a chirurgical miscellany
Tuesday 5th March 2013
Up early at 07.00 to see the turtles. They nest on Long Beach with the season Dec to Jul and can return to the beach up to 6 times to lay their eggs.
Wasn’t sure how to get there, but followed my sense of direction across crunchy lava gravel and got there.
It was a scene from the Somme. Craters everywhere, with tracks leading to the ocean. It seems that I was not in time. Better get up before dawn tomorrow then.
Iust as I thought all was lost, I spied the last straggler
Tuesday 5th March 2013
helpful policeman showed me where the turtles nest near the pier. So down there after dark. Amazing. An enormous green turtle heading into the soft sand to lay her eggs. No photo though, as camera fooled by darkness and flashgun would be so antisocial for a lady about to give birth.
Crayfish for dinner – who said that there were only 3 items on the menu and that they repeated after 3 days?
Photo to follow once I leave this awful bandwidth and internet access lockdown behind. I mean, this island is totally dedicated to SigInt. More aerials and dishes than you could easily count. Yet for the princely sum of £10 you can have 24 hour access on one machine only for the duration of the 24 hours at the blisteringly fast speed of 0.44mbps. Now by my maths that works out at 30 times more expensive than my broadband at home and .. and this is a big AND .. 30 times slower.
As they say, go figure (the answer is Cable & Wireless)
PS apologies for the date at the top of the post being different from the date I am writing about .. I’m sure that I will figure this out .. as they say, RTFM
Red-eye to Ascension Island from Brize Norton. Aircraft an Airbus 330-200. Not crowded so those behind row 4 could have 2 seats each. A better arrangement than 1 per larger seat,with more legroom up front. This VIP seating still far short of business in KLM and there is no little Dutch house full of Jenever either.
A bit of turbulence – enough to have the seat belt signs on and off the whole flight. Mind you, we were over the English Channel before the takeoff seatbelt sign was extinguished accompanied by the usual code of bings and bongs. It can’t be anything to do with safety surely? After all, we had been at cruising altitude for ages. Perhaps it kept the passengers in their seats for longer while the crew handed out iPads as flight entertainment. No instruction leaflets ….. Interesting.
Ascension – a volcanic lump of rock in the Atlantic about 500 miles from anywhere. Claimed by the Crown in 1815 and strategically important on and off since then– balmy and a comfortable 24– 30 deg the year around. Comfortable that is if you are acclimatised and not just landed from freezing UK on the way to the cool and wind caressed Falkland Islands. That is not to say it is not windy here. The frigate birds riding the wind are a testament to that. It is not the icy draft down the back of the neck that makes you shiver, but the gusts of hot air – someone has opened the oven door again.
