Day 31 - To Meinmahlakyune Wildlife Sanctuary

Our last scheduled SST trip started with our being picked up at 5:00 am and driven to a pier on the Yangon river, where we boarded a very humble boat...



with a whole lot of other folks.



We were the only non-Burmese, except for a young French couple trying to get to the same place we were headed for (don't believe they made it, they were trying to do it on the fly, cheaply, after pumping Mr. Soe for info). We headed out down the river as the sun was rising.




The ride was long (6 hours), but the river scenes held my interest.












I was fascinated by the sweeping design of many of the river craft, which I've never seen before, and which looks like it puts the sides under water, but actually doesn't. Not that that makes much difference, since water is run through the boats (notice it spewing out the back), to prevent the wooden hulls from drying out, cracking and leaking.








The boat loaded and unloaded passengers on the run.



We arrived at Bogalay, the jumping off point for our further trip down the river to the sanctuary, which is located in the Ayerwaddy River delta.

We got bicycle taxis to the Sanctuary headquarters.






Bogalay is obviously a river town....





and boats were gathered around several of the houses.




After some waiting, and a nice lunch (that came with a Raj style fanning - for cooling and fly deterrence)...



we were back on the river on our own boat, with the director of the sanctuary as our guide. Can't say I thought much of the boat. It sat very low in the water (so the boatman could see ahead), and had lousy seating.



Once again there were interesting river scenes, among them an increasing number of motorless boats used for fishing, which is what nearly everyone in the area we were entering does for a living.





We visited the on-site sanctuary headquarters and then went on (3+ hours) to our camp lodging (at the bottom of the Ayerwaddy delta on the Bay of Bengal), which was surprisingly well-set up, tho basic, likely because they have to lodge government and NGO officials and other VIPs there from time to time.



After a brief settling in and rest we went out for the first of our birding/crocodile spotting rides through the channels of the sanctuary. With only 100 or so crocs in the 33,000 acre sanctuary, the crocodile part is a challenge - more on that later. There was a slow start to the birding as well, but then it picked up. As with Moeyingyi, we didn't see that many species the first day, but there were a lot of our old friend, the Asian open-bill stork, one group roosting in nice late afternoon light...


and at one point we saw a flying flock of at least 200.

A first for us was the black headed ibis, shown here roosting with some storks...



and taking flight.





After dinner we did a crocodile shining ride, but without seeing anything other than a few pairs of red eyes. We had better luck the next night, but that's another story.....

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