Driving and swimming on Ascension

On Wednesday, 22 February, we drove up the main, long extinct, volcano —  Green Mountain.  Alarmingly steep, the road features numerous hairpin bends.  In contrast to the cinder cones over most of the rest of the island, and the searing heat that radiates off them, the mountain is covered with wild ginger, grasses and various imported trees.  There is a thick bamboo stand at the top, which is shrouded in fog most of the time.  You can see the clouds of fog sweeping up the mountain from the south. We also drove to an ARIANE tracking station.  Apparently a single pointable dish antenna is sufficient to receive telemetry from the European Space Agency launches from Guyana.  The main employers on Ascension are the US and UK Air Forces who operate radars to track satellites, Cable & Wireless who provide civilian communication off the island with a link to a satellite and the BBC who receive the World Service by satellite and rebroadcast it to South America and Africa with a forest of antennae on the northern end of the island. A visit to the grocery store on the RAF base — otherwise known as the NAAFI (the "naffy" — the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes) — turned up some oranges.  The other shops are out of fruit of any kind.  The one in Two Boats (a village toward the center of the island) has some potatoes, onions and some sweet potatoes that have seen better days! Most of the people who live here are St. Helenians, St. Helena being the closest land at 800 miles away.  Everyone you pass on foot says hello and almost all drivers you meet wave!  Dirt roads are rightly referred to as "dust roads."  The airport is universally called the 'airhead'!  Really. We've been to Comfortless Cove, one of only two safe swimming beaches.  The others are subject to undertow and strong currents — after all, one is jumping off the side of a volcano, even if it is partly under water!  The yellow sand beach in the tiny cove is about fifty feet across between the black rocks.  We had it all to ourselves all day, although we shared the water with small black (with a blue stripe) tropical fish who seemed to like to swim with us!  There wasn't an ounce of shade and the sun was fierce.  We applied sunscreen liberally, but still missed one or two spots.  The beach is called Comfortless because of the mid-1800s fever victims who were brought here from ships to recover but mostly died.  A small, grim, volcanic rock cemetery is nearby, with a few derelict stone and wooden grave markers, of which only one was really legible.