Day 10 - Castanheira part III

Because this time the goal was to do that night sampling that we didn’t do the previous try, we left Doca after lunch, to optimize the energy intake. And what a nice lunch had we, with an outdoor “meat in the stick” Madeira style, intensely flavoured by laurel, along with some also traditional and home-made “Bôlo do Caco”. Congratulations to the chef, once again!

The walk, made for the third time, becomes familiar. When we turn each hill we know what we’re going to find, but not even because of that you can say that it’s a boring walk, because the rugged landscape is truly impressive, be it for the steep cliffs, or by the “lava bomb” fields, that look like giant dinosaur eggs planted there, or the brown canyons, where little clorophyl can find a support to be.

As we got to the valley, another combat meal for dinner and we were ready and waiting for the night to fall. By this time we feared the worst as some really low clouds were passing over us, but St. Peter was with us and the night turned out to be a very nice one for fieldwork.
The only not so good thing was that the diversity of spiders didn’t appear to be high in our sampling plot, but Pedro decided well that we should not put pitfall traps in the northernmost part of the island, where a larger density of H. ingens was found. As we had the precious help of Isamberto, by 1 am we were done with the direct sampling of this cobra protocol and ready to rest for the last time in Hotel Castanheira.