Lazy Sunday

Finally, I am sitting in our field lab on a warm Sunday morning on North Andros and it’s been more of an adventure to get here than in previous trips.  This is a bit of a mammoth blog but I thought I would cover the past week’s event.

So the task of getting everyone and everything in the trip lies on my shoulders, of course with some help from everyone else around me.  This is a heavy burden as I have never had to organise so many people and so much stuff before but I do like an organisational challenge so I thought it would be fine! And in the most part it has been, my stress levels have been a little high and there has been some sleepless night but over half of us are here safe and sound.

The preparation in the UK consisted of some lab work and packing all of the equipment.  I definitely cannot take credit for the packing, this is a skill I have tried to learn from Fiona but the chaos is just too much for me to cope with.

Once packed Didi, Mike, George and myself were off to the airport, caught some well deserved sleep in the taxi and then it was time to send the boys off to terminal 3 to catch their flight via Miami (Didi and I were direct to Nassau via BA, luxury).  We have never flown anyone via the states before and I was nervous about leaving those guys on their own as I know how strict the US customs are.  But I need not worry, the heavy bag (luckily the box was too big for the scales and we didn’t get charged excess baggage) was checked in at Heathrow and made it all the way to the Bahamas without a problem.  Didi and I had a gentle flight, which she (easily) slept for most of the time in the most peculiar and uncomfortable positions.  Each time I have stepped off the plane in the Bahamas Once we arrived there were no real issues with Bahamian customs so off we trundled to the hotel, where I slept and Didi explored.

View of the beach from Orange Hill

We picked up the boys who somehow had only been given a 1 day visa and had to get an extension the next day at the immigration office.  So in the morning we visited the immigration office where they were given a 1 month visa and told we needed to extend this on Andros itself.  This introduced the guys to getting things done Bahamian style, which is pretty laid back, slow and to the outsider a little disorganised but hey in this heat I don’t blame them.  Over the next two days we amassed the additional equipment we needed while we are on North Andros which caused our hotel room to become more and more claustrophobic.

Hotel room full of stuff!

On Wednesday morning came the experience of getting this all to the mail boat, filling the car was like a huge game of 3D Tetris, which was very successful.

The car full to the brim with stuff, literally no room for our little Didi

The mail boat took all our stuff and they stacked it all and wrapped it like pros.  Then it was time for us to fly to Andros.  This time we were flying to Fresh Creek in the south of the island was we were picking up a truck from down there.  I was looking forward to this flight as I have never flown into Fresh Creek before and it would be quite a beautiful sight.  Sadly, the flight started in a rather Bahamian manner with one of our boxes not fitting on the plane and this marred the experience of the flight for me, however, it was still quite a sight flying over the creek and one I would like to repeat with a lower level of stress!  We had to wait for the next flight to deliver our box and in the meantime we collected our truck.  In previous trips we have had a number of interesting vehicles.

The car from the trip in September/October 2011.  It would break down in the rain, not very useful for sampling rain!

But never such a beautiful looking truck as this (i'm sure pictures will follow later)!  Sadly, I made the mistake of judging a book by its cover and the beautiful truck has already had to been taken to have the radiator fixed and the steering is a little off, and there is quite a knack to starting it without stalling (I’m winning in the number of times I have stalled the car, by quite a way!) and driving in 2 wheel drive at any speed makes the back fish tail out and I could continue.  Oh well its ours now and we are going to love it and treat it like a princess.  The drive north from Fresh Creek to Nicholls town, where we are based, is about an hour and due to the pot holes in the road you have to drive at a good speed to bridge them.  As I had almost crashed twice in Nassau, I don’t think the guys were that excited about me driving, esp judging by George’s face for the duration of the trip, but hey I was the only one who had driven here before and I was confident I could do it successfully.  We were following a rain storm so the road was pretty wet and all the pot holes were filled with water which was an additional challenge but all was successful with only one bumpy place.  We arrived in Nicholls Town at our motel/villa DayShell in good time and was greeted by some familiar faces to me.  It really felt like coming home and that I hadn’t be gone for any time at all.  We unpacked our stuff and headed to a local bar for some conch and beer which was a nice end to a manic few days.

I realise this blog is huge so I will give a quick summary of the next few days.  Thursday was mail boat collection day, so we all went off to get the stuff, which was loaded in one big lot on the back of the truck.  We came back to the villa and I started to unpack.  Oh my we had a lot of stuff!

I'm feeling zen, calm and in control, honestly!

Friday, I took the guys out and about in the wellfield to put up stemflow and throughfall samplers and they got to understand why everyone moves at Bahamian speeds, because it’s so HOT and SWEATY!  As this trip is the hottest I have been on, I have decided that we are going to do a two stage day of up early (6am) and work for a few hours then back here for lunch and then an afternoon working session.  This is going to be the only way we can deal with the heat!

Saturday, George and I went to the wellfield again to investigate where would be good locations for him to focus on in the north as part of his project; this trip was stunted by the fact that the radiator on the car sprang a leak and we had to travel back to the villa to find a mechanic, in the end all sorted but it wasn’t till very late in the day.

I feel like so much has happened so far that it has to been longer than a week that we have been in the Bahamas, but it isn’t!  It’s going to be one crazy jam packed trip.