By Melissa Abdo, February 24, 2009
Following our afternoon arrival yesterday in Montego Bay, it took us a great deal of time to get everything properly through customs and transport our extensive field supplies into town. We did counts continually to make sure all 17 separate pieces were with us along the way!
Transportation presented me with some unexpected challenges. First, it took us a near two hour wait to finally obtain our 4-wheel drive vehicle that we’d previously reserved for use during our journeys; upon picking it up we found tires were very low on air, the gas station was out of air, and so we had to go on a jaunt around town to get them pumped up and ready to go.
Little did we know, there was still another unexpected transportation obstacle lying ahead of us that Tuesday night…
We journeyed in caravan with the Forestry Dept. through picturesque terrain around narrow hairpin turns (honk! honk! Here we come!). The landscape was dominated by scenes of small-scale farming in red earth, with steep limestone mountains all around. Phone reception to coordinate with the team is difficult at best, but we’re making it happen! A couple hours later we came down and made our way through lovely Bamboo Avenue, and finally we had made it from Montego Bay to our new home base in Santa Cruz. We were met there by our long-time colleague and expedition co-leader Keron Campbell, Botanist at the Institute of Jamaica (IoJ) and our key scientific advisor, Dr. George Proctor, the world’s foremost authority on the flora of Jamaica. They were accompanied by Courtney Lyn, the Herbarium Technician at IoJ, who is a keen new addition to our team. We’d arrived at our base to carry out the expedition work around the south and southwestern area of the Cockpit. After settling in and having a team meeting to review our strategy and methodology, we set off for dinner…
I left the team to have their dinner, as I was due to be back to base to make more arrangements for the long field day ahead- but alas! As Ken drove to drop me off back at base, the two of us suddenly heard a loud pop and hiss from our tire. Fortunately we managed to make it safely to our nearby base. Ken and I proceeded to inspect the damage – a badly busted front tire – and he was pleasantly surprised to see stereotypes shattered as I grabbed our tools and climbed under the rear end of our pickup to get to work with the spare J It was a long night… but in the end, we got everything taken care of to prepare for the long field day bright n early the next morning.
