This January, Andy and I went to Saint Helena to collect rocks for my PhD. Just organising the trip there was already somewhat of an adventure. The airport just opened this October, and there had been some flights that had to return back to Africa because the wind was to strong to land on the cliff of the island called the Barn. Bringing our equipment on the plane is always a risk, but this time it was definitely not an option. The little plane that were to take us there would in no circumstance take our heavy drills and other tools. So we had to arrange a shipment and had to hurry with that too, since it would take over a month for the parcel to arrive on Saint Helena.
When the day finally came we flew to Johannesburg first. The plane to Saint Helena only goes once every week, so to avoid a delay of 7 days we decided to take 24 hours between the arrival in Joburg and the departure to Saint Helena. We had a nice hotel with pool, where Andy was working and I was enjoying the Sun (which we wouldn’t see much of in Saint Helena so I was happy I at least had some vitamin take-in). After a visit to the Apartheid museum and a nice meal in town, we were ready to get on the scary little plane the next day. After a stop in Windhoek we arrived on the magical island of Saint Helena. Literally in the middle of nowhere. Andy almost had a hart attack before we landed because he was sure we would fly into the cliff instead of land on it, but luckily everything went very smooth and soon we were in our little bungalow on top of the Ladder Hill. Ladder Hill road is a road that takes you all the way down to town, and where if you are there at the wrong time and you want to go down, you will be stuck for at least 30 minutes, since you have to give way to the traffic driving uphill.
The first few days we were mainly exploring the island and trying to get permission to drill wherever we wanted. They had warned us that drilling on Ladder Hill would probably not be permitted because of the rockfall and avalanche risk. Luckily the Rock Guards not only gave us permission within seconds of meeting us, but they also decided to stay with us the entire trip, which gave us a lot more possibilities of drilling far away from where the car could get, since they could carry A LOT of weight. Besides these lovely islanders (one of which had never been off of Saint Helena), we also had help from our field assistant Dave, who called himself the Bugman (everyone on Saint Helena has a nickname which even gets passed over through generations) because of his insane knowledge of every insect. A true walking encyclopedia. Dave was the person who helped us find our way on the island and even helped us with his Geology knowledge from a degree from years ago (which not only says something about Dave’s memory, but also about mine and Andy’s knowledge in geology).
In 2 weeks you can do a lot more sampling than I would have expected before hand. Things ran smoothly and although we had some problems with the drills, we managed to spend our time very efficiently. That also lead to us being absolutely exhausted after the first week and a half. In the start we were so ambitious, drilling from 8.30 or 9 to 19.00 everyday, that we manage to drill 26 sites at Ladder Hill in 4 days, and 10 sites in Bank’s Valley (an hour walk with all our equipment each day) in another 2 days. We continued drilling the beautiful dykes at Sandy Bay in the south of the island, where we did a beautiful hike to a non-existing set of flows. After this first week I saw the number of samplebags on the cupboard increasing and increasing, and slowly my fieldbook started to get full (and extremely valuable). The fear for having to measure these samples for the rest of my life started to increase each day, but we did not want to waste ANY time. So we kept going and ended up with 300 sample cores and 62 hand samples from 52 different sites. There were definitely some life threatening situations both in cars as in the field, but we made it in the end. And both Andy and me were quite happy with the results.
As a reward for working this hard, we treated ourselves to a nice dive/snorkeling session where Andy had another scare for his life when he got eye to eye with a huge devil ray. He was seriously debating trying to get to shore (with high waves splashing on high rocks) when he saw the diving group swim up to take pictures and realised it was probably fine. Happy like a little kid I came back, and was desperate to go again the next morning. Andy almost kissed the ground when we came back, but he had a great time too ;-).
After this amazing (or amazingly scary) experience we still had to pack all our rocks in the box that had to be send back to the U.K. I say all, but technically we should have probably not packed ALL the samples, seen as they are still not here and I have been back over a month. However we were too tired to realise this and very disciplined checked off every sample bag and handsample when packing it in the big box with the equipment.
The only thing left to do was get this big box in our car and down to the shipping containers. This, however simple it sounds, was definitely a difficult job. But we made it and the relaxing could finally begin. But who wants to relax when you can do a hike to the highest point on the island? Dave took us on a beautiful walk through the green areas of the middle of the island. Something completely different than the views that we had seen so far. The cliffs on the shore of the island combined with the immensely green hills land inwards gave such a beautiful and dramatic view that we almost didn’t want to go down. Luckily we did, or we would have missed a smash goodbye party with the rockguards and a lovely meal with loads of breadrolls.
We had an amazing fieldwork thanks to the help of the Saint Helena Government (specifically Sam and Isabel) and our help in the field from Dave the Bugman and the Rock guards. And of course thanks to Andy!
Hopefully the rocks will be here soon, and I can finally start some measurements.
