Edward Pollard

Arizona, February 2002

George Bush Intercontinental Airport proved to be whole uninspiring, which I guess is kind of apt.  But what did surprise me was the wetlands in southern Texas, I had expected all of them to have been drained but there still were some.  The other odd thing is the view of Houston.  A long way from the airport but still clear as the place is so flat.   A classic case of tall buildings being built as status symbols, (Enron included) it’s not like they are short of space.  The flight out proved that.  Texas is just  huge and flat and brown and a whole load of nothing.  Very bleak.  Things only started getting interesting in New Mexico and Arizona.  The latter I quickly realised is a very large state, and a lot more diverse than one imagines.  I think I expected all desert,  and most of it is, but even that is very varied, but there are also lots of mountains and cool things like the grand canyon and Monument Valley.  I even found Tombstone on the map – not all that far from Tucson.

To save money I flew to Phoenix, and what a horrific place that is.  Flying in I thought ‘this is what hell is like’.  Spreading out in all directions in the worst sort of urban sprawl, the whole place is one huge suburb.  Somebody said that it’s now the 6th largest city in the USA, and that’s mainly from retirees heading for the sun.  And so they all have their little plot with the identical bungalow, the swimming pool and the green lawn.  All in the middle of the Sonoran desert.  The airport was built in the 30’s and is now pretty much slap bang in the centre of the town.  I was hoping that I could just get the hell out ASAP.  Unfortunately I had to hang around for the shuttle bus and watch guys walking around with cowboy hats on – inside?!, but did get out and another 2 hours later I was in Tucson.  The contrast was amazing.  I really liked Tucson.  It just felt like a cool little city.   The warm weather helped, the spring had started and it was lovely and warm, but not yet baking hot as it would be in a couple of months.  The town is quite small and has a fairly large student population and I think this adds to the atmosphere, it felt young and quite hip.  Quiet yes, but there were some cool little stores and eateries.  Looked ok too, low buildings and a few oldish stucco ones.  One bizarre thing is the lack of street lights.  Because the area is has several astronomical observatories the local govmt has restricted the use of street lamps.  It gave even the central city streets something of a country feel.  And what with the dry, cloudless conditions made for VERY spectacular night skies.

I only had 3 full days there, which I regretted, there was a lot to see and I would have loved to spend more time exploring the whole state.  But with the limited time we had to plan carefully.  Wednesday morning I went in to see Laura’s office.  Quite amazing again to see the resources that one State chapter of TNC has in comparison to us out in Indonesia.  Seems like they don’t really have any worries at all.  Also quite surprised at how small the staff of the Mexico program was, but then maybe they have more people in the field.  After lunch we headed for some mountains.  Madera canyon, a recommended birding spot.  The drive out there alone was fascinating.  We started in the cliched Arizona desert  with Creosote bushes and big cacti.  The classic ones with big arms that you expect all should be wearing sombreros or something.  They are called Saguaro (pronounced swaro) cacti they are huge (15 ft tall) and the amazing thing is that they are everywhere.  The plains around Tucson and way down into Mexico are covered with what can only be described as forests of them.  So we drive through this but steadily climb up into grassland, that could have been Australia or African savannah.  The place we were visiting is an 8000 ft mountain that is covered in mixed pine and oak woods.  Not what one expects in southern Arizona, but it has lots of these mountains that are basically an extension of the Sierra Madres.  The change was quite dramatic.  One moment we were driving across grassland and the next winding through lovely oak woodland.  Walking up the valley later some of it reminded me of France.  The same small gnarled oaks, but warm and dry.  Higher up it gave way into more large fragrant pines.  And at the top of the pass that we climbed up to was snow.  Only a could of small patched, but enough for us to throw a couple of snow balls, how many people have done that in Arizona!  Thursday and Friday we went down to the border with Mexico to a place called Organ Pipe Cactus national monument.  A national park basically, about 300,000 acres of desert.  I had seen it on a BBC wildlife documentary years ago and had wanted to visit it ever since.  The place is not especially unique.  It is surrounded by millions of acres of the same sort of stuff, but it is very representative of the Sonoran desert – and beautiful.  It was a three hour drive to get there,  would have been quicker if it wasn’t for the 55 mph speed limit.  Very frustrating when on dead straight empty roads, but Laura had been done on this stretch or road before and wasn’t going to risk.  For the most part the road ran through the Tohono O’dham reservation.  Which is basically 2.6 million acres of desert and not much of anything.  The land is no good for agriculture and as with many reservations these days all they seemed to have were a couple of casino’s.  Including one at a gas station.  Coming back through in the other direction the next day we were delayed by a road accident.  The road was closed for about ½ hour as they brought in the air ambulance, but what interested me most was  that all the emergency services are local.  As each reservation is in some ways it’s own nation they have their own police and fire services.  On roads like this one it made jurisdiction complicated, the road was looked over by the reservation police, border patrol, dept of transport and in parts the park authority.  And I very much doubt that they are any good at co-operating.  Again I was surprised by the variability of the desert.  The Sonoran is a relatively green desert, not dunes, or bare rock and soil, there is plenty of vegetation, something like 23 species of Cacti and lots of other succulents.  Depending on the altitude, aspect, the slope and things the desert would change quite markedly.  Some of it was the vast plains of Saguaro cacti, the next it would be dominated by a dense brush or creosote, down the hill and around the corner and it’d be dominated by cholla – cacti that from a distance look soft and fluffy, but up close the fluff reveals itself to be all thorns.  And then down in the park large areas of Organ pipe cacti, another large species that supposedly look like organ pipes.  Not too sure myself though.

At the park we camped.  We’d borrowed a tent from a friend of Laura’s and we’d been told about a ‘backcountry’ campsite that sounded great.  Unfortunately it was full so we had to stay in the main campsite.  The RV campsite.  I think this stands for ‘Recreational Vehicle’, camper vans basically.  But in typical US style they are huge.  It’s a whole sub-culture that I never knew existed and seems to be almost entirely retired couples who sell everything up and spend the rest of their lives driving around the US in what in many cases were the size of coaches.  There appear to be two basic types; giant caravans towed by large pick-ups, or the camper van/bus type.  The latter was often accompanied by at car, towed along behind the bus.  To cater for them there are RV parks, and Arizona by my reckoning is the wintering grounds for this species.  Phoenix was surrounded by RV parks, and ‘active adult communities’ (whatever the hell they are) and places where you could buy a take away house.  Oh and also those places where they store planes – which has been big business in the last 6 months as most of the airlines are having to mothball their planes.  And so the main campsite at the park was an RV park.  We got a little plot on the edge of it, that had an amazing view across a broad plain to Mexico, so we didn’t have to look at the car park all the time, but it did detract from the wilderness feel somewhat.  We had time for a drive and so set off on a loop.  It felt a little wrong, driving around looking at this amazing countryside, but that’s about all there is to do. They don’t like people wandering off on walks in the area as they tend to die.  And so drive we did.  One weird consequence of this was that it felt like we were in safari and initially we both felt a little apprehensive about getting out of the car!  The loop road took us through some stunning countryside, around Mt Diablo, which was basically just a huge lump of rock and through another canyon.  There were not too many birds too look at – some quail and other small brown things hopping along the ground, but the combination of deep blue sky, reddish rocks and weird cacti was breathtaking.  We got back to the campsite at sun set just in time for the night’s entertainment – bingo.  Well ok so actually it was talk about the night sky, but considering the average age of the audience was about 84 then maybe the Bingo would have been a pretty good idea.  Saying that it was good.  The stars were so clear and it was good to have somebody point out what was what and where to find them. On the way back to the tent from the talk I saw a dog by the road, or was it a coyote?  Neither Laura or I were too sure and after looking into the dark a little we drove on a bit more, only to have to stop because a large, healthy looking coyote was standing in the road looking at us.  That answered the question.  We sat and looked at each other for a while and then it sloped off into the dark.   At about 8 while I was eating my beans wrapped in a tortilla (it had to be done) the moon came up.  It was one day past full, but amazing all the same.  It was the perigee, when to moon is closest to  the earth  and was huge and BRIGHT.  Later that night I woke up and though, shit the sun’s coming up (I wanted to get up and do some birding before sunrise) it was only when I looked at my clock and saw it was still 2 am that I realised how bright the moon was.

As Laura and I were going to SF on Saturday we didn't really have too much time to hang around .  We both were up before sunrise, which was easily the best part of the day.  It was quiet chilly, but so peaceful and still.  Then the place came to life at sunrise.  More so than other places I’ve been too it seemed like all the birds appeared when the sun came up.  They needed the warmth too probably.  But it only lasted a couple of hours.  By 9 it was too hot and they'd all vanished again.  We went on a 4.5 mile walk in the morning to an old abandoned mine.  Fun to be walking in the desert and got a much better sense of scale and sense of how damn hard it would be to cross it on foot, but there was not a lot too look at.  And by mid day we were out of there again, as we were leaving the most absurd RV turned up.  A truck rig pulling a caravan, very OTT and how much fuel must that use!  A very fleeting visit, but fantastic.  I love deserts.  I don't think I could work there, just not quite diverse enough. But they are stunning places and such a contrast to rainforest, there is all that sky, they are so brown, and are essentially 2 dimensional and not 3.  I want to see more now….

Only detour on the way home – other than the accident and pausing to take a picture of a town called 'Why' was to drive to the top of the mountain to see one of the astronomical observatories.  Great views all around and cool white domes with telescopes in them, and a sun telescope.   I am not too sure how it worked but it was a long tube built parallel to the earth's axis, which is rather clever.

As we pulled into Tucson in the fading light we made one final stop, we called in to see an old mission.  A superb old Spanish one, all white and looking just like you expect them to look, and still active too.  OK so I don’t expect it’s much of a mission any more, but it’s still an active church with all the strange Catholic idol worshiping type thing going on.  I left for San Francisco the following morning vowing to go back.  Arizona is huge and there was plenty more I wanted to see. Not least that other curious tourist attraction outside Tucson, a decommissioned nuclear missile.  Can’t remember what type, something from the 60s, but apparently you can go and see it in its silo, sit in the control station and press ‘the button’ !! Now there’s a way to spend a holiday.

Belize, May 2003

There was not a single ATM in the capital Belmopan that could take my card, even small crappy towns in Borneo would accept my card.  Same seemed to be the case in Belize City,  I couldn’t find an ATM and was rapidly running out of cash. In the end I went into a likely looking bank, queued up for a cash advance.  The line moved painfully slowly and when I finally got to the front I was told that they couldn’t give any money without a passport.  She saw my exasperated look but then looked at my Barclays cash card and said ‘why don’t you use the Barclays over the road?, they have an ATM’.  But of course, why didn’t I think of that, there’s a Barclays.  And so we went around the corner, I used the ATM and had a nice stack of Belize dollars.  This may well be the only international ATM in the whole country.  What an odd place.

Gladden Spit is a point on the Meso-American reef.  The reef, the second largest barrier reef in the world, runs parallel to the Yucatan Peninsula, from Mexico in the north, to Honduras at the southern end.  The spit is an elbow where the reef takes a 90 degree bend resulting in a sort of underwater promontory.  It is located in the southern part of the reef off shore from a fishing village that’s rapidly becoming a resort, Placencia.  Gladden Spit has recently been declared a marine reserve mainly on account of fish spawning aggregations and Whale Sharks.  Each year, for 10 days after the full moon in April and May thousands, if not millions of fish gather in this area to spawn.  These aggregations have been long known by local fisherman, but it’s only in the last 5 to 10 years that marine biologists have become aware of them.  Will Hayman, The Nature Conservancy’s marine biologist down in Belize was one of the first to start looking into these aggregations.  The fish, mainly snapper and groupers start to gather a little before dusk.  They all start streaming along in deep water at the edge of the reef and at some unknown signal all start to form a tight ball and rapidly ascend to the surface.  As this dense orgiastic melee climbs to the surface the females release eggs and the males battle to eject their sperm into the eggs.  The water quickly becomes very cloudy in a thick soup of fish sperm and eggs.  It is this egg soup that attracts the Whale Sharks.  Whale Sharks are the world’s largest fish and are strictly filter feeders.  The high calorific value of the spawn no doubt makes this a bountiful time for them.

The almost guaranteed Whale Shark sightings are becoming increasingly known about and Gladden spit in April and May will soon be a must on the diving calendar.  TNC was involved in getting the marine reserve set up, more to protect the spawning than the Whale Sharks, and continues to work there.  Will waqs leading a team doing research on the spawning aggregations, the why, where and who of it.  This year TNC was also using it as a time for some big, high end donor trips.  I managed to get a place on the end of season, friends and family jolly.  The donors had all left, but the spawning was still going on and the Sharks were still around and the boats were still around.  TNC thought it’d be nice if others could see it.  And it was a great deal.  All we had to cover was the diving and food costs, the boat rental was covered.  Audrey and I stocked up the car with food, beer and champagne, searched Belmopan for a cool box and ice and made the long dusty drive to Placenecia.  The village is at the end of along peninsula that I can only assume gets regularly wiped out by hurricanes.  Despite this huge risk the place is booming.  All along the Caribbean coast new houses and tourist developments are going up.  Within a couple of years it’ll be another lux resort on the Caribbean.  Fair enough I guess, Belize needs the money, but who’d want to invest there, unless you have good hurricane insurance.

We get there at about mid day, the boats were there.  No crappy live-aboards for us.  We get fancy catamaran yachts.  That’s the life, cruising the Caribbean in luxury yachts.  Surprisingly spacious too.  Ok so the cabins were a little pokey, but what do you expect in a yacht, and it’s not like you spend much time below deck anyway.  The boat deck at the aft had a ring of seats, shade under a canvas canopy, space for the coolers and enough room to spread out.  The nicest spot for me was right at the fore of the hulls.  A simple seat right over the bows.  Perfect spot to sit and have breakfast coffee.  Looking out over the flat calm Caribbean and the cloudless sky. 

There was no wind so we motored out, 3 or 4 hours due east from Placencia.  Calm sunny and wonderful.  Our skipper was Steve.  One of the owners / managers of the boat rental company looking for some easy work.  A Canadian who’d just moved down to Belize, but had been coming down since the 1970s.  A quiet, mild man who had been a commercial diver in his previous life.  And what a crazy life that is.  Living on rigs, but also living in chambers at the bottom of the North Sea for 3 weeks.  We were the last to leave and so pulled up alongside the 5 other boats at dusk.  Anchored farthest out so when one woke up and looked out all you could see was the sea, no other boats in view.  The next morning I woke early.  Just in time.  I could sit up in my bunk and my head poked out of the hatch.  Looking due east I could watch the sun rise.  Lovely.  And I then drifted off to sleep again for another hour or so before getting up,  diving off the bow and swimming back to climb aboard and get some coffee.  Each yacht had a little rib and we’d move around between them in that.  The 14 year old son of one of the other guests was having a ball in the ribs.  Happy as pig in shit zipping back and forth for no good reason.  Until that is that he ran over the rope and lost a boat.  It was dark and he tried to swim for it.  Odd choice but luckily he was picked up and they got the boat.   

Full of enthusiasm and excitement we headed out to find the Sharks.  Ha.  I think of all the dives out there the first had to have been the most depressing and disappointing.  Partly I had false expectations.  I was really looking forward to seeing the spawning aggregations but didn’t realise that these mainly took place after 5 pm when the rules said we should be out of the water.  However the basic problem was with the group.  We were of very mixed standard.  From Audrey and myself who knew what we were doing, to total beginners and crap divers.  The first dive was the perfect indication of this, and the frustrations that would continue through all the dives.

We dropped in and it was rather disorienting at first.  All the blue, no point of reference.  I was gulping down air a little fast, but gradually got used to it.  We had been told “just find the fish”, and Glen, the dive-master did find them.  They were shooting long the bottom and he at first tried to kick off and follow them.  Audrey and I tried to follow and everybody else got left behind.  He gave up and we ended up swimming around in circles seeing nothing for the rest of the dive.  The others finished air early and surfaced.  Glen went up to the boat and I wanted a good safety stop, I’d been all over the place depth wise and wanted to the sure.  I looked up and could see Glen signalling to surface.  I didn’t want to and then the boat just left.   When I surfaced they all said that they’d just been off and looked at Whale Sharks from the surface.  OK I thought lets go back and look at them.  I still don’t know why we didn’t.  Audrey, and I had missed them and we just went directly back to the boats.  What really rubbed it in the most however was talking to boatman Steve.  He’d gone in the water with a couple of tourists and had seen it all.  At the same time we were in the water.  They’d followed the snapper, seen the spawning and watched 2 sharks feeding in the spawn.  All while we were swimming in circles.  But we all consoled ourselves – still have another couple of days.

Friday started with a wall dive as it was still too early for the sharks.  This was certainly the best in the Caribbean that I did.  But that’s still not saying much.  The wall was a good one and a reasonable amount of coral.  Great visibility, warm, still water, but all both Audrey and thought was how brown it wall was.  And there just wasn’t that much coral.  I assumed that it was all because it gets hammered by hurricanes so frequently.  There is no opportunity for big, diverse reefs to develop.  At the end I surfaced and thought “Ooh I saw 3 angel fish species”.  And that’s good for here, but you can see three types of angel fish in one field of view at Sangalaki.  What must people think when they go to Indonesia for the first time if all they’ve done is the Caribbean.

That afternoon our quixotic search for Whale Sharks began again.  At least this time we saw things, but the dive group was still exasperating.  It took everybody so long to get in the water.  I was the first over board and bobbed up and down in the water, watching the tropic-birds and waiting.  I can’t fathom how it too so long.  One woman would be snapping at her husband.  Another spookily pale woman moved very slowly and carefully, like a chameleon.  On each dive I must have been hanging in the water for 5 – 10 mins before we could descend. Finally we down into some jacks, so at least we saw some fish.  We swam around in circles making bubbles.

Almost like a dream a Whale Shark appeared out of the gloom and came towards us.  I watched it coming and then looked around to check that everybody else was watching it.  I now slightly regret that.  I should have savoured every moment and detail, but I wanted to be a good buddy.  It wasn’t a big one, only maybe 4 m (they get up to 14m)  and I can’t really remember looking at it head on.  It wasn’t interested in us or our bubbles and turned to my left.  I got a good clear view of the ridged blue back specked with white, and then the huge tail fin disappearing into the gloom.  And that was it.  Our only Whale Shark.  We were damn lucky, nobody else saw one that day and we just happened to be in right place at the right time.  I looked at Audrey, she looked at me.  I gave the raise the roof hand signal and she the stirring dance thing.

The last two dives were ok.  I think my expectations were so low by this stage that seeing anything was good enough.  Both dives were on Gladden spit again.  While there were no more Whale Sharks we did see some good schools of jacks, a couple of loggerhead turtles and a small ray.  It looked just like a mini manta.  A devil ray or something.  But it was fun to see.  Then below us was a shark.  Short, but stocky with a big head.  Clearly not a reef shark, but I couldn’t tell what.  Back on the surface I asked Glen, “oh that was a bull shark”.  Woh.  The first time I’ve been in the water with something that does actually attack people.  Kind of humbling. 

One thing that can’t be complained about was the food and hospitality we got.  Fantastic BBQ snapper and one night a king mackerel, perfect jerk pork chops, and the best bread pudding ever - It was incredible.  The food just got better and better each night.  By far the best food in Belize.  Nothing too fancy, but tasty, perfectly cooked and, for want of a better word, wholesome.  Impressive, considering they were cooking on a boat for 25 people.  Each evening we’d all gather on the Purrfect, eat, and watch that day’s videos.  The evenings tended to be dominated by a Nat Geo film crew who were led by an obnoxious Brit.  And nobody could quite work out how come they were free-loading on our food either.  But our boat had the coldest beer and other drinks, and certainly was the most chilled.  And the last night, we were the party boat.  We had cold beer, G&T and the champagne had been on ice since we got there.

The next morning I was pleasantly surprised to find that I’d made it back to my own bunk without getting wet.  I was less pleasantly surprised by the screaming hang over.  Suddenly the morning sun dazzling on the Caribbean seemed slightly less idylic.  As I stumbled around trying to get Guatemala coffee inside me, the anchor was weighed (about 15 Kg. boom-boom) and we headed back to the mainland.