Glamping
After a few days of recovery at CVB, lounging in bed for days watching medical documentaries, it was time to prepare for our next field expedition. Alicia, a recent graduate of Pat's lab and Amanda (different Amanda), Pat's new PhD student, had both arrived during this time and we all bonded through long lazy afternoons of TV-watching. Me, Mariah, and Alicia Vato, only about 4km from the nearest road, was around a 2 hour hike from CVB. While orders of magnitude less dramatic than the hike to Mangevo, we still appreciated the Mangevo playlist to get us through some steep mountainsides. I had camped at Vato in 2014, when I was in Madagascar for study abroad, but it was nowhere near as glamorous as the camp we arrived at that afternoon. The kitchen is tiled and equipped with a sink, counter space, and a dining table. The camping grounds are sectioned into 5-7 plots to accommodate 1 or 2 tents each. The plots are lined with sand and complete with metal roofs. I was...
