The Gambia is not the place to be when you want to spot the Big Five. There's not much Wildlife to be spotted, to be honest.
Local guides are happy to bring you past a ticket barrier to a sacred pond, infested with rather docile crocs - they're sacred too, pretty harmless and touchable. It helps they're not the size of a grown up Aussie Saltie.
Same guides are also happy to bring you to the tiniest of Official African Wild Life Parks - think 2 km by 400 metres - to show you endangered monkeys. When we did spot the monkeys (they were cute, we were thrilled to see them in their natural habitat and not in a zoo) the guides told us immediately this was a very special occasion because normally the endangered monkeys remained totally invisible.
The Gambia is famous for it's birds. All European birds seem to migrate to the Gambia. The thing with birds is you don't see them, unless you're a trained ornithologist. So apart from an inordinate amount of vultures - see something big in the sky and it's a vulture - we only spotted pelicans and ostriches.
Well, you can hardly miss them, can't you.
And hyenas. We saw hyenas. They looked pretty harmless and rather cuddly, behind bars. They were behind bars because they attack everyone and everything, so they're caught and locked away before they can feast on the locals.
That's your Gambian Wildlife. It makes for nice pictures, though...
Local guides are happy to bring you past a ticket barrier to a sacred pond, infested with rather docile crocs - they're sacred too, pretty harmless and touchable. It helps they're not the size of a grown up Aussie Saltie.
Same guides are also happy to bring you to the tiniest of Official African Wild Life Parks - think 2 km by 400 metres - to show you endangered monkeys. When we did spot the monkeys (they were cute, we were thrilled to see them in their natural habitat and not in a zoo) the guides told us immediately this was a very special occasion because normally the endangered monkeys remained totally invisible.
The Gambia is famous for it's birds. All European birds seem to migrate to the Gambia. The thing with birds is you don't see them, unless you're a trained ornithologist. So apart from an inordinate amount of vultures - see something big in the sky and it's a vulture - we only spotted pelicans and ostriches.
Well, you can hardly miss them, can't you.
And hyenas. We saw hyenas. They looked pretty harmless and rather cuddly, behind bars. They were behind bars because they attack everyone and everything, so they're caught and locked away before they can feast on the locals.
That's your Gambian Wildlife. It makes for nice pictures, though...
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