Denniblog

Elderberries are good against the flu and colds. Recently, the centuries-old lore has been backed up by clinical studies of Sambucal, of which I now own two bottles. However, they didn’t come cheap at nearly ten quid each for what amounts to a 3-day-course.

Thankfully it would seem that the elderberries’ curative properties are at least partially preserved after heat treatment, and it is not necessary to concentrate them overmuch, so I am looking up recipes for wines and cordials to help us through the winter. But it will be many months before the berries are ripe for the picking.

Prompted by a (harmless but annoying) summer cold, I’m casting around for alternatives. According to Wikipedia they produce a type of brandy in Hungary (bodza pálinka) which is made with 50kg of elderberries per litre. The online price (£ 1.85/40ml) would reflect that. But I’m reasoning that the stuff’s cheaper in Budapest.

However, according to a Google image search, the spirit is clear. Part of the beneficial activity of elderberries is due to the pigments (anthocyanidins, comprising 0.2-1% of the berries and a whopping 0.5% in Sambucal). There are darker incarnations, which I suppose aren’t distilled from quite as much fruit (more like wines), and these may be just what I’m looking for. One more reason to conduct some field research 😉

I reckon there should be a EU-wide initiative looking into the benefits of elderberry drinks, which would boost the economies of several eastern/central European countries.

Nobody has been back in touch about the manatees (which I find a little rude). The expedition club has been in touch—fingers crossed that some members will be interested! 😀

A large population of Irrawaddy dolphins has been discovered around the Sundarbans. The only relative refuge for this species which I was previously aware of (aside from a very sparse distribution in rivers in Cambodia, Indonesia and the Phillippines and along coastal areas in SE Asia) was in the Chilka lake in Orissa. The population in the Songkhla lake in Thailand has dwindled significantly.

With Platanista gangetica apparently thriving right around Dhaka (I’ve previously suspected that they are scavengers) a visit to Bangladesh may well be on the cards next winter.

If you’ve been following my recent travels, you probably know that transferring flights between VA and BWIA at Bridgetown takes more than the allotted 2-2.5 hrs because no baggage agreement exists between the carriers and you must clear immigration, customs and check-in. On my return I miraculously made it, but only because my luggage emerged early (as part of the main luggage—not on a separate transit belt this time), and somebody put in a word for me before the customs officer arrested me for being pushy and obstinate (“give the poor girl a chance”—only in the Caribbean!).

I was shaking all over when I made it to the international check-in counter because it closes one hour before the flight is due to leave. Thankfully there was still a long queue.

Well, we have put in a complaint (several, actually) because I don’t want others to go through this kind of stress and I don’t believe the ticket was advertised correctly. Flight transfers ought to follow certain guidelines, or so I thought.

The initial reply by Lastminute.com followed from the misunderstanding that the luggage would be checked straight through (as I had been informed by VA check-in staff at Gatwick):

The minimum connecting time for your return flight is one hour fifty five minutes and you have almost 2 hours in hand, to take the connecting flight. As per the airline you will have sufficient time to go through the immigration formality and take the connecting flight. There will a through check-in of your luggage, you do not have to manually carry your luggage to the connecting flight.

Lastminute is standing by this claim, only now they admit that immigration and customs must be cleared and the required (‘standard’) connection time has been decreased to one hour fifteen minutes.

Having studied the points raised in your e-mail, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my sincere apologies for any inconvenience that may have been suffered, after investigation into your case please note the standard connection time for Barbados [BGI] – Barbados [BGI] ], for an international flight is 1 hour and 15 minutes.

The connection time allocated for the outbound flight was 2 hours and 30 minutes, and 2 hours for the return section, the standard connection time is allocated including the time taken to collect and check-in baggage.

(Note to LM: quit the grovelling—it changes nothing!)

Who is allocating such times? People who try to break the speed-immigration record? They are not meant for people like me, for sure, nor the lady who was sitting in the seat next to me and moves somewhat more slowly at eighty years of age (I don’t think she’d ever make it to Trinidad, so it’s just as well that she was staying in Barbados). No, the people who allocate these times must imagine that a plethora of specially dedicated staff awaits us at the airport to whisk us through customs and immigration, hand us over to the VIP check-in and probably carry our bags on the way there.

They sure don’t travel in our shoes.

It’s worth noting that this complaint reference has gone through ABTA, so I wonder what their response will be.

I cringe each time Virgin Atlantic’s latest advert appears on TV. Cribbed from the Leonardo di Caprio movie Catch Me If You Can, it shows a bunch of red-clad mannequin stewardesses fawning over a dashing airline captain as they march across a drab airport to the tune of eighties music—just to show that in a quarter of a century nothing has changed.

But that isn’t quite true. I’m seeing more male cabin crew now, although I have yet to encounter a female pilot. And passenger service has declined sharply. My return flight from Barbados had the worst service that I have experienced in a quarter century of travelling.

It all started so well. VA has an image of being young, cutting-edge and fun. I was ecstatic to be flying with them again after my great trip to Nippon 2007. But the Barbados route is not Japan. On the Japan route they would never get away with that level of attitude. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but in future I will pay extra not to fly Virgin again.

Setting aside the complete lack of assistance by ground staff (that is another matter) the service was appaling. It isn’t just that drinks are dealt out in thimble portions: for about three hours after dinner I was waiting in vain for a drop of water. With an elderly passenger sleeping in the aisle seat, I could not get to the bathrooms. The cabin crew took a long time to respond to the signal (in the end I had to stand up in my seat and call out to someone as he was turning his back to me) and the response was “we have only just finished with the duty free”.

“So you don’t believe in giving your passengers any liquid?”

“You’ve had liquid from the bar and you’ve had liquid at dinner.” With a huff, the young man turned on his heels and returned with a beaker containing about 100ml of water.

Usually I take my own water on flights (and I usually do not need it), but in Bridgetown the final check point is past the drinking fountains and I had to discard the water from my bottle. I wasn’t tempted to refill it with the tepid water in the bathrooms.

I should have done.

Yesterday night we watched a repeat episode of Victorian Farm in which Ruth is scrubbing down the beds and walls with salt and turpentine to get rid of bed bugs (in a room that hadn’t been slept in for 50 years).

It seems that back in the day it was teeming with bed bugs everywhere, which begs the question where the critters are now. I don’t make it a habit to clean the rooms—certainly not with salt and turpentine—and I have never in my life seen a bed bug nor been bitten by one.

This strikes me as odd. While bed bugs may have disappeared from the modern home with the advent of central heating or whatnot, plenty of people still encounter them on the road. I have travelled the world, stayed in hundreds of sub-standard or downright seedy establishments, and I have never encountered any. (Unlike Steve to whose blog I’m currently addicted!)

Maybe I just don’t react to them? Or maybe the mozzie coils I use in the tropics get rid of them? Or maybe the guesthouses I choose top stay in are all meticulously cleaned, even the downright hovels (unlikely)?

Come on now: where are the bed bugs? Maybe I should make it a point to seek them out on my next trip.

No reply from the OUEC yet. I suppose expedition proposals have to be in by October, and from what I remember of the club they don’t have regular meetings during term time, just some speaker events. Maybe somebody will pick up on it next academic year…

I may only have seen a grey back arching out of the water, but I must say I’m smitten with manatees. Somebody told me that they are used to keep waterways clear of weeds in Guyana. Apparently there are many of them, so I’m looking up Guyana as a potential destination for next winter 😉

I’m finding out surprising things. Here is a link to a blog entry about a boy feeding grass to two manatees as if they were ponys. They are surprisingly tame. Note the tiny eyes—manatees in the clear waters of Florida have bigger eyes.

[EDIT: no wonder, they are Amazonian manatees (Trichechus inungius) (see comments in blog link), not Trichechus manatus, the West Indian manatee which occurs in Guyana as well and is the principal species used for weed control, as far as I know. Interesting to see bank feeding in Amazonian manatees which have poor eyesight.]

17th January 2009:

[long entry…]

It was past eight o’clock, and I was still waiting for Mr. Boodoo. Or rather ‘Shortman’, his sidekick, who Mr. Douglas had said would come to pick me up.

Heavy grey clouds held the promise of rain. I watched them pile up as the clock turned to eight-thirty, then ten to nine.

“Still playing the waiting game?”

I wondered what it looked like to Mr. Douglas. He’d seen me arrive with a different guy every day, and now I was sitting and waiting for half a morning—after having waited in vain for Truckman for half a day—to be picked up by yet another man.

But he knew Mr. Boodoo. “It’s odd,” he said. “He is normally on time. This is not at all businesslike.”

Mr. Douglas let me use his phone and Mr. Boodoo sounded surprised that nobody had come to pick me up. At least he hadn’t forgotten about me.

“Hold on,” he said.

I did.

*

Shortman arrived five minutes later, with two boys in their early twenties along for the ride. He apologised for being late, but he wasn’t serious. Neither was I. They were here: that was all that mattered.

“It’s Saturday,” he said. It’s our time for liming!”

And with that we were off to d’Hammerhead Bar.

*

“Look at that moth,” Shortman said and grabbed my arm. Something about his eyes made me hesitate. A moth?

I looked and my heart stopped for an instant.

It sat there under the ceiling like a painting, each wing the size of my hand. A museum-specimen come to life. Except that I knew that it wouldn’t move again until dark. With that insight, I could breathe again.

The jungle had come to the bar, and it was time for us to leave.

I wondered when—and if—we would meet the mysterious Mr. Boodoo as we drove up to the RAMSAR sign that marked the entrance to the Protected Area. The school-maxi driver had told me that here I would find guys who knew the swamp. The guy in question lived in a house right next to the sign. His name was Bobby.

He showed me his catch of calalloo crabs and cascadoo. The crabs sold out before we had finished lunch: a delicious curry stew prepared by Shortman who maintained that men were the better cooks.

I found these men a refreshing change from those I had encountered so far.

[read on]

16th January 2009:

I got up to a late start because I had to increase my dose of Vitamin X and wait until I was calm enough to venture out. Those final few days were taking it out of me.

It was past noon, and it was clear that I wouldn’t manage to walk all the way to the Cocal Estate and back before dark. I set off down the road anyway.

The roar of an approaching engine made me turn. I leapt out of the way as a PSTC bus thundered past without slowing. It was almost empty. It seems that not even the locals know when to expect them or where to track down the elusive tickets. However, I still had that 3TT ticket in my wallet. If only I’d paid more attention to the traffic instead of day-dreaming.

After that I threw caution to the wind and flagged down the next car that came along, treating the driver as if he was driving a route taxi, although it was plain that he wasn’t and that I would be his only passenger. He was easy with that. We passed the bridge over the Nariva River and he pulled over, asking whether I wanted to go to the beach with him.

“No, here’s good. How much?”

“How much do you want to give me?”

I handed him 10TT, and he was easy with that too. Sometimes things just are.

I would worry about how to get back when the time came.

I walked back to the bridge. The Nariva river continued for as far as the eye could see with no sign of an estuary. The banks were a dense thicket of mangroves, as impassable as any fence around a military installation.

The river runs parallel to the road and going along the beach suddenly didn’t seem such a bad idea. I walked to a deserted spot—well away from any parked cars—and picked up a sturdy rod of bamboo. Then I continued along the beach, using the seam of mangroves to point the way.

It took me twenty minutes to reach what passed for the estuary. Aside from two fishermen on the opposite bank, I hadn’t seen a soul.

The Nariva River is a classic blackwater river, the water dark like tea, with visibility between 30-45cm. It is rich in organics and fish, but there was nothing which the manatees could conceivably feed on.

Dejected, I turned back. The manatees wouldn’t be at the estuary—I wasn’t looking for dolphins.

The estate was about an hours walk away. It looked out of place with its large sheds; similar to a farmyard back home. Two lads were working in the yard. They greeted me and shouted for the boss as soon as I mentioned the M-word.

“Yankeeee!”

And there he was: Mr. Michael ‘Yankee’ James, wearing a Manatee Conservation Trust shirt.

I felt as if I had been caught in a surreal dream, standing on a farmyard with palm trees in the distance, talking about manatees.

“Come, I show you something,” Yankee said and took me to a large house opposite the estate. A wood-panelled room opened to a panoramic view of the sea. Its walls were covered with press clippings, maps and photographs of manatees.

“Wow!”

Yankee stood by while I studied the newspaper articles, many already familiar from pdf scans on the MCT website.

“Any questions?”

“Yes, how many are left in the swamp?”

“We think about forty-seven.”

Forty-seven? My mind was reeling.

“But— I thought the last estimate was about twenty!”

“Twenty-two in fact,” Yankee said, and grinned.

“They don’t breed that fast! Ohmigod—you found another population!”

His grin widened. “That’s right. There is another sub-population.”

That was all that I could find out from him for now. Yankee was a busy man and I didn’t want to keep him, so eventually I came out with my intent. “I was told that I should contact you about seeing the manatees.”

“No, not me. I’ll give you the number for a Mr. Boodoo. He can make arrangements.”

“Oh—” what had I expected? “Tomorrow is my last day. I’ve spent a whole week chasing after manatees and only just found out about you!”

Yankee regarded me with open amusement. It was clear that I had gone about the matter all wrong. To top it off, tomorrow would be a Saturday.

“I’m sure he can accommodate you.”

So near and yet so far… And yet, I was elated as I bade my good-byes. Forty-seven manatees!

“How will you get home?”

“Oh, something will turn up.”

Something—or rather somebody—did. A man called George dropped me right in front of Dougie’s. I had met him and his friends a couple of days ago, but had forgotten his name. I kept meeting too many new people.

Mr. Douglas let me use his phone to call David Boodoo (6683133; cell 7504688, if you ever want to see the manatees), who was (who’d have thought!) a good friend of his. Somebody would come to pick me up at half past seven tomorrow morning.

Despite the shaky start, it had been a perfect day. I rounded it off with some of Sherna’s excellent food (her tiny kitchen in the orange trailer in front of Dougie’s is a secret so well-kept that I would probably have lived on bakes all week if she hadn’t pointed it out herself) and a few beers at the bar. Even when one of the few man-pests started talking to me (only the second one this week), he couldn’t spoil it. I left and sat on the balcony to watch the sunset.

Tiny stars floated among the trees as fireflies came out to greet the encroaching dark.

15th January 2009:

I spent two hours waiting for the Truckman, but he didn’t show and I only got his voicemail.

He was probably busy. They were expecting the results from the solitary monkey specimen today. Maybe he was miffed because I’d said they should have sampled more of them. When will I learn to keep my big mouth shut?

At noon I gave up and went to d’Hammerhead Bar, but the landlord wasn’t there.

The new field station was supposed to be close to a bridge. It must be near to where I had seen the sign for the RAMSAR site, nearly all the way to Ortoire. I hesitated: it was too far to walk, but it wasn’t straightforward to flag down a ride with no route taxis running, and I did not want to be picked up by a single guy looking for entertainment.

I got stuck at d’Hammerhead for a while because a fisherman called Lambi kept buying me beers. He mixed his with rum, and I asked if he’d finished work.

“No, I’ll go back when the tide is low.” He squinted at the beach “—which is now!” With that he smiled and left, walking perfectly straight as if he’d be downing lemonade for lunch.

He’d offered me to come with him, but said that I’d have to change into short clothes at his place (they wade chest-high into the water to launch the boats), so I declined. Sometimes I regret that I’m not a guy.

The afternoon turned out to be nice, so I decided to walk up to the lighthouse on Brigand Hill. This proved to be the right decision. The steep road was arduous, but the view was worth it:

However, it wasn’t the view that made the walk worthwhile. On my return, I met a Mr. Davis from the Forestry Commission.

*

“The monkeys are falling from the trees!”

This was the strange manner in which Mr. Davis introduced himself. He and a friend were standing at the corner of the Plum Mitan Road.

“Pardon? Oh, you mean all the dead monkeys they’ve been finding.”

Mr Davis nodded grimly. “Yellow fever, I think.”

“Do they have the results yet?”

He regarded me for a moment and I told him about my meeting with the Truckman, but despite working with the Forestry Commission for twenty-seven years, Mr. Davis knew of nobody who went by that name.

We got talking, and he mentioned a recent Oxford University expedition studying trees in the Nariva Area. He had worked with the expedition and with scientists from all over the world.

I asked him about the manatees.

“Ah, you have to talk to a man who calls himself ‘Yankee’. He’s the boss. You find him on the Cocal Estate. The manatees are on private land, but of course the rangers need access. He’s the one to talk to.”

For the first time, I had a concrete lead. There was only one working estate on the way to Mayaro, about twice as far away as the abandoned field station. That had to be it.

I took out the useless map, and both the ranger and his friend, and later Mr. Douglas, confirmed the location. The Cocal Estate was about half-way down the Manzanilla-Mayaro Road.

It was just about walkable.

14th January 2009:

Thirty minutes’ walk from the Beach Facility, I came to an open part of the occluded Nariva River, which runs parallel to the Manzanilla-Mayaro Road. Or perhaps it was one of the many canals which run through the swamp.

Perhaps there would be manatees in these stretches of water, lined as they are with a nibbled growth of reeds and waterlilies. But with only twenty-odd manatees left in the entire area, the chance of a random encounter this close to the road was rather slim.

A guy called Ramish—from a road-clearing crew which had nearly run me over with their big orange digger—crossed the road to talk to me. He offered me a cough sweet and warned me about bandits hiding in the bushes. He also mentioned alligators lurking in the swamp.

The alligators were news to me. I wondered how they and the manatees get on in their shared habitat. Adult manatees are probably too big for an alligator to tackle, but what about the calves? Do mother manatees have a fierce side which I don’t know about? Or maybe their slow movements don’t trigger the ‘gators reflexes?

About twenty-five minutes after leaving the stretch of open water behind me, I finally reached the Manatee Field Station. As expected, it was deserted. There was no sign of any recent human activity. The gate hung open and the faded ‘Entry By Permit Only’ sign was practically an invitation: “get your manatees here!” According to Mr. Douglas, manatees are a delicacy, tasting like beef which is rare and expensive here.

Was I too late? Had the Manatee Conservation Trust been disbanded?

I turned to walk back. Two guys painting a wall at one of the few houses on the opposite side of the road beckoned me over and I went to talk to them.

The field station was indeed abandoned, but one of the men assured me that the manatees were safe.

“They are further upriver,” he said. “They breed there.”

“But nobody is watching them. Aren’t they hunted?”

He shook his head. “Oh no, people are watching. Nobody can come out with them!”

I liked that.

I stopped at d’Hammerhead Bar for a brunch of bake & shark and got talking to the owner—the first time I’d seen him as he usually has business elsewhere. Within five minutes of mentioning the manatees, he was on his mobile to a ranger friend who usually came to the bar for lunch. He was on his way over.

The man, who introduced himself as ‘Truckman’, had worked as a forest ranger for twenty-two years. He promised to pick me up at Dougie’s at ten the next morning. I could hardly believe my luck, but I noticed that he seemed distracted.

Obligations again.

“Really, I do not want to interfere with your work,” I said.

Truckman muttered something noncommittal. And then he told me about the monkeys.

Fifteen dead howler monkeys had been found in one week alone. They had sent a sample to the lab and were waiting for results. Yellow fever was suspected.

One sample?

I recalled the mess the Brits and Americans are making when sampling dead waterfowl for H5N1 Influenza (suspending the samples in saline or broth, to ensure extra-fast degradation of viral RNA) and wondered what tests would be used to confirm yellow fever. Even if the tests were robust, one sample wouldn’t mean much: perhaps they had found the only monkey to die of old age.

“Better to sample the lot,” I muttered.

Truckman bade his good-byes and I walked down the path to the L’Ebranche River. I hadn’t seen Ryan and thought it best to leave a message with his friends, lest he thought I had turned into some incomprehensible phone stalker.

The fishermen were just landing their catch: crate upon crate of snappers but also tiny sharks and tuna, none longer than my arm. The estuary was a haven for juvenile fish. Even with next-to-zero visibility, the waters here are rich. The beach and mangroves were dotted with black vultures (Coragyps atratus, locally known as kobos), expectantly waiting for their share. Dogs patrolled the beach, fat and happy.

People came seemingly from nowhere to buy fish. Some of it was grilled right next to the landing area, on corrugated metal sheets which had been pulled across a small fire. Somebody tossed a bundle of fish innards into the river, and a large striped pufferfish came so close to the surface that I could see it feed. Else there would be a splash and the morsels disappeared into the tea-like water without a trace—cigarette butts and all.

Ryan was there, and so was Charlie. They gave me a lift home.

“I would like to set up a co-operative,” Charlie mused. “We could sell much more fish that way—we struggle to sell it. But the government isn’t interested. The government doesn’t care about this area, only about the heavy industry in the east.”

He had a point; his was an old complaint. The government doesn’t think in terms of small-scale businesses—be they fisheries co-operatives, women’s collectives or eco-tourism outfits. I had heard of one such outfit from second-hand references: ‘South East Ecotours’ were founded in the nineties to bring ecotourism to Nariva. But the fact is that almost all tourists visiting the area come with tour operators based in Port of Spain.

They bring no business to the local community.