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Allende makes bread

Bread making has become a routine activity on a Sunday morning – preparation before church, rising during church (8am Mass) and baking after church. Allende (nuestra amiga VSO espanola) was very keen to have a go but 6am on a Sunday was a little early, so we made an arrangement for later and had bread making master class. It was the same day we were due to go to the British High Commissioner’s home and Marie (Canadian VSO from Region 9) and Tulsi (South Indian VSO from across the street) had turned up to talk to us at 7am that morning. They were present for the master class!

Allende threw herself into the task as with everything she does. Sticky fingers and whole body kneading were the order of the day. But the bread turned out fine as you can see from the photos.

She had another private lesson three days later but, at the point of writing, she has not yet ventured into doing it on her own. Perhaps a little more encouragement will be necessary.

El pan delicioso de Allende

The biting things!

"You might well be worried - we're after you!"

We have been plagued with these evil little ...... since we arrived. This morning I counted 100 new and old bites on the fleshy parts of my body. They are particularly bad at dawn and dusk and during the rainy season they are everywhere. They love to get human blood and then make their getaway. If they get the chance they will bite 5 or 6 times in one region. You rarely see them land but just floating around the air. Fortunately, although the number of bites has not reduced, our reaction to them is getting better.

There are two types of bites – the one which hurts and makes you scratch, lasts a few days and then disappears leaving its mark – and the mosquitoes that attack, leave a blister which can be quite big, drive you insane for one hour exactly and then the blister disappears leaving no mark at all. But the worst of all are those that get you when you are least expecting it, after one or two rums when you are sitting quietly, perhaps reading. These are the commandoes of the mosquito world. They attack the bare feet, bite half a dozen times and before you know it you are driven insane and they have left with a fair proportion of your blood to feast upon whilst you hop around trying not to scratch.

Good bless the little critters. They have to get their food from somewhere. And some people are veggies because of cruelty to animals. What about cruelty to humans by dogs and mozzies?

Death to all Mosquitoes!

A weekend of Food

This weekend, we decided that it was time to have some real food. On Friday evening we went to a Brazilian Restaurant called Peppers on Regent Street. It’s more of a café really but the food was very good. The main meat we have here, and let’s face it Mary and I are carnivores (apologies to all those veggies amongst you), is chicken, hotdogs and bacon. Peppers had a supply of excellent barbecued rare beef, chicken and pork. We were a little taken aback when we discovered we had to pay for it by weighing our plate and paying GY$2,000 per kilo. It was quite efficient but strange. We are not prepared to divulge how much we ate but next time we will get filleted chicken rather than on the bone because who wants to pay for bones?

We were going to have a light Saturday evening but Meg and Allende decided to go to JRs (an alcohol free burger bar). This is the place we go when we are seeing someone off. This time it was our friend Meg’s turn who is returning to England for three months due to what the Guyanese call UFA (unexpected family affairs). She’ll be back in September but we will really miss her and we wish her and Bill well during their unexpected time together. She should be in Barbados at this moment waiting for her Virgin flight to Manchester.

Today is 17th June, the day Daniel, our eldest was due (birthday 3 days later). We always celebrate that day so we will be going to the Palm Court for a meal and Karaoke with Jeffery the compere – a mixture of beautiful singing and awful dire caterwauling, but it’s great fun.

Meg's last evening at JR's spent with Stephen, Mary and Allende before she travels back to Manchester for three months. Bon Voyage!

We'll miss you, Meg!!!!

The Job

Well, this is the real reason why we are here. We have both been very busy with lots of varied work. Last week we moved office – just across the corridor. They needed our room for a Head of Department and the one we moved into was much bigger overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. There are 6 of us in the office - Mary and I and Meg who came with us, Nicholas a young Guyanese man who is working on Physical Education and Jess and Ann from Texas and Chester respectively who are VSOs working on a Literacy Project. They will be leaving in July and the office will be very big for 4 of us. There are no plans yet for any other VSOs to come to NCERD.

I have been working in a number of schools with all of the challenges that that entails. I can’t go into detail here but it keeps me well occupied and allows me to experience what is going on at the chalk face – literally chalk here, not even dustproof and whiteboards and interactive whiteboards and unimaginable dream. Alongside this the Education management Programme is keeping me occupied. I have started NCERD’s first website – slow going because of the speed of the internet but you will be able to see it develop – http://www.ncerdleaders.com/.

Mary has been working on three projects. The first is the evaluation of another project with which she wasn’t involved which entails travelling to all the regions and asking questions about the success of a set of materials. The second is an Educare Project, a charity run by an ex VSO which has been setting up after school clubs linked to a feeding programme. Mary and Meg will be training the teachers in all of the regions – a lot of travelling. The third is a series of 3 day workshops about a whole school approach to teaching reading through phonics. That starts in the end of July so she has time to prepare.

I have been travelling the regions meeting groups of teacher trainees on the Education management programme and giving my take on leadership (a concept that has not really taken off here – they are more into administration). They will understand it though by the time I leave!!!

All in all it is very satisfying and varied work. It may take a while for it to filter through to the children (the only thing that is important) but, sure enough, it will do and those will be the outcomes VSO requires to justify our stay here.

Regional Director Visits Gerorgetown

We were just lamenting the fact that our social calendar seemed to be drying up when we invited to the VSO Director’s Home to meet up with some new VSOs and the Regional Director for the area – Matt. Guyana is the most westerly VSO country and there are others in scattered places which do not fit into a category such as Asia or Africa. These are all lumped together including the Pacific, China, and Guyana and so on. Matt is in charge and spends most of his time travelling. It was great to meet him and all the other VSOs again. Many of them will be leaving in July and August and we will be left with just a small number, from about 25 when we arrived to 7 or so. But there will be another batch in August.

Just for Will and Kate

The Shepherd’s Pie

We don’t just experiment but the old favourites come out as well.

Rain, Rain and More Rain

Yes, it’s the rainy season and sure enough, it knows how to rain in Guyana. There has been 2.4 times the normal rainfall for the May / June rains as they call them. This is the main rainy season. However, we have only had one day of floods and I think our Wellington Boots, or Long Boots as they call them here are warding it off. I thought it rained in Lancashire in the rainy season there from September to July but nothing like this. It will appear from nowhere, the only sign being a black cloud which suddenly appears and, oh yes, the sight of people running.

If you are not prepared, for example, on your bike and on the way to a school and your cape (ours donated by Peter and Angela) is in your basket, you have about 2 nana seconds to put it on. I’m quite good at it now but the first time was a scream. It was a good job that everyone else was so concerned about themselves that no-one saw me. Raindrops the size of water bombs shoot down straight ten thousand a time in a square foot. I pulled the cape out of its bag and struggled to pull it over my head – the helmet got in the way and it wouldn’t go up or down. The neck zip was closed and I only extricated myself by taking off the helmet. By that stage my head was as wet as if I had jumped in Darwen baths – all this whilst sitting on the bike trying to hold it upright between my then sodden legs and socks. I tried again and succeeded but where was the neck zip – oh, at the back!

Never mind, thinks I, but realize that I can’t put the hood up because I would be blinded. Took it off again and this time did it right. My boxers were beginning to feel decidedly soaked and I set off for the VSO office 200 yards away. I had to stop and walk the last fifty yards because the water mixed with the sun screen I had put on ten minutes earlier and cascaded over my eyebrows and into my eyes causing them to sting – sun screen, I ask you!!!! Arriving at the VSO office and undercover but not wanting to go in because I don’t think they would have enough mops to clear up after me; I waited until the rain eased. I set off for my school but, because it was still a little wet put the hood up having abandoned my helmet. It had about two pints of water in it and I showered myself again. C’est la vie! I arrived at my school soaking wet only to find that only 40 of the 260 children had turned up for the day – “BECAUSE OF DE RAIN”.

The weather here didn’t quite live up to the expectations of the Guyana Tourist Board Website. It was supposed to be wall to wall sunshie and blue skies all day long with intermittent very heavy rain,usually in the early evening, which clears up very rapidly. Well, the heat is certainly there all of the time. The skies are blue just about as much As in England and it is very frequently cloudy. The website that said there was no name for overcast is certainly wrong – it’s overcast for much of the time but still hot at the same time.

We are about to enter the hot season. It may go from 32C ish to 35 / 36C. We cope well with the latter and we’re sure a few more degrees will not make a lot of difference.

Vicious Dogs

Georgetown is not only home to 400,000 people but also to what seems like the same number of dogs (I exaggerate but it seems like that as you see as many on the road as people). NONE HAVE COLLARS, NONE ARE ON A LEAD, NONE SEEMED TO BE WALKED BUT THEY JUST WANDER AROUND THE STREETS GUARDING THEIR OWN TERRITORY. I’m sure that many of them are owned but certainly the majority seem to live a life independent of their owners.

Nighttime can be very noisy with the birds (yes, they sing all night), the croaking frogs and the dogs. We live in Queenstown and we have our own dogs here. Then there are the Kitty dogs, the Campbelville dogs, the Albertown dogs, the Bourda dogs and dogs from every district in the city. One lonely little creature may begin to howl followed, in sympathy by others from the same area. Within a few moments, there is sufficient howling and barking for dogs from another area to be woken up and take up the challenge to bark louder and howl more insanely. The theory of the full moon is definitely true because the howling lasts for most of the night. (Incidentally, the new moon lies on its back here rather than on its side). I digress. Before you know it dogs from three or four regions are in competition and the noise is horrendous. But fortunately, the leader of the pack lives next door to us – a guard dog from a high up government official. He’s big and mean and definitely in charge. A few distinctive barks from him, having been rudely awaken, frightens the rest (they know who’s in charge) and the whole process dies down in reverse until Government Dog out barks the last of the little wimps!

But that’s not I wanted to write about. Three weeks ago I was visiting someone in Kitty on my bike and, as I left, I mounted and swiftly pulled away. Within 2 seconds, four mangy dogs, three brown and one black were chasing me and yelping at my heals – two on either side. Not wanting to be bitten 4 times, I cycled faster and they ran with greater haste. The front runner on the left snapped at my bare ankle (wearing no socks and a pair of shorts) and the blood spurted out!!! They had achieved their goal, seen me off their territory and disappeared under an abandoned car.

It was shock. I didn’t even stop to examine the damage but cycled the mile or so home at great speed with the cries from passers by stating the obvious “you’ve got blood pouring down your leg”. There were five punctures on my left upper ankle, three small and two large. Mary ministered to me and we then had to go through the routine of getting the booster rabies jabs – one that night and another 3 days later. We don’t think the dogs here have rabies but it’s VSO procedure. Thanks to Marco, another VSO, for administering them.

What came after was worse because I was encouraged to go to the police, not a pleasant experience. It was a bit like a Victorian Gaol – rickety wooden gun cupboard marked “rifles”, violence aggression, shouting and generally not a place to be. They were quite pleasant and helpful to me but a suggestion of possibly “putting the dogs out” caused some worries about relationships with neighbours from others. So now, I walk in their territory and have my bicycle lock and chain handy to put them out myself if they come anywhere near me! So far so good.

Barbecue at the British High Commisioner's Residence

The next highlight on the social calendar was when the British High Commissioner and his wife invited all VSOs to his private residence for an afternoon barbecue and swimming party. They have a lovely home – befitting the position – with a tempting swimming pool, a large friendly dog and a beautiful patio. We were given an excellent meal with all the trimmings (and wine – only the second glass since we came here). Thanks to Mr and Mrs Wheeler for their hospitality.

VSO Forum

After about three months VSO arranged a Forum for all of the volunteers in a conference centre in region 3 – The Toucan Inn and Guyana Heritage Museum. We had the Friday off and went by a private hire bus (clean, comfortable, spacious and no music!). It was a really good weekend in that all the VSOs were able to meet up, it was well prepared (thanks to Ann and Hannah) and offered a varied programme. We were given a breakdown of everything that was going on, a question and answer session (which I led) and spent the afternoon discussing issues in our various groups – Education and Disability. At the end we had a wind down session when everyone was asked to write down something from their past – perhaps a secret, controversial or downright shocking. In teams we had to match the item with the person – quite a difficult task as VSOs on the whole are sensible and law-abiding. Secrets included being locked in the slammer for stealing Christmas trees, throwing a puppy over a wall, being jailed for being a political activist and meeting Nelson Mandela. It was great fun!

But, the social bit was the best. The food was delicious and varied including individual omelettes at breakfast. In the evening, much rum and coke was consumed and late at night we all went up to the parapet in the pitch black and observed the stars and the satellites as they passed above us. The VSO group is great, sociable and from varied backgrounds and countries. It makes the experience so much the richer.

The accommodation was excellent – unusual, quirky with masses of interesting bits of Guyanese history all over the place. It doubled as a museum and the owner, a Portuguese Guyanese was a bit of a historian. He was very proud of his achievements and wanted to show us around. The room had its own facilities – a luxury here!

We went home the next day after a hearty breakfast and a relaxing morning reading the paper. Mary and Meg were desperate to get the Cup Final on TV but were unsuccessful. They later discovered that they had the wrong week. Others swam in the pool – quite a luxury.

Catching up on Photos

A long time ago I promised you photos. You may be aware that South America has been having difficulty with its internet. The Americas II cable in French Guiana has been broken and loading photos by dial up takes a long time. So here goes. Just click on the link below and you should be taken to another place where you can catch up on our earlier photos.

Click here to get photos of the first few weeks

Home Sweet Home (in Georgetown)

The Harding Residence

This blog is long overdue because I realise that we haven’t really told you about where we are living. Most of the houses in Georgetown are on stilts or the main part of the house is upstairs with outside living areas downstairs or often it is just storage space. The area is prone to flooding and there were very bad floods in 2005. Some say they might reoccur this year but so far the rainy season is quite mild. So, we have an upstairs house with three bedrooms, living and dining areas, a kitchen and an en suite shower with hot water. What luxury! The house is surrounded by a lawn, patios and a garden and our landlady keeps them all immaculate. She is the exception rather than the rule so it’s a great place to live!

I'm sure this little piece has just got byou longing for more. So all you have to do is click on the picture below to see a whole array of Home Photos on the web link.

Our Home in Guyana

Post Shell Beach and back to work!

Well, here’s our news since we got back from our adventures in Shell Beach. We were invited by our landlady, Miss P to go to the annual Hat Show in the Jubilee Gardens which is near the VSO Office. They’re small gardens and very colourful. The people call Georgetown the Garden City but these are the only gardens which are as we would know them in England. Although there are beautiful flowering trees everywhere. Very few people have gardens but they have their private space which is often in the form of a yard and, if there are any plants, they are in pots, very often without flowers – ferns etc. Our house is perhaps the exception with its lawn and flowering plants. Anyway, I digress, we went along for 4pm, looked around the gardens and then the show started. There were about 8 – 10 women in each category starting with children in the elegant and original categories. It was like an Easter Bonnet Parade and took us back to the 1950s as the ladies and girls paraded around the bandstand with the police band playing ‘sensible’ music in the middle. The highlight was when Miss Cecilia Harding at 84 years of age danced around the bandstand to everyone’s amusement. Aunt Cecilia as we like to call her!!!

The following week we invited all the VSOs around to our house for an Afternoon Tea with home made scones, bread and cakes. It was a lovely day. It started at around 4pm and we waited until the sun came over the yardarm as it does here at 6pm and then we had a little tipple – Banks Beer – the local brew and Rum and anything! A great time was had by all. Everyone gives a party at some time. Ours was to celebrate our anniversary, St George’s Day and the birth and death of Shakespeare all of which occurred on 23rd April.

Last week we went on a business trip to Vreed-en-Hoop which is just across the Demerara River to the West of Georgetown. We went to visit several schools and, yet again, saw first hand the challenges that schools have to face on a day today basis. However, the Nursery Schools seem to be an oasis of calm with their excellent display and generally very delightful schools – but they get every afternoon off to prepare. I suppose the strange thing about this trip was going to work and coming back on the launch across the river.

The following weekend was another National Holiday but there was no day off as it is on a Saturday. It was Indian Arrival Day which commemorates the Indian indentured labourers arriving in Guyana in 1838 to work in the sugar plantations. We treated ourselves by going to the Meridien Pegasus Hotel which is right next door to where we work – the only really “posh” hotel in Georgetown – and having one beer. At £1 a bottle, one is all we can afford on our salaries of £105 a month. We then went to the Horticultural show next door which, as our friend Meg says, is a bit like the Southport Flower Show. We had afternoon tea (a treat from the past with ladies with hats) and bought a few plants to decorate our veranda. We have quite a collection now! In the evening we went to the Arrival Day Concert in the Cultural centre which was almost 3 hours of Indian song and dance with some additional items from other ethnic groups. It was unbelievably colourful and a great experience. The next afternoon we went to the National Park to join in the Indian Family Fun Day.

Just a word about Sundays! I get up at about 5-45am to make the bread for the week and off to church on our bikes. It’s a great community. One week there was no priest so the women lay ministers did a service. Who says we can’t have women priests? Sundays are like Sundays here. Wherever you go at any time of day you can hear the services, usually evangelical with loud sermons and stirring music. It’s very uplifting.

I seemed destined to work in schools called St Mary’s. From my own school in the sixties – St Mary’s College to my last school where I was Headteacher in Croydon and now to a school in Brickdam, Georgetown – St Mary’s High - where I am helping out with some advice. Mary must be looking over me! (and then, of course, there’s my own Mary - she’s always looking over me!!!!)

Work is getting very hectic for both Mary and I. I am still busy with the Education Management Course for Headteachers, travelling around, meeting trainers and advising as well as getting together with large groups of trainees (Heads, Deputies and Senior Staff) to talk about Leadership and Management. In addition, I am giving management advice to schools where it is needed. I have been asked to prepare a series of 8 TV programmes on Leadership and Management and hope to go live in September. There’s never a dull moment. Mary and Meg have got several projects going at the same time from training on SEN in nursery schools to planning large 3 day SEN workshops to be held in Georgetown for teachers across all the regions. She’s also planning work to train teachers for after school clubs linked to a feeding programme for children. What busy little bees we are!

It’s been a bit like work, work, work in the last few weeks but there are exciting things on the horizon – the most pressing of which for Mary and Meg is to go to Windies Sports Bar at 10am this morning to watch the FA cup. This afternoon we are having Guyanese cooking lessons and tomorrow we have been invited along with all the VSOs to a Pool and Barbecue Party at the residence of the British High Commissioner! Watch this space!

Photos are from the Georgetown Botanical Gardens which are about 10 minutes walk from our house. The middle one - the water lilly is the national flower of Guyana and you see them everywhere, in dykes, ditches, rivers and canals. They last for about one day but there are always others to replace them. The seed pod, on the left is almost as spectacular and looks like a giant sieve. On the right is the Georgetown Kissing Bridge.

If you want to see more pictures of what we've been up to during this period, click on the picture below to go to the web link.

From Shell Beach to Arrival Day 2007

Feed the Poor Charity Cruise or The Guyanese letting their hair down big time!

Having been on a boat for so long we couldn’t decide whether to go on the day cruise we had booked for charity on Sunday. We weren’t expecting a cruise liner as it showed on the picture, but a little better than the Bartica ferry would have been appreciated.

We did go and arrived at 9am as the boat arrived. It took two hours to unload the lorries, all 8 of them. Moving backwards and forwards to adjust the weight of the ship, they left one at a time over some makeshift planks. We got on at 11am, left at 11-30am and by 11-45am we realised we had made a big mistake!. It was to be 6 hours of boozing, singing, rapping and dirty dancing.

We should have known when the crowds were controlled getting on the boat by policemen with semi automatics. It was the Guyanese enjoying themselves at their best. It was good natured and everyone was well behaved but it got livelier as the drink took hold. The standard measure being sold was a full bottle, whether it was beer or rum!

We went to a place where we could get off, called Fort Island, in the Essequibo River. It was a Dutch fort about 2 hundred years old. Later as we passed through the place where the lorries had been earlier where all the dirty dancing was going on, I felt a woman’s backside writhing against mine. Quite pleasant but when she turned round and saw it was me, she screamed the boat down!!!!

The great Shell Beach Easter Adventure

Our big adventure was over Easter. On the Wednesday we set off to go to Shell Beach to see the turtles lay their eggs. It was to be a 24 hour journey by minibus and sea going speedboat because the 90 mile beach in the North West of Guyana, a few miles from the Venezuelan border, is only accessible by sea and river as the Atlantic is on one side and thick rain forest on the other. What a challenge it became.

We left at 6am to go to the central market – Stabroek – and caught a speedboat across the Demerara River (sugar fame) to Vreed-en-Hoop where we got a minibus to Parika only to catch another speedboat across the Essesquibo River, mentioned earlier. I have been on this one before in full work gear and brief case and it goes unbelievably fast, there is no cover except tarps and you get very wet. They hold 10 and you have to sit in the boat according to your weight. Getting on and off for those not so nimble can be a challenge. This one took 45 minutes and yes, we did get very wet. We dried off on the next 90 minute minibus journey to Charity and the estuary of another river. Here we got provisions (bananas) and I used the public loo made of rusty corrugated iron, which hung over the river and you can guess what happened after that. But when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go!

We left in the “Da Generation X” speedboat for 15 passengers at 12-30. This was to take us all the way to Shell Beach in about 3 and half hours (remember that!). Fine, we went to the Ocean and it was decided it was too rough. We were pleased because it was incredibly fast, choppy and we had lost contact with out bottoms and the sea and our soggy underwear all merged into one. We turned south into the rain forest. Beautiful, hanging trees, dangling roots nine foot long, birds, eerie, windy, beautiful water lilies everywhere (the National Flower) and generally enchanting. We set off at high speed and the wash was 6 foot high and the boat threw us from side to side as we twisted and turned without every slowing down – a very skilled driver. After a while, we arrived at a bridge and Maruca – an Amerindian (local inhabitants) village which was real rain forest Guyana. We were a novelty as we walked through the village but no one spoke. It started raining and the dirt main street changed into a river. We waited; it didn’t abate, so we set off again.

This time the water was coming from the wash, the clouds and the seriously dripping trees. We could not have been wetter if we had been in a Launderette machine and so we dispensed with the tarps and enjoyed the scenery. Until, when we got to the 99 turns river (so called because it was built by local slaves in the 18th Century to join the Waini River with another leading to the ocean and it literally had 99 bends). It was very shallow and it was not unknown for passengers to have to get out and push. There was no-one for many miles except the eagles above and the stork idly looking on wondering what these crazy white humans were doing.

Then the pump silted up and we went so slowly we could have swum faster. The day was getting on and dark comes at 6-10pm sharp and we weren’t going to make it either way. Unlike the Norfolk Broads there was no friendly pub to moor up against! Then we had a spurt, off again at great speed and crack!!!!!! The propeller hit a root and sheared off a blade. Boats like to go round and round in those circumstances but our driver, who was very skilled but a little fool-hardy, carried on without telling us. It was only when we realised there was a problem that we got him to stop and we did, in VSO terms, a needs analysis. Yes it would be dark in an hour, Yes the boat was going about 2 miles an hour, no there was nowhere to stop or get help, yes, we only had one torch and when it gets dark, it’s really dark.

We voted to turn round and go back which we did slowly and carefully and eventually arrived back at Maruca 8 hours after we had left. We stayed in a small boarding house only accessible by river. There were 15 of us and the landlady managed to put us all up in bunk beds, sleeping on the floor, in hammocks etc. Then the real adventure started. We came back from having our tuna sandwich and our friend Allende (who is Spanish) was exclaiming “It’s impossible, it’s impossible! I have arachnophobia. I can’t sleep with the spiders. I can’t sleep with the tarantula (pronounced the Spanish way tarantoola) and to our surprise, right above her head in the open eaves, there it was!!! Baby but nevertheless hairy and menacing and about 5” wide. No amount of spray and shooing would convince Allende whose hysteria was considerable. Mary was just hiding away because she knew the open eaves could invite the spider over to her bed as well. Allende finally slept after donning her iPod, closing her eyes and being tucked in all round in her net. The spider was never seen again.

They suggested we get up at 5am for a 5-30 start. Mary was not best pleased but was outvoted and we were down at the river before it got light. There was no electricity anyway so it didn’t make any difference. We waited and waited and the boat appeared “Just now” the Guyanese expression for any time from 1 minute to several days. At 7-30am we set off with a mended prop but still a dodgy pump. After several hours we were going slowly again and phut phut the fuel ran out. Oh dear! We flagged down a boat and siphoned some off, paid him and we were back on our way. This time, it went well and we finally reached the ocean in the top end of Shell Beach and then we found out how fast this boat could really go – zooooooooooom, splash, bump, serious bump, throw up in the air bump, but we all managed to hold on and eventually spotted our camp at 2-30pm. It was like the film South Pacific and the sailors’ entry into BaliHi. Thin logs were placed horizontally on the beach and as we arrived we were pulled up on the logs by about 12 jolly Amerindians who gave us a wonderful welcome, even if 24 hours late!

It was worth the wait. It was like a desert island with the beach being made entirely of crushed shells with no sand. We had tents, there was food cooked in the open and it was an experience we have never had before. The downside were the latrines where the mosquitoes peculiar to Shell Beach bit hard and left blisters, the well which produced water the colour of hot chocolate and the same temperature. But we were treated really well and it was a great adventure. We went turtle watching in the dark at 8pm and others went in the night but no-one saw any and we were probably too early in the season.

The boat left the next day at 10am and was an uneventful, if not bumpy and extremely wet journey. Well, that’s except for the springing of a leak in the Atlantic. We noticed

it when the Guyanese passengers started bailing out. We had to wait for a boat and when one passed (there were very few) and probably a banana boat, all the young passengers had to get off and women and old men (I put myself in that category) stayed on board. The Guyanese continued to bail out whilst the captain bunged the hole with a cork (pronounce “cark”) and away we went, arriving back at Charity after having spent exactly 24 hours on that speed boat (remember the three and a half hours earlier)!!!!!!

We did enjoy it really and it was the greatest

adventure of our lives