RAF Flight to UK Arrivng at 1:30 am: End of adventure

On Saturday, March 24, we packed, closed up Garden Cottage, made our way down the mountain, paid for the car and the cottage and went to the airhead at the ridiculously early, but strictly mandated by the RAF, time of 12 noon for a 3 pm flight.  We conveniently parked our rental car in the small parking lot near the "terminal" and left the keys in it for our friendly petrol station owner (Birdie) to retrieve later. To prepare for the flight, one queues (i.e., "stands in line" for you Yankees) outside in the hot sun, reaches a desk inside where they take one's luggage, gets a turtle and date stamp in one's passport, puts one's carry-on baggage through a scanner (a full one and half litre water bottle, an aerosol can of insect repellent, and who knows what else, is fine with the security person!) and walks into a small lounge to wait and wait and wait.  If one is bored by the lounge, one can go outside into the "cage."  The cage is a small fenced area, albeit with picnic tables and a modicum of shade, next to the runway.  Under normal flight schedules, passengers who have just flown for 8 hours from the Falkland Islands must wait in the cage (not being permitted entry into Ascension) for an hour and a half while the plane is refuelled and then and spend 9  hours flying on to RAF Brize Norton in the UK!   At 3 pm we walked onto the runway, up the steps and were fortunate to seize two seats by the window during the open seating scramble!  The aircraft was provided by Air Italy with an Italian crew.  The food was variable -- a good chicken dinner at about 5 pm and a nearly inedible microwaved grey tortilla wrap for a snack at about 11 pm.  We  landed at 12.30 am on Sunday, March 25, but went onto British Summer Time, thus immediately losing an hour.  The RAF staff at the airport were impressively and unexpectedly cheerful and helpful.  We took a shuttle bus, along with a few other passengers, to the Gateway House Hotel on the base.  The Gateway House is a billet for soldiers who have long waits for flights.  Equally helpful RAF staff assigned us to a simple room (two single, unmade beds, one chair and a wash basin) and we got to bed at 3 am.  Up at 7 am, we had a full English breakfast in the canteen along with a number of camou-clad soldiers, some of whom were NATO forces from Estonia.  The room and extensive breakfast were compliments of the RAF.  As the woman on the desk said, "What else could you have done after arriving in the middle of Sunday night?" Another shuttle bus landed us conveniently just outside the airbase gates at the rental car agency, and we were off into the English countryside!  The South Atlantic Adventure was over.  An endeavour well worth the trouble and expense, renewed family acquaintance, experiences we will not forget and the making of a few new friends with whom we hope to stay in touch.

Exploring Green Mountain and the Devil's Riding School

On Thursday, March 22, we drove back to North East Bay, but this time we turned southwards past the European Space Agency tracking station, and walked along the beach and rocks to get finally a clear view of Boatswain Bird Island, the nesting place for thousands of sea birds.  We also saw an impressive blow hole, sending sea water and spray 20 feet into the air regularly. As if we needed any additional drama, we learned today that the aircraft (Titan Airways) that provides the one and only service to and from Ascension Island was damaged at the RAF base on the Falkland Islands.  An alternative aircraft (Air Italy) has been found but it will not be able to maintain the expected schedule.  We don't know when we will be leaving!  On Friday, March 23, we explored the buildings just above us on Green Mountain, mostly built in the 1820s and 1830s, but some used well into the 1980s.  The Royal Marines built barracks (very small -- large enough only to accommodate a garrison of 20 to 30 men) in 1833 in the windiest, wettest place on the mountain, but after 30 years they found they couldn't tolerate the damp so they barracks were turned into a milking shed and new ones built!  There are also two huge slopes concreted in the 1860s to catch rain and funnel it down into tanks to provide the island's inhabitants' water supply and used for this purpose well into the 20th century. Down near sea level, Jack explored one of the island's strange volcanic features, the Devil's Riding School.  Reached after a short climb over a lava field strewn with flat, broken bits of lava (described as walking over broken china plates), one reaches a shallow, wide crater.  The floor of the crater looks something like a bull's eye target with rings of alternating colors.  The devil could have ridden horses around the circles!  (The formation can be seen from space, so try finding Ascension Island on Google Earth.  Hint: Latitude 7 deg, 56 min South; Longitude 14 deg, 25 min West.)

Giant Green Turtles and the BBC Relay Station

On Tuesday, March 20, we climbed around Fort Bedford which is situated on the lower part of a cinder cone just inland from Georgetown.  Some of the cannon are 19th century and two other rusty cannon were last used to scare off a Nazi submarine in World War II. We had a tour of the BBC World Service relay station courtesy of a friend of Howard Peters, who worked there until February.  The station gets BBC programming via satellite and rebroadcasts it on short wave radio to Africa and South America from this unique dot in the South Atlantic ocean.  The service provides unbiased news coverage, especially to those in less democratic countries.  The power supplies, amplifiers, frequency generators and tuners (some made in the 1940s) all operating at 11,000 volts and 100,000 watts are impressive!  If you're worried about cell phone exposure, don't wander into the BBC's field of transmitter antennae!  The BBC operates the only power station on the island and uses 90% of the power it generates.  The BBC also supplies, via desalination, almost all of the drinking water for the island. Nearby we swam at English Bay, one of the only two "safe" swimming beaches on the island.  Very warm water!  On Wednesday, March 21, we finally had a successful walk on the paths around Green Mountain.  They are definitely jungle walks, overgrown and sometimes requiring considerable exploration to determine the course of the path.  All is made more interesting by the fact that the paths are mostly cut out of the steep slopes of the mountain-side.  We have learned that parts of the Garden Cottage, in which we are living, date from 1817, and that our water is unique in that it comes from a well high up on the mountain and reaches us via a 300 meter tunnel through the mountain. Readers of this blog will find it unsurprising that we ended up at Phyllis's Village Takeaway, eating a delicious chicken curry for dinner!  After dark, we went to Long Beach to see green turtles coming onshore to lay and bury eggs.  The turtles are easily frightened but don't see red light very well, so Meg made a red filter for our torch out of parts of a plastic bag!  We saw many of these 400 pound, 3 foot long female turtles leaving the sea, crawling up the beach and digging large depressions in which to lay eggs.  The turtles have been doing this for several months.  We also saw a baby turtle that had recently hatched, claw his (or her) way up through the sand and head for the sea.  It had a tendency to head in the wrong direction, so Meg gave him an airlift to the water's edge.  Hopefully, he can head out to sea where it will be safer.

Wildlife: Masked boobies and land crabs

Sunday, March 18 was a frustrating day!  We drove halfway around the island to the site of an abandoned NASA tracking station that was used for the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions.  Most of it was dismantled or destroyed around 1990, but one derelict building and numerous concrete pads remain.  Meg feels strongly that the Americans should have cleaned up their mess.  We then hiked and hiked and hiked through lava, basalt and ash (and most of it downhill meaning the climb back up would not be fun) in hopes of seeing the huge offshore rock - Boatswain Bird Island - that is a very important nesting place for South Atlantic seabirds.  We missed an unmarked path and never saw the island!  We did however reach a place where a seabird called the 'masked booby' nests.  These birds do not abandon their nests and can be closely approached.  Only when one is about six feet away, do they start squawking!  We decided we had earned dinner out that evening, but buying a meal was difficult.  Apart from the over-priced menu at the island's only hotel, the only snack bar open on Sunday is at the NAAFI club at the RAF base.  We chose pizza from the limited menu, but it took 70 minutes to be prepared! On Monday, March 19, we had our lunch party for our fellow South Atlantic travellers.  Some of us carried on to the Village Takeaway in Two Boats (village) for some excellent fish cakes for dinner, made with fresh tuna,  and then went to North East Bay after dark to see the Ascension native land crabs.  We saw hundreds of female crabs who have made their way down from the mountain to disperse their thousands of eggs into the sea.  The orange, yellow or red crabs average about six inches across.  They are so numerous you have to be careful not to step on them!  Meg was more than a bit spooked.  It's an eerie sight in the darkness punctuated by flash photography.

Staying near the top of Green Mountain, Ascension Island

On Thursday, March 15, the only slight excitement as we sailed the calm Atlantic seas was that a large tanker passed within about two miles of us.  On Friday, March 16,  Ascension Island came into view out of the haze and we dropped anchor about half a mile off the Georgetown pierhead.  Again, the drill of lifejackets, down some steep stairs onto a pontoon tied to the ship, jump the gap to a launch, motor in to shore and jump another gap onto the "pier."  The pier is just a concrete pad at sea level with steep steps leading up to the top of the low cliff on which the port sits.  We had arranged to hire a car - a Ford Focus - from Mr. Birdie, the owner of the only petrol station on the island who sent his daughter (?) to meet us at the port.  The daughter, a saint as are most people living on Ascension, was anxious to get back home to finish packing, since she was leaving for St. Helena that evening on the RMS. We then drove to the foothills of the major mountain (extinct volcano) on the island and up the 18 hairpin bend road, nearly to the top at about 2,800 feet, where we have rented Garden Cottage.  It was the residence of the farm manager in the days when there was a farm here,  including 50 milking cows.  With the advent of more frequent supply ships the farm was abandoned about 20 years ago.  The pigsties and cowsheds are derelict and overgrown.  For a week, we are living at a higher elevation than anyone on the island!  The mountain top is usually cloud-covered and has frequent rain showers, so we are living in a tropical jungle.  (Everything  in the cottage is damper than you can possibly imagine!)  That means a variety and abundance of beautiful flowers, ferns, bananas and other plants and a variety of insects, including cockroaches, and geckos.  We also have rabbits and the occasional wild sheep grazing on our lawn!  On Saturday, March 17, we visited the ruins of Fort Hayes in Georgetown.  Ascension was claimed and occupied by the British in 1815 and fortified to defend against any French attempt to use it as a base to rescue Napoleon.  Late that afternoon, we went to the pier in hopes of getting some fresh fish.  One small sport fishing boat did return with two four foot long dorado and some Brits kindly gave us about five pounds of fish, filleted right there on the pier!  We made good use of the fish in a lunch party the following Monday for several fellow-travelers with whom we have been crossing paths on the ship and on St. Helena - a geologist from Dublin, two young men making a film about the flora and fauna of the remaining British Overseas Territories, and a retired man from Northamptonshire and his wife, whose grandfather was once Postmaster in St. Helena.

We leave St. Helena on the RMS

On Monday, March 12, there was, as there always is, great excitement as the RMS St. Helena arrived from Capetown bringing returning saints, tourists, workers from the UK and supplies and shipments of all kinds, including a small bus.  Think "Wells Fargo Wagon" from The Music Man! There will be a rush to buy meat and fresh vegetables before they run out and stores resort to the usual choice of potatoes, onions and rather dejected carrots.  We drove to the southwestern part of the island and climbed High Hill - a steep but manageable trail that climbs 150 m to 707 m.  We finally broke out the video camera, made a video of driving down the steep and narrow Ladder Hill road to Jamestown.  Later, Jack monitored the video camera while Meg interviewed her cousin Caroline about growing up in England and life on St. Helena.  It will be a gift to her son, daughter and grandchildren.  A couple of financial notes:  petrol (gasoline for you Yankees) costs £1.52 per liter which is $8.92 per US gallon.  We heard an ad (local radio is often more like someone reading the newspaper;  in fact, the announcer IS reading the paper!) for a junior government statistician job paying a salary of £5,000 per year, and saw an ad for an accountant at the Bank of St. Helena (the only bank, with only one branch) paying a salary of £12,000 per year.  This is not to say that the cost of living on St. Helena is low.  Food prices seem about the same as the UK and petrol is higher.  Tuesday, March 13, was our last full day on the island.  We spent time in the museum which has at least something on every aspect of St. Helena history and life.  We returned the Toyota 4WD to Hensel who seemed to want to be an intermediary between us and whoever owns the vehicle.  We drove 337 km in 12 days.  We never saw any paperwork nor signed any agreement for the vehicle!  It was a large, heavy and unwieldy vehicle, not one we would have had for choice, but it did enable us to go on roads and tracks we could not otherwise have travelled. We had a final dinner with our cousin Caroline and Hensel with much discussion of the large, if disorganized, collection of family photos and documents that Caroline inherited from her father.  On Wednesday, March 14, we delivered our cabin baggage to the customs house at the requested time of 7 am.  It cannot be a less formal procedure.  One simply hands one's bag to a saint who takes it into the shed that serves as a customs house.  They do put the bags through a scanner (X-ray?) however.  We returned at the requested time of 10 am, said fond farewells to Caroline, Hensel, Nicole and Dax, all of whom came to see us off.  Then, again with minimal formality, there is a brief passport check.  One dons a lifejacket, steps into a ferry boat (at just the moment when the height of the boat rising on the swell matches the height of the dock, with two deckhands there to help), motors out to the RMS St. Helena, makes that step again onto a pontoon tied to the RMS and climbs the steep ladder steps on the side of the RMS.  Shortly before noon the RMS raised anchor, set "sail" for Ascension and the island of St. Helena rapidly disappeared into a watery haze hanging over the South Atlantic.

St. Helena barbecue and High Tea at the Golf Club

Saturday, March 10 (continued), undeterred by our near shipwreck earlier in the day, we went to a barbecue that evening at the new home of Caroline and Hensel's daughter and her husband.  Their driveway is steep and has two hairpins that cannot be negotiated except by reversing down one of them.  However, the house itself is an example of how modern and comfortable a house can be built on the island.  They had a number of their young friends for dinner as well.  One of note was a South African physician who married a saint and is on contract to work at the hospital for two years.  He will not do more than that because facilities and procedures are so limited that he feels he would lose his skills through lack of practice.  He is of note because his parents emigrated from South Africa to the US when he was small.  They went to Western Michigan University, so this young doctor was educated in Kalamazoo until he was 18.  And he is a Wolverines fan!  On Sunday, March 11, Jack started the day by climbing Jacob's Ladder again.  He put in some considerable effort and got to the top in 12 minutes.  Climbing the Ladder is an annual event that draws competitors from around the world.  The current record is just over five minutes which works out to two steps per second.  In the afternoon Jack took up an invitation from a British geologist we met earlier on the ship to attend the award ceremony of a golf tournament held at the island's only (9 hole!) golf course.  The tournament was definitely for saints, not tourists, and Jack met many interesting island characters.  The award ceremony was preceded by beers at the bar and succeeded by "High Tea" - ultrathin British sandwiches, sausage rolls, cheese straws, jam tarts, etc., and tea!