The 'berg

Georg (the Austrian tree frog researcher) is waiting for the rainy season to start in earnest. Once rain falls regularly the frogs will start calling and he will be able to determine in which trees the frogs are hunkered down.

Lately the weather has been phenomenal and so Georg remains in a holding pattern.

Since things are slow for him he joined me in my latest trip to the Inselberg station. (I came because I was asked to figure out how to move several hundred pounds of steel up a rock slope). The day that we arrived at Inselberg camp we decided to sleep on the summit of the ‘berg itself. The walk from the camp to the summit is about 45 minutes of up and more up. Rather suddenly the forest gives way to a moonscape covered in succulents and epiphytes (it’s very strange to see the things one normally sees up in trees, growing in turf-like communities on the ground).

It would be very difficult to overstate the beauty of the Inselberg. I’ve never managed to take a photo that captures how bizarrely the terrain heaves and how bodily it is, but the sunrises and sunsets come across fairly well and give an idea of just how vast and undisturbed this bit of rainforest isLooking at that panorama, a few more attempts seem waranted. The shot above was taken at sunrise, a little after six. At that hour all of the valleys are fog-filled . If you were to zoom in to the panorama you would see this:

I think I mentioned that Alex's thesis is that French Guiana is home to lowland clowd forests (a preveiously undesignated term). I joke that she is wasting her time fooling around with mosses and liverwarts and that she siply needs to sit on top of the Inselberg and take a photo every morning; quod erat demonstrandum.

The night that Goerg and I spent up top, we slept out on mats in a slight depression at the edge of the 'berg. Pictured below is the depression during a previous overnight.

There aren't many warm-blooded creatures up top and thus not many blood-suckers. When Georg and stayed up top we simply laid out on mats and were not chewed up at all. Sunset with Georg pictured below; Georg pictured, not me.

And sunriseThe full moon on top of the Inselberg is almost too much. Below left the moonrise and to the right, a 15 second exposure taken well after sunset. I was surprised to see in the long exposure that the moon was bright enough for the camera to pick up color.

My previous overnight on the 'berg was with the German moss team. We slept in a bowl with an outlet facing south.

Fom down in the bowl, the outlet provided a lovely view of a sliver of skyline.

Below: The Pararé station is down in the thicker fog belt that extends all the way from left to right of the photo. That band hovers over the Arataie river and blankets the Pararé camp in the early mornings. Turning on a headlamp in the wee hours you'll sometimes be blinded by a ball of white directly in front of you. Can't see with a lamp and can't see without one.

Trying to describe the 'berg or even showing photos of it is invariably disappointing to me but I probably won't be able to resist trying now and again.