Picdump: Dreams do come true! Sometimes it only takes 13 years...

... and includes risking your life. This is an actual Koka crop we had to pass. One of many on the way...

Koka, do not try to enter these areas without knowing the right people...

Koka in the front, Lehmanni habitat in the back

The most beautiful rainforest I have seen so far!

Tina-Turner-Caterpillar

The first snake I found in Colombia

The first O. lehmanni I`ve ever seen. This one is a juvenile and beautiful!

Hard to find as they are very shy. Still they call all the time, but mainly hidden somewhere you can`t see them. 

Closeup of a yellow male

A Banded Guyana Leucomelas I found in Colombia :-P

Oh wait, white toe nails... which not all of them have though... novelty for me!

Very active all the time.

BEST! FROGS! EVER! 

My favorite, an orange male from a very variable population. All the frogs shown here were found in the same area.

He didn`t like us at all.

All I now can say is "Wow" and thanks to all the people who made the trip possible.
I will write an article about this trip later. Still I can`t find the words I need to express how impressed and overwhelmed I am about this experience. Give me time. Take a look at the pictures and enjoy :-)

Imagine I saw O. lehmanni on a Picture in a Book when I was 12 years old and always dreamt of seeing them in their habitat. 13 years later, not as much of a dreamer as back then anymore, I made it there (and the most important thing, back) alive and just am just amazed of what I saw, learned and felt. Happiness. Absolute happiness. Mixed with sadness as all of what we saw is about to disappear. Lehmanni still are heavily collected (1000-2000 are ordered each time, but sometimes the collectors only find 200.. imagine that).

Facts about O. lehmanni which were new for me:
1. Not all of them have the white finger tips. There are some which have them, some have completely white hands and some only have one or two white fingers.
2. Depending on the population patterns and colours are either variable or stable. Of the frogs I have seen, none looked alike. The red population seems to be the other way around. They very much are what you expect lehmanni to look like. Clean banding, white finger tips.
3. Lehmanni is not exactly a highland species. I thought you find lehmanni in 2000m above sea level and was stunned that we heard them calling at around 550m elevation. Populations which have been whiped out by overcollecting even used to be found at arround 400m elevation.
But that does not mean they like it warm. Actually even at low elevations the area is pretty "cold".. the highest temperature we had was 24°C at around 12am. Nights lows can go down to 15°C.
4. Lehmanni males call when you pick them up. I got a video provoking one ;-) So they should be pretty easy to sex.
5. Not Coca is the problem bringing lehmanni closer and closer to extinction. There are patches of forest being cleared for these crops, but they do not even get close to the devastation overcollecting frogs causes. Actually we even heard lehmanni call close to the Coca crops and in the morning they even come out to the cleared patches and call.
If you imagine that a lot of "Frog enthusiasts" show up in this valley, tell the poor people there that they get 200 pesos (about 10 cents) for each frog they collect and order an amount of 2000 frogs, sure they are tempted. We talked with the farmers about their income, turned out that living of the Coca farming is hard (who wonders) Each kilo of Coca paste is sold for 800000 pesos, about 400 dollars. To produce this you need close to 500 kg of leaves, alot of chemicals, gasoline and work hours. Then you can harvest only 4 times a year.....
So selling a lot of frogs comes in handy.
6. I thought lehmanni was smaller, more like a really big Bri Bri O. pumilio. I was wrong ;-)