After Mash

hi - a short post as not much to say - we've taken out a monthly sub at Pegasus, which allows us to use their pool and gym - not badly equipped and air-conditioned, so no excuse for Penny to go to flab. It's also just up the road from the Iwokrama Georgetown offices.
We also got our shipping in last week, so good supplies of tea and marmite, and a ton of toiletries, that we could have easily bought here.. still, it was fun unpacking the boxes - which are going to recycled for Penny's archive storage - and Malcolm's appreciating a few more changes of clothes - he'd been on holiday rations until now.
Tuesday 23 February, was republic day or Mashramani, with a sort of carnival parade - not quite up to Trinidad standards but still pretty noisy and crowded. We took an old disposable camera, so photos to come, if we can get it developed. We saw some floats from government departments, which I don't think happens at Notting Hill.
We're beginning to get used to the heat; our location,on the East Coast sea-wall, means we are not too plagued by mosquitos, and we have got into the habit of walking along the sea-wall most evenings before the sundowner on the balcony, so not too bad really. And now Malcolm's making bread again - it's almost home from home... only 30 degrees hotter!

First trip to the Field Station

Sorry for lack of post last weekend - fairly quiet apart from a birdwatching tour in the Botanical Gardens with a young rasta and enthusiastic Guyanese birder, who located the 'signature' bird of the Guyanese coast, the blood-coloured woodpecker, but as it was towards 6pm by the time we saw it, it looked like a little dark blob to us non-(or in Malcolm's case, incipient)birders.
This week, we've had our first trip to the field station, on the northern edge of the Iwokrama reserve, quite an idyllic spot by the Essequibo river. It involved a fairly long and bumpy drive along a dirt road, with critical timings across the old railway bridge at Linden and a ferry across the river just before the lodge. Penny did some work including finding out about sustainable logging and monitoring activities, and reinstating a library in a 'benab', a circular structure, open to the elements and the birds, who regarded the shelves as an ideal nesting area. We managed a trip out to Turtle Mountain, 'climbing' 300m and sleeping in hammocks and eating a tasty catfish cooked over a camp-fire. Lots of macaw, toucan and some monkey sightings but no jaguar yet.