- 38 - Tuesday 4/7/53: The strong southeaster blew all last night and until about nine this morning. This was fortunate for our landing on the rather exposed coast of Dabora, about six miles east of Menapi. Van and I with our seven boys, and the #2 cook, Losima, left on the "Ruru" at 1:20 P.M. Anchored opposite the Government rest house at Dabora 2:30. Native skipper Lambert took the vessel close in to the fringing reef. We landed by dinghy in calm water on the one narrow bit of sand beach, clear of coral. Resthouse and boys barracks well built of sago thatch, sago midribbed walls and split palm floor raised about four feet above the ground. But there are many chinks in the thatch. The small house has a seat but the pit is only a foot deep. Water supply is from a shallow water hole dug in coral about eighty yards back from the beach on the edge of a mangrove creek. A low wall around the water would not keep pigs out. Every sizable village is supposed to maintain a resthouse. This one is badly neglected. My general impression is that Government is not very active on Cape Vogel. Village Constable Oswin (!) dressed in blue serge ramie presented himself about 6 o'clock in company with a genial but sharp looking elderly native called Timothy, whom we saw at Menapi. Timothy works for the Mission, he says, and speaks fair english. Oswin said not a word when addressed in english. Then Moto, a quiet thoughtful looking middle-aged man of heavy semitic countenance, who reminded me of Einstein. Timothy and Oswin, and "all the people" will guide us to the bat caves at Tapitapipi tomorrow morning. Caves full of big bats. They kill 30 of them for meat a week or two ago. When camp was settled I took a boy and walked west about a mile to Neara Point, promontory of honey-combed lime stone cliffed to the sea. Cliffs 20 to 30 feet high, and from them a rough lime-stone ridge rises inland. Collected six spp. in poor low rain forest on the limestone. Wednesday 4/8/53: Strong S.E. blew all last night and today it is still blowing It comes into every corner of the resthouse - through walls and floor, and over the partition which makes two rooms of the place. Difficult to handle plants, and to write notes. And if it keeps up until Saturday, when the "Ruru" is due to pick us up we will have trouble in getting away from this place. With a native guide called Douglas, I hied me early to the bat caves at Tapitapipi, a walk of exactly one hour from the resthouse by the indirect route which for some reason, we followed, traversing flat land carrying grassland, (Imperata), rain forest second growths, and some big banana gardens, we crossed Okobobarina stream in ten minutes, and much larger Didi stream in twenty minutes: both running clear water. In forty minutes we finished about a 200 ft. climb up a limestone scarp after which the topography was gently ridgy. The caves in primary rain forest, which extended from the top of the scarp. Did much hunting in these forests for 16 specimens of plants. Trees mostly sterile or in fruit. What appears to be the main entrance to the caves, [illegible], is under an overhanging cliff perhaps 80-100 ft. high, facing approximately west. Two entrances at different levels, one above the other. A gully stream now dry, disappears into the lower opening, which is 6-8 ft. high. Upper opening more in the nature of a crevice, spanning which were some rotten looking poles which someone had used as a bridge to enter the level. A third entrance 6 ft. from the bottom of a small sink hole back about 50 yds. from the rim of the cliff.