Update on Kolombangara Island- A trip up to the rainforest lodge

Kolombangara island is located directly east of Ghizo. Villages are spread all around the coastal slopes with quite a few harbours which can be used for anchoring after carefully crossing reef entrances. The larger township of Ringgi offers a harbour with a deep entrance and and some deep anchorages.

Kolombangara is the large round volcanic island with Ringgi Cove located to the South East of it.

The summit gets rapidly covered in cloud through the day's heat build up and drowning rains generally follow. Looking forward to get to the top!! :)


The harbour was well surveyed during WWII so the bathymetry on the chart can be trusted. Be careful of the fringing reef in the middle. The harbour is very protected and even a squall can barely build up much waves. There has basically been no wind in the last month, and only I hope that the trades would pick up eventually but at least, it meant leaving the KUNA in the harbour was pretty safe from weather if not from theft.
The brand new infrared battery door alarm that makes a lot of noise probably was a good enough a deterrent. If not, parking in front of Rocky’s security house and slipping a 50SBD note for him to look after the boat was!

Ringgi is a company town, dominated by the timber company KFPL buildings and houses. It has a couple of stores, a public phone and the store even sells mobile phone cards. Market on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday is sometimes well supplied, sometimes only offers betelnut. Supplying for a rainforest camping trip was a challenge, as only a couple of manioc roots could be found!!! For dry stores, best is to go to Noro, 5 miles away on New Georgia Island. Basically, do not count on the local stores except for some tuna and rice.




Kuna on a stopover at Noro Wharf



A year after having first landed on Kolombangara island during the BBC shoot (see blog archive may 2009), another visit was arranged to collect media for the newly formed Kolombangara Island Conservation Association.


View of the crater and its opening to the South East.


In December 2008, with the support of the local timber plantation company (KFPL) and the Solomon Island Community Conservation Partnership (SICCP), the local community agreed on supporting conservation of the upper part of this large volcanic island, ie the zone above the 400m elevation contour, which includes the deep crater and ridges up to the summit, 1600m high. To encourage and stimulate donations for conservation, the KFPL supported the construction of a rainforest lodge with stunning views on the crater slopes and truly the best rainforest bird watching observatory conceived. Our role was to bring these stunning view to the outside world, by collecting some imagery that would help encourage donations for conservation.








The lodge is located at the end of a logging road, at 380m height, 15km drive away from the coastal company town of Ringgi. Walking tracks will also progressively be cut into the rainforest for visitors to access the crater, the summit and the river banks. This tourism project aiming for high-end customers to visit this very special place will create jobs for the community for guides and lodge carers. For example, the track along the Vila river, which runs out of the crater, takes the adventurous trekker to heritage sites, where skulls from the times of head hunting are kept. Indeed, a large portion of the wet river banks inside the crater have been terraced by the people who escaped the head hunters by living in the thick and wet rainforest.




skull...




From a photographer’s point of view, the rainforest environment is spectacular but challenging. The climate up at the lodge is milder than the stuffy heat of sea level: temperatures only a few degrees lower (25 instead of 31!) seem cool due to the high humidity. The Sony EX1 camera held up to the task, even in dripping moisture, which often destroys video equipment. Portable and light weight, it was carried up and down steep gorges to capture the views of the crater and the deep and intense rainforest vegetation (an assistant was also carrying our Miller tripod daily). We rigged up a makeshift dolly and a jib made out of local timbers cut with a bushknife. The local production tools look a bit archaic, but there is no way to receive things into the country, so they did the job.


tropical timber jib

dolly filming tree roots



wet camp... glad about the rainforest hammock!


Walking between tall trees, it is very rare to get a really photogenic view from a vantage point, except where there has been a land slip or a tree falling. Wildlife is heard more often than seen, with hundreds of bird calls and dozens frog calls. The rainforest is also very wet, unpredictable heavy rain showers being nightmare for electronics and the terrain difficult: steep muddy slopes and slippery river bed rocks are common fare. Despite all of this, with a bit of patience, ingenuity and camera equipment holding up to the field conditions, lots of nice shots were collected.

Exploring the rainforest of Ngatokae Island

Another place visited to gather nice nature images for the DVD (see previous post on Morovo lagoon) was the rainforest. The solomon islands rainforests yield very high biodiversity, supporting a large number of endemic species and there is a strong need for conservation initiatives to protect them, project that the country itself can barely support, so a number of NGOs are involved.


Going along with Patrick Pikacha, a local conservation scientist who works for the NGO Conservation International, it was easy to take up a bushwalking trip to the top of Ngatokae mountain, Mt Mariu, to photograph the many frogs species that inhabit the forested slopes of the mountain.
Patrick works for Conservation International and is the founder and editor of Melanesian Geographic, the Geo equivalent publication for the Solomons/PNG

Ngatokae is an old volcano, now extinct, and its summit culminates at about 885m.

It is not a high mountain but because it is so close to the open ocean, the vegetation gradient is remarkably compressed from the tall lowland rainforest to the misty cloud forest, Species that would be found elsewhere at 2000m are found here at 600m here! This makes for Ngatokae high conservation values.

The first morning led us along an old logging road, now eroded into ferralitic soils and covered by the bush reclaiming its grounds.


The lower parts of the island have been logged ten years ago. The forest has now recovered to a lower canopy called secondary forest. Some of it remained cleared for the gardens exploited by the villagers.

Gardens are nested in the clearings
The secondary forest can sometimes a better habitat supporting a more diverse range of bird species than the primary forest. In some of the remaining tall trees, Eclectus parrot can be spotted. The female is red and from the throne of her nest, in a large tree hole, she monitors a crowd of green males who brings her food. This female eclectus was shy but I managed to “creep” her and take a shot

Female eclectus parrot, high in her tree

Up at 200m elevation, we enter the dark shade of the primary rainforest forest. Meandering amongst the tall trees, the tracks becomes softer and less slippery, the soil is covered in a thick layer of leaves and its very quiet.


We descend back towards the valley of the Kavolavata river which drops from the upper ridges of Mount Mariu. Beautiful volcanic rock pools and and relief to refresh when we arrive at the camp in a curve near the creek.




Robert is cooking up a feed of rice and 2 min noodle with onion and capsicum on the fire: breakfast, lunch and dinner!!



A Hennessy Hammock is once again a must in the rain forest!

The evening is spent looking for frogs. Patrick has a nice sigma 150mm macro lens that he’s lent me to take close ups. The frogs are found easily: as soon as it gets dark, especially after the bucketing rain, they start singing very loudly, though so small!

tree frog
Many species can be found on the tree trunks under leaves or inside the small water pools formed by the epiphytes.

eyelash frog, an endemic species from the Solomons-

The next day, a walk up to the 600m elevation mark took us through a fast transition to a sparser ridge forest with large pandani and later through the cloud forest, where short trees covered in mosses intricately mix with smaller species of pandani (not unlike Tasmanian ones) and ferns. Higher on the ridges, with a shorter canopy,

there are also a lot of orchids


The internet repeater is located on a clearing at 600m, and the only place where a sweeping view of Morovo lagoon can be enjoyed, and a rare sight as the summit is often in cloud!



Morovo lagoon and its many islands