The camp at dusk and at dawn, when we wake up to get ready for our day.
Two insects that do a very good job of looking like live and dead leaves (katydid (?), swallowtail moth - love all the little "eyes" on the moth).
The landscape is dotted with these wonderful, huge "cotton trees" (or kapok trees). They (and maybe some other trees, too) have these magnificent "buttress roots" - fold after fold.
A few of us spent the last couple of days (off days) on the Banana Islands, so named by the Portuguese many centuries ago because their shape resembled a banana. There are two towns out there, maybe 800 people total. Otherwise - thick forest. The people mostly fish, which seems to be a relatively good way of making a living in Sierra Leone. Fishing towns (including Dublin, the town on the Banana Islands that we were staying next to) have more than their share of concrete-block and/or multi-story buildings, and maybe a generator or a satellite dish from time to time. (They are, needless to say, still very poor!) The islands figured quite a bit in both the history of slavery and the history of anti-slavery in this area, so there are several historic bits and pieces out there - cannon, old lamp-posts, overgrown forts, churches. We stayed at a very basic guesthouse with delicious food (king mackerel that even I, a fish-hater, liked). A nice break.
The tidy church which replaced the collapsed 19th century building in 2011. Reminds me irrelevantly, of the church in The African Queen.
View from the guesthouse patio.
Looking back to "the Peninsula" (where Freetown is located) from the island.
Only time I've seen a sail used here, so far - looks more or less like the bedcovers they sell in the markets, strung up on a couple of poles above an ordinary fishing boat. It was beautiful, and put me in mind of a tiny Viking ship. They seemed to be making good time!
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