São Tomé and Príncipe; Day 8 - Ribeira Peixe & Bom Sucesso

   With our guide from the previous day, Mitu, we had arranged to take a boat out from the town of Ribera Peixe to the rocks of Siete Pedras, where a good number of terns and noddies breed. We were excited to do this, but quickly became less excited when we saw the state of the boat that we were going to be using, with the outboard motor tied on with ropes and various bits of the frame rebuilt. 

  Still, we loaded on along with Mitu and a couple of other guys that would be fishing whilst in the area. However, the motor would not start and it took about half an hour of trying to repair the piece of junk whilst in the bay, before they decided it would have to go back to shore. At this point, we had seen enough. Not being able to start the motor in the bay was bad, but if it happened out by the rocks that was downright dangerous. So we cut our losses, said farewell and departed.

  By now however it was only 08:30, leaving us with the rest of the morning to try to figure out what to do. We slowly drove back north up the island looking and various beaches but seeing nothing. We arrived early back in the capital, where we spotted a Sea Turtle near the harbour, before we taking an early lunch.

  After lunch we drove back up the mountain to Bom Successo, where we had visited on our first day, to try and photograph some of the birds we had seen less well, our priority being Giant Weaver. We started by birding an area slightly further down the mountain for a couple of hours, in mixed habitat not far above the village of Monte Cafe. This worked out great, as we found several Giant Weavers. Not showed incredibly well for photos, but they were considerably better views than we had got in the forest at Mount Carmo. In the same area we got some nice flybys from Island Bronze-naped Pigeon and awesome views of White-tailed Tropicbird. 

  For the rest of the afternoon we birded back up at the Bom Successo botanic gardens. Here we saw nothing that was new, but Giant Sunbird was nice to see again. However, we stayed in the area until dark and after slowly drove down until we bumped into the local race of Barn Owl. We made several stops before we got a response to the tape, followed by fabulous views of bird, our last mainland target species that we had not already missed. With that complete, we headed back to the capital and organized a hotel for the next three nights, ready to relax after a very rewarding trip.