Baby Steps

Happy New Year! And what a fabulous place to be spending the 1st Jan 2017. After nabbing an awesome room in the guest house, I posted obligatory photos of the view from the site across Facebook. And with a stunning outlook like this, can you blame me?

The morning was spent playing with the total station (TS) and trying to (re)locate the benchmarks from last year. A total station is a really swanky electronic piece of kit, which allows you to measure the distance and height of a particular point. A benchmark is a survey point of known height and location to which all your other measurements can be connected. I say the TS is swanky, merely because when I learnt archaeological surveying (many moons ago) we had to do it all manually using a theodolite. The TS means that one person can survey all the points etc, since the instrument can be operated from a bluetooth tablet, and it does all the calculations for you. That is if the software is behaving itself... Hearing a pasty white foreigner yelling "I want to go home! Home! Home, you stupid thing!" the day after they've just arrived in a tropical paradise can be confusing to say the least.

After successfully locating benchmarks it was time to leave the site and head to St George's to collect the students who had spent New Year's Eve partying in the capital. We opted for the short route, over the mountains...wiggly is an understatement! Once safely back at La Poterie, the evening was spent (albeit briefly since jet lag is really starting to set in) in the local bar, bopping away to funky tunes. I have no idea what the local rum was mixed with, but it went down very well. Currently writing this while fumigating my room with mossi repellent stuff, then an early-ish night ready to be on site, bright and chirpy, by 0700.