Hey friends, family and anyone else reading this blog.
Have just spent the day lazing around at home, watching some tv
shows and doing some housecleaning and
laundry and all that kinda stuff after a big weekend.
I am sitting in bed listening to some music, currenly playing some
Florence and the Machine. It’s a beautiful balmy Caribbean night, the moon has
just risen, the stars are slowly disappearing, and the waves are lapping gently
on the shore sending clouds of ghost crabs scuttling away to the safety of
their burrows. But I am exhausted, the last 2 nights I have had about 5 hours
sleep in total, and it has been SO much fun it has honestly been one of the
best weekends I have ever had and I feel I have to share it with you all!
We got in from the field on Friday and have since had time off as
we are ahead of schedule and have pretty much finished the work we need to do
up until the start of next month. J So It has
been fantastic, having an indefinite amount of days off, it really does make a
world of difference!
Friday night was Mandy’s birthday. Mandy is John’s wife, and John
is the head Warden for the Blue Iguana Recovery Program breeding centre and for
the botanic park itself. A fantastic
couple, from New York / DC; always kind and friendly, and particularily generous
in providing Crystal and I with a bed countless times after a night out and J. They live in a 3 bedroom townhouse
on the water front of North Sound, and they have 2 cats (19 and 20 y/o)!! who
throw up and shit absolutely everywhere in the house, but are so old and loved
that they are not possibly going anywhere soon. So Mandy just turned 35 CI (you
do the math for the conversion to US dollar) – a little joke here in Cayman
what with the CI$~US$ conversion rate being set at a standard rate of about 0.8
CI to 1.00 US.
Anyway, we went to Rackams, our typical Friday night bar, set in
Georgetown on the waterfront, ( same place as where we went 2 weeks ago and I
ended up with a 2 day hangover, a drunk proposal from a blonde
wannabe-dreadlocked Scottish guy who claimed to be a dive instructor and then
proceeded to jump of the balcony into the water below surrounded by very large
Tarpon fish who get fed every night by the kitchen staff with meat scraps…. To
cut a long story short we left shortly after that before he could notice we had
gone).
Ok getting side-tracked… We spent the evening at Rackams, and I
wasn’t in the mood to drink as we had spent that morning cutting trails and
then had hiked back out of the park and it was bloody hot; about 35 degrees or
so. The weather the last few days had been terrible, the wind had come in from
the North and was blowing down a gale for about 5 days straight, clouds everywhere,
terrible beach conditions but awesome field work conditions as it was so cool.
However as soon as night fell, the tent flapped endlessly and so ontop of the
fact that we sleep on wooden boards and holey air mattresses, we also kept
getting woken up every few seconds by the tarp flapping insanely loud by our heads. So we were
exhausted, I had probably had about 4 hours total for both nights, and then had
to work all day in the sun, so my energy levels were seriously diminishing by
Thursday afternoon on our walk home as we were finishing the trail cutting.
Crystal and I got into sleepy-giggle mode and proceeded to hang up my blanket
over the bushes to use for shade, and whilst we waited for Doug to catch up to
us on the trail as we had done our bit, we sat under the blanket and talked
random sh*t for half an hour, crying with laughter at random comments. By the
way we have decided that Cats should lay eggs, it would be awesome! Weird, but
awesome!....
Ok seriously I am getting very sidetracked now.
So
everyone but me drank rather a lot on friday night so I drove Mandy's
car home, and we stayed at John's place for the night, finally getting
a decent night's sleep :)
Saturday was
awesome. Scottish Musketeer number 3 came round and we bought some rum,
fruit juice and cherries and spent the afternoon/evening/night/early
morning walking on the beach drinking rum punch out of plastic glasses
with removable bottoms to stick in the sand. We saw the sunset over the
coconut palms, watched the almost full orange moon rise up in the East,
saw the stars arrive and fade away, and finally saw the moon chase the
sunset, setting in the early hours over the sleepy island. Scott was
the only one who was awake enough to see the sunrise again, Crystal and
I had both fallen asleep :P
We walked along the beach to the
Cemetary down the road, I lost my flip-flops half way along, and we
went to look for a coconut to drain the juice from. We found one, but
unfortunately I only found out it was rotten AFTER I had made a hole in
it, stabbing my hand with a paring knife, and drank some of the
unusually brown cocunut water. It was disgusting!
We went for a
moonlit swim at about 3 in the morning, in our little swimming hole in
the turtle grass, it was freezing in the wind once we got out so had to
follow it up with a hot shower. The warmest place of thewhole night was
actually under the sand, and so the times we were lying on the beach,
we buried our hands and feet. This would explain why the house was so
full of sand the next morning!
Well I think that just about
covers the awesome randomness of the whole night, it was very enjoyable
and it has been great to make some awesome friends. I also have the
coolest roomate ever, she's as crazy as I am and she loves reptiles.
Seriously awesome.
Tomorrow out to the field for the day to
do a little more track clearing, and tonight heading to Musketeer
number 3's place to watch some weeds and hang out with him and his
awesome roomates Graham and Laura.
Until next time, I shall be living it up Caribbean style, as usual :P
Love and hugs,
Melissa
xo
PS:
If you were wondering what the title of this blog means; after a day
out in the field doing the insanely exhausting sweaty and hot work we
do, clearing trails and cutting trees out the way, we look forward to
getting back to camp, sitting down, drinking a huge amount of water
collected from the rock-hole, taking off our work boots, putting on our
flip-flops and getting out the box of wet wipes as a substitute for a
shower. It really is the best feeling to have flip-flops and wet wipes!
Out there, it's the little things that count! :)
