Another survey that seemed to be constantly be getting rained off was one at the local golf course – we finally made it there too in what seemed like a roll with the weather and we caught a Botwasnna long eared bat! I am so excited as everyone soon realised, as we caught one at another part of the course when I was here in 20018 as student surveying the site as part of African Bat Conservation Biodiversity Monitoring Project – just a shame that the weather meant we had to close down early and pack down super quick! Chirag the new Carnivore team Research Assistant joined us as did some visitors from Iceland who have been following ABC on social media!

Me, Tom, Dom and Patrick also took a trip to Ngala Hill on our day off to go and climb the mountain (it felt like one!) which is just outside of Lilongwe and had beautiful views up at the top. Though Dom and I did not think we would make it all the way and at one point I was definitely ready to stop but I channelled my inner goat and made up and back down again! It may have also helped that Tom took the majority of the weight out of my bag and kindly carried most of my stuff.. It was worth it when we got to the top and we had a beer despite it being a bit early, to celebrate us getting to the top! On our way in we had a breakfast picnic on the back up of the pick up truck, which was banana pancakes with peanut butter and a flask of coffee 😀

We managed to get down just before the lighting storm came in which you can see coming in straight towards us from Lilongwe in some of the pictures. Passing all the cute goats! There was also so many donkeys up the hill and at some point one made a sound (that classic donkey eeh-oh!) that echoed and sounded fantastic. Then after we got down and after thanking the local villagers that guided us up, we went to a local tea room for some tea and bread – always got to try the local thing – before heading back to Lilongwe, where we decided to go grab some beers and have a swim in town. We were not super keen on swimming in the pool though as the water was green. Apparently, Dom says it is due to the lighting that it turns green, still not sure about going in…