Its about time....
Trip Start
Jun 25, 2008
1
5
Trip End
Sep 25, 2008
The Valley, Anguilla
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Im afraid I cant remember very far back about what ive done...this island life gets to you and I pretty much always forget what day of the week it is. From what I can remember from two weeks ago I went out drinking with an American guy called Matt from North Carolina. He's about the first person close to my age that has stayed at the Arawak so took the opportunity to sample the ,albeit limited, nightlife Anguilla has to offer. The Pumphouse on a Thursday night is the place to be, they have a live jazz band on...Nice! Was absolutely heaving and it's the busiest ive ever seen any place on the island. The weekend after that drinking session, so not last weekend, the one before, I went snorkeling at Little Bay. This place is incredible, the only way to get to it is by either swimming round from another bay, by boat or by climbing down a cliff on a rope. Needless to say I took the rope option...wasn't as bad as it looked im happy to say. The snorkeling was great, nice to finally get into the ocean and see some wildlife.
Also that weekend I spent an afternoon at this little beach bar called Smokeys, had my first rum punch...jeez! They make them damn strong here, took me an hour to drink then had to take a long walk to clear my head...got a bit pished. Managed to take some self portraits that didn't come out too badly considering the state I was in.
Last week was all about the first phase of the National Hurricane Exercise, involving all the utility companies on the island. The scenario was that a car had set off during the eye of a storm, got caught up when the storm came back and a electricity pole fell on to it. 2 persons trapped inside and one person walked off to get help (yours truly!). Well that was the plan anyway. It was all going fine until it was time for me to head off into the bush to get myself lost. The fire service is responsible for the search and rescue here, well that was what I was told anyway. By the reaction of one of the senior officers on the site visit before the exercise it was clearly news to him....doesn't exactly instill much confidence in being found! On the day of the exercise the fire service got around the issue of search and rescue by just not turning up for the exercise...which made for an interesting part of the exercise when it came for the two casualties to be extracted from the car. The utility company guys just left them there and got on with what they were doing. One thing I have noticed here is that no one will work in the rain. The slightest hint of a shower and they are off into their cars to take shelter. I was left out in the rain getting soaked as everyone just scattered. It seemed most of the guys only turned up to get a free lunch (which was damn good) and to get absolutely blind drunk....i was wondering why people kept on walking over to this one truck, seemed it was the booze wagon.
The rest of the week went by pretty fast, without actually doing very much apart from writing some reports about the hurricane preparedness of the two big development projects over here. The weekend was a relaxed one, well Saturday anyway. Sunday we went exploring a cave. It is hidden off the road in the bush and you have to climb down this little entrance into it, but by god its worth it. Absolutely amazing experience. Not many people know that its there so it was deserted, felt like real exploration as we had to crawl through some passages and clamber down some small cliffs. Think were going to go down there again in a few weeks with some better gear and go in a bit further. Really good to see some of the real island, wouldn't get the opportunity if I was just here on holiday in one of the resorts. I have been offered an extra month here due to the time it is going to take to carry out the vulnerability assessment, as I haven't even started it yet due to the amount of work that has needed to be done.
That's it from me for a while, not much planned for the coming weeks but will try and update at the weekend or early next week should anything exciting happen!
Take care!
