Pemban flying foxes and a rain forest

On Valentine's Day, we took a "tourist day" and borrowed a car to go see some sites on the island. Not far from our town is a roosting site for the Pemban flying fox, a large bat that has black wings but reddish-brown fur and a face much like a fox's. There were hundreds in one grove of trees.







I know they are hard to see, but each strangely-shaped blob is a bat, hanging from the branches.



Our second stop was a indigenous rain forest in the northwest corner of the island. Most of Pemba used to look like this, before people started living and farming here about 1000 years ago.









Notice how green everything is. And did I mention this is the dry, hot season?