On our last day in The Gambia, we spent most of it at the Makasuto Culture Forest, which means Holy Forest. The forest is a 2,500 acre preserve. It has an array of zones including palm groves, wetlands, mangroves, savannah plains, and other collections of trees. They claim to be inhabited by lots of animals including baboons and monitor lizards, but we didn't see any animals. They also claimed to have hundreds of bird species, but we only saw a few birds.

The preserve consists of five different eco-systems and is considered part eco-park and part cultural center. They have a crafts center and give traditional dancing demonstrations. We did get to hear a three-piece band playing for us during lunch.

Our forest guide told us that Makasuto consists of three separate parts: water lodges, boat rides, and nature walks. We started our day there with a boat ride. It was called a river so I'm assuming it was a slew of the Gambia River or a tributary stream of the Gambia River. It appeared to be part of a mangrove area. It was at a low tide.

Our group was in two boats, so I took a different boat from Vicky to get her photo. Our fellow tourists thought that strange that we would be in different boats.

We not only didn't see any animals but we saw very few birds and we really had to work to see them.

The mangrove area of river was pleasant enough but not really very exciting. You can also see that we were at low tide.

My biggest excitement of the whole boat ride was discovering all the oysters growing on the tree roots and along the river bank. We didn't, however, get any oysters with our lunch. Of course, I'm not sure if I would have eaten them or not. The water was pretty muddy or something.

After our boat ride, we took a break and then had a nature walk. Our walk was about an hour. We walked through different zones such as the palm forest woodlands, savannah plains, and salt flats. We went from cool and shady to very hot and sunny, and back again but most of the time we were under a forest canopy. We learned about various trees that are used for healing purposes.

You can see a typical woodland scene in the first photo. It wasn't much like a deep jungle with a heavy canopy but not very open either.

We learned about making palm wine from palm tree juice. We got a climbing demonstration but I never got a chance to try it myself, which was disappointing.

We passed lots of termite mounds. We learned that the mound is roughly as deep as it is high. That's because all the dirt that the termites displace as they dig down gets piled up on top. This was not one of the highest or biggest mounts that we passed.

I believe that the next tree is a Capo tree. I was most interested because the sap smokes like incense to keep away the mosquitoes.

Towards the end of our nature walk, we came to a Palm Reader's Hut. We ended up not stopping since none of our group was interested in having their palm read. The fact that Vicky didn't want her palm read was something of a shock to me!

Well, here we are at the end of our trip, but Vicky and I felt that the Makasuto Culture Forest needed a little more color to brighten it up, as we always do.