Our first Sunday here Jared (a student from Penn State working at NCAR), Heather (a student at CU who works at NCAR) and I decided to visit the old plantation site on Diego Garcia. Unfortunately Adam (the other CSU student) had to work ... but I really want to go back to this part of the island and so I will try and drag him with me when I do :)
I am not going to go into the details of the history of Diego Garcia here (mainly because I just googled it myself... and you can do that too) but I found this
blog which has an interesting explanation for the early settlements on Diego Garcia ... so If you want to know more than what I put in here, check it out!
Things I find a bit "funny" are ... originally Diego Garcia was a French territory. And after dropping off pigs, sheep and goats on the Diego in 1774, and after sending lepers from Mauritius to Diego, they eventually they set up a few coconut plantations. In 1810 the British acquired Diego Garcia during the Napoleonic Wars and they placed donkeys on the island in 1838 (this is important for pictures later).
The plantation is "open" to the public on Sundays, but you still have to get a key from the British military (BIOT .. British Indian Ocean Territory) and pay $2 a person. So we bought our passes, jumped into the truck and headed out. None of us had been beyond the research site, so it was quite exciting to drive farther than 6 miles on the roads.
As I mentioned above, the British imported Donkeys to the island in the 1800s, the Island is still home to a "pack" of wild Donkeys ... they are fenced out of the area that most people work/live, but to get to the plantation we had to go through the Donkey territory. This is the first guy we stumbled upon ... he was smart and was waiting in the middle of the road. He looked so sorry and mangy I actually fed him my apple!!
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| Donkey in the road :) |
We also saw quite a few more donkeys on the way (including babies!!!)
After the donkeys we ended up on a dirt/gravel road, and we were in crab territory. Diego Garcia is home to a number of fascinating crabs (some of which are quite fun to play with) ... but on this trip we saw the biggest hermit crabs I have ever seen, emperor crabs (which I apparently don't really have any pictures of, but I will fix this soon), and the coconut crabs (they are huge, and eat coconuts ... scary). It is illegal to eat coconut crabs on this island (but people claim they are pretty yummy...).
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| Huge hermit crab! |
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| Coconut Crab! |
Along the way we also passed by the british military's shooting range on the island ... where we just had to stop and take pictures in front of this very serious (but also hilarious) sign warning us of the dangers that we could encounter if we entered that part of the island. Don't worry ... we did not actually go into the shooting area so I think that we were pretty safe!
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| Sign outside the British shooting range area |
After a number of obstacles (huge palm fronds and mini lakes) we finally made it to the plantation site ... where we were then eaten by mosquitos (horrible tiny biting mean mosquitos). It was interesting and yet erie to be visiting this plantation site which had not been used since at least the 1960s ... maybe even longer. It felt somewhat like we were in some sort of zombie horror flick where everyone had died or disappeared and we were the only ones left in the world.
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| Plantation Managers house |
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| Thank goodness I don't have to use this stove! |
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| I think this is where the blacksmith worked ... |
After visiting the plantation we found this little beach alcove, where a few navy/air force guys were hanging out enjoying the nice weather and the beach. We got to talk with them about life on Diego Garcia ... and they all convinced us to sign up for a bike race called the "tip to tip" where we bike the 36 miles from one end to the other along Diego Garcia! While we were hanging out at this awesome little beach I got to see some awesome birds (Red Footed Boobies!!!), and watch a shark try and catch a fish! We ended the day out at the plantation with a beautiful sunset!! We then had an epic ride home ... were one or two crabs may or may not have lost their lives :(
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| This is the part of the lagoon where I saw the Red Footed Boobies ... they were in those trees, only my camera doesn't zoom enough for me to get a pic :( |
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| Sunset :) |
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| More Sunset :) |
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