Saturday March 14th, we left for Brownsberg in the early morning with our mentor and his assistants. The familiar climb up the mountain with the bus seemed less frightening already. Up on the mountain, we unloaded the trunk, and prepared lunch. All that was left for the day was checking plots and transects, already made by the group. The day after, we walked two transects in the evening with the assistants, Rawien and Usha. These kind people, have been studying species and environmental climate change respectively for many years, and are very knowledgeable and eager to share experiences.
The morning after we repeated the same transects, as the night-active and day-active frogs/toads differ in presence. This we repeated for other transects on the Monday night and Tuesday morning, and the Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. During noon though, we were free to go visit waterfalls and creeks found on the mountain. Dick went together with Dimitri (our mentor's son, who's studying the area as well) to the Witti kreek, translated to white creek, which is a long walk through a terrain with various altitudes. They were told that on this track the gold miners, which are very abundant around the Brownsberg, burned an area of forest to the ground to make it less attractive to visitors. They discovered halfway the mountain that this area was way bigger than they expected. However with the heavy rainfall and the incredible view on the Brokopondo lake gave this place a quite an extraordinary atmosphere. After having a swim in the creek with all their clothes still on, since they were drenched already from the rainfall that day. They came back to the camp quite a while after sunset and where able to join the last evening transect. Unfortunately, we were heading back to Paramaribo around noon on Wednesday, so we said our goodbyes to Rawien, Usha, and Dimitri.
The morning after we repeated the same transects, as the night-active and day-active frogs/toads differ in presence. This we repeated for other transects on the Monday night and Tuesday morning, and the Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. During noon though, we were free to go visit waterfalls and creeks found on the mountain. Dick went together with Dimitri (our mentor's son, who's studying the area as well) to the Witti kreek, translated to white creek, which is a long walk through a terrain with various altitudes. They were told that on this track the gold miners, which are very abundant around the Brownsberg, burned an area of forest to the ground to make it less attractive to visitors. They discovered halfway the mountain that this area was way bigger than they expected. However with the heavy rainfall and the incredible view on the Brokopondo lake gave this place a quite an extraordinary atmosphere. After having a swim in the creek with all their clothes still on, since they were drenched already from the rainfall that day. They came back to the camp quite a while after sunset and where able to join the last evening transect. Unfortunately, we were heading back to Paramaribo around noon on Wednesday, so we said our goodbyes to Rawien, Usha, and Dimitri.