Jour 9: on the way to Ikongo mount

At the crack of dawn the carriers join us.
Dishes, tents, water, food, you should forget nothing because we leave for 4 days of hike in the forest.

 

Walkers' column is on the way

 

 

The first kilometers are made by following rice fields and a small river where we discover the first orchids in some trees and shrubs.

Angraecum conchoglossum and Aeranthes antennophora

 

 

 

Then little by little we penetrate in the forest, the real, that where to progress becomes really difficult because path disappear in the thick végétation.

 

We cross numerous rivers which we have to every time cross by removing our shoes, and protecting our bags

It we slowed down enormously but we have no other choice!!

 

Sometimes the vegetation is so thick that our guide has to cut a path with his machete.
Nevertheless we find time to discover some new orchids...sometimes easy to see, sometimes not...

   Aeranthes nidus

 

Aerangis citrata et Microcoelia gilpinae

 

After about ten hours of walking, we arrive at a small opened up zone, in the center of which thrones a unique small house.
Here live a Young couple, just married, who lived their village to find a place to live in the forest.

 

It is completly illegal, but it is always the same.
They start to cut some trees, to plant corn, banana trees, tomatoes, they build a rice field, cut more trees to have more place. Some years later some other persons come and finally the forest completly disapear of this area...
 

 

 

As every night we go to sleep in our tent under thunderstorms, but this time the ground is sloping, what is going to complicate enormously our sleep...

When the morning come, there is water in our tent, our sleeping bags are wet and our legs are painful ... the day is going to be hard...