São Tomé and Príncipe; Day 6 - Mount Carmo

   As mentioned yesterday, the rain arrived mid-afternoon and it did not stop overnight. We had no choice but to accept our fate, climbing and camping on Mount Carmo in the rain. We set off on our hike with our guide Mito at 06:30, leaving from his house in an oil palm plantation and then setting off on the trail through the forest up the mounting. 

  The ascent to the campground took about two hours. We did not do much birding on the way however, as the rain dampened down activity considerably and we ultimately saw very little. Still, we managed to find our first target bird with two different pairs of the Sao Tome Ibis feeding on the path in front of us. They showed very nicely, and given that this was the species most interesting to us on this hike. We also had a roosting Sao Tome Scops Owl, which was nice but not as good as the views we had earlier in the trip. 

  Once we reached camp, we waited for an hour while Mito had his breakfast, as we hoped that the rain might finally cease, which it did for all of about half an hour. We used this time to get the tents up. The campground was already sodden by the weather! However, at 10:00 we made our move and began to continue our ascent to the areas where our remaining targets could be found.

  In total, we only walked around four kilometers during the afternoon hike, but the trail was awful and the weather continued to be appalling. By this point, all my equipment and clothing was saturated, so we just had to make do. The frustration continued as we failed to find any of our target birds on the walk there, but fortunately a detour on the way back brough both species in quick succession and both showing very nicely. 

  First we had a nice and close Newton’s Fiscal, which gave an excellent showing, followed by one of the birds of the trip in the Sao Tome Shorttail. This strange pipit was the bird we thought we were most likely to miss but the individual we finally found gave an unbelievable performance, singing in the open and even fighting with a Sao Tome Prinia at one point. Now with our two targets for the day wrapped up, we felt much better despite the weather.

  We arrived back at camp at 15:00, where we ate, before another short walk before dark. The conditions continued to be unfavourable, but we had another one of the endemic species for the first time in Giant Weaver, its just a shame it was so high up we could not appreciate it. By 17:30 we headed to our tents, unable to do much else given the weather. With all our clothes and optics soaked, we had already conceded we would most likely only be here for one night, especially since now only two but really only one major target remained to us.