Tristan, part 3
When you say that you are going to spend a few weeks on a tiny part of an island - maybe three miles, end to end, of the part you can walk on if you don't do near-vertical walking - people do ask 'what do you do to fill the time'?
To answer that, I need to explain the weather. The SA Agulhas is an ice-breaker. Part of her work is going down to the antarctic to do scientific research. This is a summer-only job, so other work, including the Gough relief, has to fit in round it. This means the Tristan visits happen in the Southern hemisphere version of March/April. 34 degrees south, mid-Atlantic in spring is very unpredictable. Usually it is chilly (but not freezing), with torrential rain. Something like 25/30 days rain in the month.
So everyone was counfounded by 'summer' weather which set in a day or two after we arrived. Later weather included a couple of 'normal' days, and some big storms (also normal). As many of the activities are out-of-doors, the tourism department's attempt to schedule them didn't always go to plan.
We tried to spin out what we did, so that we would fill our time, but in retrospect, this was a mistake: we should have grabbed every chance - and pushed for doing good weather stuff when there was good weather. The downside of this is we didn't get to see any of the other islands, except from Tristan itself. But ExMemSec did get to try at Queen Mary's Peak. Our guest house included a well-equipped wash house, but it seemed immoral to use the drier when there was a perfectly splendid howling gale. On the other hand, said gale required a high level of pegging skills. And sometimes there were rain-laiden squalls. So laundry was a sport: dashing out to bring it in, forraging in bushes for things blown off the line.
I worked 2.5 days a week, which was pretty much a full time job, given that I would start at, say, 9.30, walk to the internet cafe (arrive 9.45) log on, and wait for gmail lite to do its thing (read novel). Around 10.30, emails downloaded, I would go to my list of 'things I can do when I get on the internet', and go to the first url, and then start on the emails. Any email needing an internet search (and this turned out to be most of them) got added to the list of 'things I cann do when I get on the internet' - a prioritised list, I should add. At a certain point, the first web page would be loaded, an email answered, and I could start the second search. At a later point, the search list overtook the emails to be answered, which I took to be an indication that it was time to go to the Cafe da Cunha (also the museum, archives, post office and tourism department) for a coffee. After that, there was a lot of time spent opening a web page, and reading a novel.
In the other half a day, we walked pretty much everywhere we could. I started a record of the houses - previous visitors have been photographing people, but I am me. We recorded the graveyards.
Wifi was switched on for the houses at around 4pm, and more emails, novel-reading and web browsing followed.
I was mostly reading, alternately, a book by Wilkie Collins and one by Ben Aaronovitch, with a side-step to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists for a chapter or two every so often, and one or two other things - Trollope - Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town and C. J. Sansom's Winter in Madrid. _Eclectic_ if nothing else! I hadn't realised that Wilkie Collins writes comprehensively about disability. I should write something about that. I was depressed by the RT Philanthropists. So little has changed. On the other hand, it was an excellent book to read on Tristan. The museum here is very good at explaining what life was like on the island in the past. RTPh provided an early 20th century UK calibration to that.
To answer that, I need to explain the weather. The SA Agulhas is an ice-breaker. Part of her work is going down to the antarctic to do scientific research. This is a summer-only job, so other work, including the Gough relief, has to fit in round it. This means the Tristan visits happen in the Southern hemisphere version of March/April. 34 degrees south, mid-Atlantic in spring is very unpredictable. Usually it is chilly (but not freezing), with torrential rain. Something like 25/30 days rain in the month.
So everyone was counfounded by 'summer' weather which set in a day or two after we arrived. Later weather included a couple of 'normal' days, and some big storms (also normal). As many of the activities are out-of-doors, the tourism department's attempt to schedule them didn't always go to plan.
We tried to spin out what we did, so that we would fill our time, but in retrospect, this was a mistake: we should have grabbed every chance - and pushed for doing good weather stuff when there was good weather. The downside of this is we didn't get to see any of the other islands, except from Tristan itself. But ExMemSec did get to try at Queen Mary's Peak. Our guest house included a well-equipped wash house, but it seemed immoral to use the drier when there was a perfectly splendid howling gale. On the other hand, said gale required a high level of pegging skills. And sometimes there were rain-laiden squalls. So laundry was a sport: dashing out to bring it in, forraging in bushes for things blown off the line.
I worked 2.5 days a week, which was pretty much a full time job, given that I would start at, say, 9.30, walk to the internet cafe (arrive 9.45) log on, and wait for gmail lite to do its thing (read novel). Around 10.30, emails downloaded, I would go to my list of 'things I can do when I get on the internet', and go to the first url, and then start on the emails. Any email needing an internet search (and this turned out to be most of them) got added to the list of 'things I cann do when I get on the internet' - a prioritised list, I should add. At a certain point, the first web page would be loaded, an email answered, and I could start the second search. At a later point, the search list overtook the emails to be answered, which I took to be an indication that it was time to go to the Cafe da Cunha (also the museum, archives, post office and tourism department) for a coffee. After that, there was a lot of time spent opening a web page, and reading a novel.
In the other half a day, we walked pretty much everywhere we could. I started a record of the houses - previous visitors have been photographing people, but I am me. We recorded the graveyards.
Wifi was switched on for the houses at around 4pm, and more emails, novel-reading and web browsing followed.
I was mostly reading, alternately, a book by Wilkie Collins and one by Ben Aaronovitch, with a side-step to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists for a chapter or two every so often, and one or two other things - Trollope - Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town and C. J. Sansom's Winter in Madrid. _Eclectic_ if nothing else! I hadn't realised that Wilkie Collins writes comprehensively about disability. I should write something about that. I was depressed by the RT Philanthropists. So little has changed. On the other hand, it was an excellent book to read on Tristan. The museum here is very good at explaining what life was like on the island in the past. RTPh provided an early 20th century UK calibration to that.