pelicans in different stages of landing on the water.
The park also hosts some fun non-bird wildlife. This large monitor lizard was out for a swim...
...and this croc was actually really small, but he looks ferocious in the super-zoom!
Best of all, we saw our first warthogs of Africa!
Check out this mama and her four babies--they were hanging around right by the boat landing. Andy might have made me sing "If I was a young warthogggg" from The Lion King when we spotted these guys...
OK, on to The Gambia! The birding there was really fantastic--if you ever go, we can put you in touch with a couple of really good guides. While staying on the coast, we did a half-day trip to the Abuko Nature Reserve, a small park with tons of birds and monkeys, with a guide named Fatou Colley, who is the only female birding guide in the area as far as we know.

Our first sight in the reserve was a giant termite mound. We've seen even fancier ones since, that look like castles.
We're working from memory here, so we may get some names wrong, but we think this guy is a pied kingfisher. We saw many fun kingfishers up and down the country...

Like this malachite kingfisher, also at Abuko. It took many, many shots for Andy to get this guy in focus.
Abuko also had abundant monkeys--the first we've seen in the wild in Africa! Here is the patas monkey, which was all over the park.
The slightly rarer, but still pretty common red colobus monkey.
OK, this guy was in the little zoo within the park, not in the wild. I realized I'd never seen a hyena in person before--apparently they are very hard to keep at zoos so we don't really have them in America. I think I'd only ever seen one animated in, you guessed it, The Lion King.
Near the hyena cage were some (wild) vultures, snacking on something dead.

If you think I remember this pretty bird is called, you are wrong. Sigh.
One of the last birds we saw at Abuko was this black-backed night heron, which is very rare for the area. Check out its huge eye! You can tell when your guide is a real bird-nerd when you see how excited they get to spot stuff like this...
Some lizards of Abuko:

Our next stop, a couple of hundred kilometers up the Gambia River, was Tendaba, a small village with a tourist camp (with pool!) and boat trips to nearby nature reserves. Unfortunately, the (extremely battered) public minibus dropped us 5 dusty kilometers away from the town. The walk was long and hot, but we did see these cool trees with fruits like big fuzzy Christmas ornaments along the way.
While we stayed at Tendaba camp, we found the staff there less than helpful in arranging trips to see birds and wildlife, so we ended up going out in a boat with the competing "Eco-Tourism Camp" down the road. There is really nothing eco about that camp, but our guide Faye definitely seemed more knowledgeable than the guide at Tendaba.

Anyway, that evening we set out in a pirogue (motorized canoe) on the Gambia River for Kiang West National Park. This is the one picture in this post that I took (from the dock before we left), and I am darn proud of it.
We saw a few fun birds at the national park, but the light wasn't great so we have no pictures. The next morning, however, we did a very nice pirogue tour of the nearby Baobalong Wetlands, where we saw many herons, egrets, kingfishers, and some more exotic birds.

Here is a nice heron, not sure what kind.
And here is a nice baobab tree. They are very big, and often the only type of tree you'll see in the dry climates here. I had to read a book in French called "Le Baobab Fou" (The Crazy Baobab) in college, so I've always wanted to see one in person. Funnily enough, they are not leafy right now, but a lot of them still have fruit. (Bouye, the juice made from the fruit of the baobab, is delicious, by the way.)
OK, our last birdwatching tour was done on the island of Georgetown, also known as Janjangbureh, even further up the Gambia river. With the river nearby and forest and scrubland on the island, it is known as one of the top bird-watching spots in The Gambia.

Rather than pay for an expensive boat tour, we asked around town to find a bird guide who would do a walk with us. Several people offered to guide us, but we were looking for someone "professional"--i.e., someone who at least had their own binoculars and a bird book. We finally lucked out and found Solomon, a local artist who also has a tourist camp (Solowin Camp) with his German-born wife, who offered to take us on a tour for $3 US an hour. The tour was excellent--we paid double, and we told him he really needs to raise his rates for the future!

Anyway, my favorite bird that we saw in The Gambia was this guy, the Abyssinian Roller. We saw him first at Kiang West, but finally got a picture in Georgetown.
We saw lots of cool birds in Georgetown, but the most awesome was probably this red bearded barbet. Sorry we didn't have time to edit photos so you could see it more clearly, but this guy has bristles underneath his bill that look like a beard. Crazy!

In short, if you love watching birds, you should definitely visit The Gambia. (And let us know when we're going, because we got stuck with a whole bunch of Gambian money at the border and can't find anywhere to trade it now, so we will swap it to you at a good rate!)

A little bit of everything: El Salvador

El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, but we were surprised at what an excellent variety of experiences it had to offer. It's got beaches, volcanoes, Mayan ruins, cute villages and modern city life, and unique, delicious food...basically, everything else you find in other Central American countries condensed into one small area, and I am surprised that tourists have not really caught on to this yet! We were there for three days, but I think that we could easily have stayed a week or longer and not run out of new places to visit...and I can't say that for everywhere. (Also, El Salvador--like Panama and Ecuador--is on the US dollar, making dealing with money incredibly easy.)

Because the country is small, we based ourselves in the capital of San Salvador and took day trips to places of interest. San Salvador has more malls than we have ever seen in one city before, and the one we stayed near was Metrocentro, which is the largest mall in Central America. What's kind of amusing is that after wandering through it for a while you feel like you are seeing the same 10 stores over and over again: Metrocentro must have at least four Mr. Donuts, for example, but that's OK because we love Mister Donut (see Andy's forthcoming food post for more details).

Anyway, our hostel owners also have a beach house, and on our first full day in town, the husband happened to be driving out there to do some maintenance. He took us along and we got to relax on a lovely, nearly deserted beach in the far western part of the country. The Pacific ate my goggles, but otherwise it was a very pleasant outing.

There was even wildlife to spot near the beach. Like these colorful blue-tailed lizards...
...and a whole slew of turkey vultures on fenceposts! Andy got this great close-up of one.

That night, we went to (where else?) the mall! Which had a cinema, and it just so happened to be half-price Wednesday, so we saw that worldwide blockbuster, "New Moon," for $2 apiece. We both agreed that "Twilight" (which we saw on a tour bus in Peru) was better.

On our second day in the country, Andy and I mastered the city and regional bus systems to get ourselves out to our next destination. All ex-American school buses, by the way. Smoking is banned on these buses (yay!)...but apparently so is ice cream (boo).

Our destination was the Mayan ruins of Joya de Ceren, aka the "Pompei of El Salvador." These ruins, preserved by a volcanic eruption in the 600s AD, are the only surviving example of everyday Mayan dwellings (rather than the great temples and public buildings you find elsewhere). Also, they are the southernmost Mayan ruins, marking the far reach of the Mayan empire.

Here you can see an average Mayan's dormitory--the raised platforms on the left were beds. Each family dwelling consisted of three structures: a dormitory, a kitchen, and a "bodega" (which apparently does not mean little shop, but cellar, or storage area).
And here is the back of the shaman's temple. The shaman had a living space and a working space with lots of nooks for his potions and such.

Joya de Ceren is a small site, and it only took us about half an hour to see. So we hopped back on the bus and were back in San Salvador by lunchtime. Easy!

We took this opportunity to visit the old city center, which is a loud, crowded place filled with street stalls and bus fumes. Much of the old architecture has been destroyed by successive earthquakes, but the churches are still nice to look at. I think that this one is the Sacred Heart of Jesus church, probably the fanciest one downtown.
A tree up in the main plaza of San Salvador. The season is definitely getting underway down here...we heard a lot of Christmas songs (in Spanish, of course) playing over the sound system at (where else?) the mall.

That afternoon, after much hunting for the correct city bus, we visited a park high above the city where the "Puerta del Diablo" (Devil's Door) offers great, if slightly smog-hindered, views of a good chunk of the country.
And that night, we visited another neighborhood high above the city to eat amazing pupusas with our Salvadorean hero, Ronald, the cousin of our New York friend Julia, who had never met us before but nevertheless picked us up at our hostel to take us to a traditional dinner and city tour--how awesome is that!

Anyway, at Pupuseria Abbi, the diners next to us were serenaded by a full-on mariachi band. Apparently, many such bands rove the restaurants at night to play to paying customers. It was the first time we had seen this in our travels, reminding us of how we creep ever closer to Mexico.

Our final day in El Salvador was spent mostly in Suchitoto, a village known for its colonial architecture and proximity to a beautiful lake and waterfalls.

The town itself was a little sleepier than we'd expected, but it did have a nice main square and church.
We hiked out to the Los Tercios waterfall, which falls over these crazy geometric rocks. The waterfall was not the biggest waterfall ever, but fun to see nevertheless.

And right near the waterfall was an incredible mirador looking out over the lake. One of the more beautiful and peaceful vistas I have seen on our whole trip.
In closing, if you have a week or 10 days or so and are thinking of taking a Central American vacation, I highly recommend El Salvador. There's plenty to see, it's not too expensive, the people are very friendly, the food is amazing, and you don't have to shlep around a lot on long bus rides. Put it on your itinerary!

Take Me Down to the Panama City...

(where the jungle is green and the Canal is pretty...oh won't you please take me ho-ome...yeah, yeah!)

The home stretch of the first leg of our travels has begun--hard to believe it, but we fly back to the US less than one month from now. Meanwhile, we are on a new continent, technically, and in a new country, Panama! There was a lot to see and do here in our first few days, which were based in the capital, Panama City, and the nearby Canal Zone.

Our first impression of the city, seen from afar at night as we came in from the airport in our $28 taxi ($8 more, I would like to note, than we then spent on a hotel room!), was that it was super-glitzy. The skyline, which you see below, is thick with skyscrapers and was all lit up, as was the waterfront we drove along. We passed American chains like Bennigans and Hard Rock. I imagine that if you stayed in one of the "better" hotels in the business district, you might never have this impression of the city challenged.

Of course, we were not staying in one of the better hotels! Our $20 a night got us a room with low lighting, a rubber-encased mattress, and a couple of not-very-family-friendly TV channels.
(The establishment managed to be classy enough not to post by-the-hour rates in the lobby, however!)

What was nice about the low-rent hotel district is that it was much closer to Casco Viejo, the old section of Panama City, than the nicer hotels are. The old town is a mix of beautifully restored colonial buildings and crumbling ones. Here is a shot of the cathedral, on the main square in that area.For some reason, this huge toucan was being delivered to the cathedral.Las Bovedas were originally prison cells built right along the waterfront in the old town; at high tide, prisoners were submerged up to their necks. Now it has been converted to art galleries and a fancy restaurant.
The presidential palace in the old city, still decked out for Panamanian Independence Day, which was November 3. It was originally built in the 1670s and spruced up in the 1920s. The buildings immediately surrounding the palace are beautiful, but a couple of blocks away things start to get a bit dingy again.
Flags were still flying everywhere for Independence Day. This one had a giant moth on it.
Not far from the presidential palace is the fish market, which has lots of guys like this one hanging around.
Another nice church in Panana City, this one closer to the business district. See those clouds? It's still rainy season, as we learned very quickly.
Our greatest frustration with Panama City was finding places. There is no home mail delivery in Panama, so no buildings bother having numbered addresses. When you are getting directions somewhere, it's all by landmarks, so people tell you things like "it's right next to the El Rey supermarket," instead of giving you a number or even an intersection, since there are hardly any street signs, either. So if you don't know where the supermarket is, you're up a creek. Finding stuff in the city usually took us about twice as long as it might have elsewhere.

On our second day in Panama, we took the train across the isthmus to Colon, the port city on the Atlantic side. The whole trip, ocean to ocean, took only an hour. The train costs 10 times more than the bus between the two cities, but has the advantage of running right next to the canal, so we were able to see quite a lot of it (note the panoramic windows). We compromised by taking the bus back.
Look, it's the Panama Canal! (Cooler pictures later.)
Later in the journey, when there was water on both sides of the train. Lake Gatun, the huge artificial lake that was created in the construction of the canal, reached far on both sides of us.

10 kilometers from Colon are the Gatun Locks, which raise and lower ships three levels between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Gatun. (There are two sets of locks to do the same thing on the Pacific side, Miraflores and Pedro Miguel.) We took a taxi from Colon to visit these locks and watch ships pass through, which was really cool. As a bonus, our taxi driver worked for many years in different jobs at the canal, and knew everyone on duty at the locks and explained to us how all sorts of stuff worked!

Here you can see how the wheels work to open the massive gates of the locks.
A set of gates at Gatun locks, closed. Note how much higher the water is on the left side of the gate than the right.

Here you can see the water roiling as this compartment to the right of the gate is filled. In just about five minutes, the water on both sides of the gate was at the same level...

...and the gates began to open!

Check out the two huge ships that we watched pass through the locks. Both were definitely "Panamax" ships, which means they were built specifically to be the biggest possible ships that can fit through the Panama Canal. I really don't think they had more than about a foot of leeway on either side as they came through the locks! Note the barge in front of the ship on the left that helps guide it through, and the railroad cars on either side of both ships that do the same.

Squeeeeeeze! This ship was from Russia, the other one from Hong Kong. We learned that it costs your average cruise ship about $250,000 to pass through the canal (tolls are charged by weight). Our taxi driver took this photo of us outside of Gatun Locks, with the first American train to help push a boat through the canal. A terrific book to read all about the history of the canal (from the first, doomed French attempts to build one in the 1880s to the ultimate American project and all of its attendant political intrigues) is "Panama Fever" by Matthew Parker. We were lucky enough to swap our friend Maribel for this book in Chile and both really enjoyed it--we felt like canal experts by the time we got to Panama!
Back in Panama City, we came across some important signs. We think that this one translates to "Don't pee on grandma."
This one needs no translation. Kosher deli in Panama!?!? Sadly, I think it must be coming soon, because we couldn't actually find this place in the mall where we found the sign. Ah, thwarted in our attempts to Jew it up in Panama...

OK, so, the other cool thing we did in Colon (aside from visiting Gatun Locks) was visit the Zona Libre, which is the second-biggest tax-free shopping zone in the world. We are usually not big on shopping, but we made one very important purchase there...a new camera!! Yes, we finally replaced the one that was stolen in Bolivia. We got the same camera, but the newer model, which has some cool new features like face-recognition technology (so it now knows to tag me or Andy automatically whenever we show up in a picture).

We got the new camera just in time, too, because we really put the super-zoom to use the following day, when we went birding along Pipeline Road in Soberania National Park! The park is about halfway between Panama City and Colon and is supposed to be pretty much the best place in Central America to go birding, with over 400 species recorded there. It was a little hard to arrange a trip there, and not cheap, but we had wanted to go birding for a while and figured that this was the place to do it.

Our excellent guide was Jose from Birding Panama, who picked us up at 6 AM with his scope and superstrong binoculars in tow. He was so into the birds, it was really fun to be along with him. Definitely one of the best tour guides we've had in all our travels yet.

Here are just a few of the many beautiful birds and specimens of wildlife we saw. (And Sabrina, please forgive me if I butcher some of the names--Jose made a list for us, which I conveniently left at the hotel tonight!)

A mot mot, which is related to the quetzal. Both birds have wonderful colors and long tails.A giant dragonfly is perched on the leaf in the center of this picture.
A trogon, we think, with a lovely yellow belly. Crap, we don't remember what this bird is called, but he posed nicely for us on top of this wild ginger plant.
One of three or four types of woodpeckers we saw. Based on the color, I am guessing this one was the cinnamon woodpecker.
The social flycatcher.

Iguana! This agouti was such a cutie, nibbling on some fruit fallen from a bird feeder in a yard in Gamboa, near the park.
This parakeet had so many beautiful colors on it.
Rats, we can't remember what this one was called either. But look at that amazing patterned tail!
Some of my favorite birds that we didn't get a picture of were the red-capped manakin and the red-legged honeycreeper. Google-image those two if you'd like to see some more lovely birds.

A final shot with the new cam: sunset over Panama City.

Like many places we've been, Panama City was a real mix of rich and poor, glitzy and grimy. But we really enjoyed the old city, the cheap street eats (50-cent ice cream cones and 75-cent fruit smoothies, hurrah!) and Dairy Queens (8 branches in Panama City!), which we'll cover in a future food post, and the convenience for cool day trips, like visiting the Canal, shopping at Colon, and birdwatching.