David Ngala

Category: Forest surveys | Date: Nov 15 2008 | By: davidngala

Final day at the forest!

After the long day and the near encounter with an elephant, the crew may have just need this trip to mida creek. Mida creek is a small creek (ok not small but big creek in my opinion), it is a great place where birds feed, migrant birds can also be found here and they come here to feed as well, the place is spectacular, if you are a keen birder and love to see all types of birds, then I suggest a trip to mida would do just fine.

at mida creek.

peter confirming the bird he saw.

Peter takes a closer look - at the mud flat

So they headed to mida creek and we drove to the entrance towards the board walk and bird hide. This board walk is really something, built by A Rocha Kenya for their ASSETs programme ( for more information on this vist the A Rocha blog or ASSETS blog or www.arocha.org) the place is built on suspended board that are held together by long strong ropes, the broad walk suspended above the mangrove roots. Its really cool, at first walking on the board may seem like you are walking on air, however there are two ropes that you can hold on to give to a balance, if you are afraid of heights, well try it , your fear will be gone in a second! ( although its not so high), the board walk is about 260 meters walk so breeze yourself before you start walking, as you walk there are stop point along the walk that have more information on mida creek and the mangrove, when you get to the end of the board walk the view of the ocean is great, you can see the mouth of the creek and about three islands if you use a good pair of binoculars, at the mud flat you can be able to see birds feeding, its great!

board walk at mida.

Noreen tries to get across at the board walk.

After the great afternoon at mida creek we got back to the camp site at the forest to prepare for dinner and the long day ahead. The following day we embarked on mission - clean up watamu beach, we headed to watamu, we quickly took a pit stop at watamu turtle watch, Rob the Project officer was kind enough o takes us round and explain to us all about watamu turtle watch and local ocean trust (for more information visit Watamu Turtle Watch blog or email wtwkenya@swiftmalindi.com),

Rob talking to us about the turtle.

after a briefing on Watamu Turtle Watch we headed to A Rocha Kenya for a short briefing before embarking on the beach for the clean up, we started the clean up at the beach outside A Rocha towards Turtle bay, this seemed like a long day as the scotching sun made it seem much harder but finally we managed to reach our target. Our mission was accomplished!

Baech clean up.

rubbish collected.

We headed back to camp to have lunch and visit the famous Nyari view point, this is the point where you can see the canopy of the forest, the view is great, what a way to climax the trip, we were done, we cleared the nature trail I think more that 3 km of forest road was cleared, we had fun, we saw the beach and now it was time for the team to head back home, back home in Nairobi. As the team was packing up, a certain feeling of sadness engulfed me, I sat and thought, here there are we thought they wouldn’t make it but they have, that really touched me, well done the team!!! I thought to myself, and off they went, leaving Arabuko-Sokoke forest trail better than before, well done team, that was great work!

hard at work.

part of the clearde trail.

Asante sana - Thank you very much.

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