Travels of a Fish Nut

I didn't get the best welcome to Cusco. The hostel I was staying in had a free airport pick-up service which decided to use. I’d given them my flight details and they said they’d be at the airport with a sign with my name on. So you can imagine my surprise when there was nobody there for me. I had taxi drivers hassling me, offering ‘help’ and in the end I let one of them phoned the hostel for me as much to get them off my back as to find out what happened. The hostel said they didn’t have my flight time which was why they weren’t there. (Luckily my anal-retentiveness had led me to print off all the emails I had regarding accommodation and transport so I could show them they had my details yet they still tried to deny they’d received my details!) They said they’d be there in 15 minutes so I was getting quite annoyed when they turned up after half an hour in a crappy taxi with a tear in the backseat and no seatbelt. I said I wanted a seatbelt so ended up sitting in the front which ga...

Sorry I haven't written in ages. I went on holiday and had an amazing time (more on that in upcoming posts) then had one week in the Falklands to finish off things at work and say goodbye to people and places. I flew home to the news that a plane on a similar flightpath to us and in the air at the same time mysteriously dissappeared which freaked me out more than I thought possible. I was home for a week in which time I got experimented on by my sister, went to London and had my hair highlighted (not big news for most people but pretty impressive for me as I'm as phobic about the hairdressers as normal people are about the dentists!). The second week was spent in Spain with mum and Steve (more on that too later). I had a great time and got a bit of a tan although not too much as I was lathering on the factor 40. My antimalarials made me more sensitive to sunlight and as I'm not used to it anyway I was really paranoid. So I got back a week ago and have spent the week doing, ...

I’m going on holiday for two weeks in May. I’m really excited as I’m going to Peru. I’m going to Cusco for a few days and then I’m heading to the Manu Rainforest Reserve for a tour around the rainforest! I’m really excited and have bought a new zoom lens for my camera so I can hopefully get some decent photos of the wildlife. As always I’ll put some photos here when I return.

I’m leaving the Falklands and I’m going home. Since Dave died I haven’t been enjoying my work as much as I once did. Going to sea for weeks at a time is a fantastic experience when you are happy but when you are sad or grieving it can become a nightmare, trapped and alone with nothing but your own thoughts for company. I had problems on my first boat back, finding myself crying at nothing and unable to motivate myself. Just wanting to go home. I had the same problems on my second boat and came to the realisation that this wasn’t healthy. Looking through my diary I realised I had been unhappy all year and had said in almost every entry that I wanted, I needed, to be with my family. I couldn’t deal with the grief alone. So, a week or so ago I decided that enough was enough and gave my resignation to my boss. He’s been incredibly understanding for which I’m very grateful, and I can happily report that I’ll be home at the beginning of June. I’ve felt much better since making the decision. ...

I'm off again. I'm due to be out for between 3 and 5 weeks depending on the fishing. I'll write when I get back.

One dark and cloudy night we had a rain of birds. I’m not exaggerating (much!). It was a few days before new moon and the sky was incredibly dark. Our boat (as all boats do) had bright deck lights and when I came out of the factory around midnight birds were on deck and flying all around the boat like moths attracted to a flame and, like moths, hurt themselves in the process. They would fly towards the light which was attached to a wall and then fly into the wall. I spent some time picking the birds up and letting them fly off until I realised it was pointless, particularly when I let one go only for it to fly right back into the lights and landed on deck clearly stunned. The next morning I went out and caught in nets on deck and hidden around the boat. Some had got around the winches for the warp cable and had got covered in oil. Luckily we were heading back to drop someone off in Stanley that day so I gave them to a friend who then gave them to Falklands Conservation. Unfortunately (...

I’ve just come back from a few weeks on a squid trawler. We were fishing near Beauchene for a lot of the time, which is an island to the south of the main groups of the Falkland Islands although it’s still part of the Falklands. It’s uninhabited and is a wildlife sanctuary with visits being strictly controlled. Fishing around this area brings lots of birds to the boat (more on those later) due to the large breeding colonies. For two days we had peales dolphins around our boat. On the first day they came and visited up for a few hours but on the second day they followed us all afternoon and into the evening. The numbers grew from about 10 on the first day to at least 20 on the second day. The number wasn’t the only thing that was surprising – their behaviour was incredible. They were highly active, jumping out of the water repetitively (I counted one jumping 35 times and it had already jumped at least 10 times before I started counting!); swimming upside down and slapping their tail fin...