More Kauai

early morning at the heliport

We had a couple rainy rainy weeks of fieldwork here on kaua‘i. It began with four days being a human sponge in the alaka‘i swamp. We went up there with friends from Koke‘e Resource Conservation Project and the Nature Conservancy to hunt and kill weeds in the native forest. The alaka‘i is claimed to the be the wettest place on earth (I think there are a couple other places that get as wet – like the eastern Caroline Islands in Micronesia, or maybe one or two valleys on the low southern flanks of the Himalaya) – but it certainly lived up to expectations.

classic alaka‘i cloud forest

From about 2 hours after the helicopter dropped us off until we hiked our soggy butts out of the bush 4 days later, it went from downpour to drizzle to steady pissing rain back to downpour. For the planet’s highest swamp – perched at over 4,000 ft on the edge of the Wainiha Pali (pali = cliff) – where all the moisture carried by the trade winds collects, condenses, and descends, these were typical “habitat days,” really.

hammocks are beautiful things in a swamp - dry nights off the ground

We were living in the clouds. By day we traversed the inredibly intricate topography with GPS and compass – navigating deeply divided creeks and streams passing through cracks in the ancient volcano, crossing the patchwork of grassy bogs knee-deep in mud and walking/crawling/falling/scrambling through the thick eflin cloud forest. Our first day “targets” – invasive trees marked for death on our maps during a helicopter survey – were only 1.5 km from base camp yet it took us 5 hours just to reach them.

from the helicopter - looking over the Wainiha pali northeast to  Hanalei

After a full day in the forest we’d all converge under the little tarp at base camp (there were 11 of us altogether). As our campsite sunk around our feet, we’d talk and laugh, shiver to keep warm, and try not to touch our skin to the sopping wet clothes still on our backs. Good compay for certain but in truth we all were only waiting for dinner – hot, lovely dinner. Then it was off to our tents or hammocks to strip off the wet work clothes and crawl into sleeping bags.

the edge of the alaka‘i swamp along Wainiha valley

Sleepy time was deeply appreciated, for after a night of blissful coziness we all knew we’d have to get up, get out, and put back on the same sopping wet clothes, rain gear, and boots in the cold morning. I had an extra pair of field pants. They taunted me each morning, but what would be the point? We were sponges. It was ankle deep mud just to get to breakfast. And moments later we were soaked to the bone. Just keep movings and at least we stay warm sponges in the swamp.

As horrible and inhospitable as the weather and habitat were, we just laughed it off – all smiles…



And the following week our last limahuli trip came and went this past week. We spent another couple rainy days and nights sweeping one of the drainages in Upper Limahuli Preserve – climbing the ridges and dropping down to pick off the last of the remaining nasty weeds. With the winter rains, the season for invasive plant hunting is coming to a close up there. There is word about some trips to mark out a future fenceline around the upper valley, but budgets are tight everywhere and helicopter rides aren’t getting any cheaper.

As always, enjoy the fotos – post comments!! I need reason to keep writing these silly things.

the terrain behind upper Limahuli valley

natalia, emory, merlin and me

the native hydrangea - Broussaisia arguta or kanawao

another grey, rainy day in the forest

base camp

flying out along the Na Pali coast with our pilot Ken

above and beyond

Is this above and beyond the call of duty? I have spent the last week of work weeding a cliff. Not my usual job here at the Botanical Garden – more often than not I work far away from the valley in which the garden is situated. But we have a grant to support the full restoration of a cliff zone along a ridge extending into Lawai Valley, right above our greenhouse.



The cool thing about the site is that amid mostly weedy tree species – like haole koa, java plum and christmasberry – there’s a population of a threatened hawaiian plant, Schiedea spergulina. It’s a delicate little thing in the carnation family (Caryophyllaceae) that you only find growing on cliff faces on the south and western side of Kauai.



The federal government has given grants just like ours to people and organizations all over for critical habitat recovery. But most folks are failing to meet the requirements specified in their grants. So that the money isn’t lost, the agency managing the grants is revising many of these requirements. My boss recently approached me to say that now all we need to do is get rid of one exotic species - Furcraea foetida, a type of agave - along the cliff by September 30th and we can collect on the grant.



I never knew taking an arborist course would put me at a disadvantage - I imagined using the skills to collect seeds high up in the canopy…but now the task of removing all the agave from the cliff has come down to me. So I ordered myself some proper tree-climbing gear (we typically use lighter rock-climbing equipment) and got out onto the ropes.



I’ve been harnessed in on the cliff face 7 to 8 hours a day for the past week, cutting back the Furcraea with a handsaw and poisoning it with garlon. I try not to think about how much money an arborist company would charge for the same job. I go crazy enough between the cut-cut-cutting and inhaling herbicide all day.

Guyana Fishin' trip - Part 3 (the end)

Well – its been long enough. Back to the fishing story. I must admit though at this point it’ll probably be a bit of an anticlimax.

In case you don’t recall, I had just left my PhD position in the Rupununi savannas of Guyana – no more job, no more income, no more jeep, no more free housing in Lethem – but then again, no more job.

I was free. As if to mark the occasion, the day after I got fired (after I already quit – a long story) Dan and Bryan invited me on a fishing trip out into the bush.



“Just walk with hammock and handline,” they told me.
‘Walk with hammock’ meant camping and no way in hell were we really walking. In late March with no rains yet, the leached-out, white soils of the savannas form brilliant, smooth, boiler-plate single track between the villages. Like I said, in the Rupununi most practical folk move around on bicycle.

the Rewa Road with Makarapan mountain in the distance

Our plan was to head out of Annai along the new jeep track to the village of Rewa. Annai sits 5 miles west of “bushmouth” – literally the gateway to the Rupununi. Its the point along the main road from Georgetown where the huge expanse of high Guianan rain forest gives way to the rolling savannas that stretch for hundreds of miles to the west into northern Brazil. About 30 miles southeast of Annai, back into the high rain forest, across the Rupununi River and at the base of Makarapan mountain is the village of Rewa.

Rewa is a relatively young community, having been established at the confluence of the Rupununi and Rewa rivers sometime in the 1960s at the height of the balata-tapping days. Back then many Macushi and Waipishana amerindians moved from their villages in the savannas to temporary camps in the rain forest to work the balata trade. They scoured the jungle for the bulletwood tree, Manilkara bidentata, to harvest its milky latex – the natural rubber called balata. Once collected, the balata is poured into thin sheets and dried into mats. These mats are then rolled up to be hauled out of the bush several at time. With each roll weighing 80 to 100 lbs, it is back-breaking work. The amerindians working these balata camps often established farms and, eventually, some camps became permanent villages like Rewa.

drying out balata

loading rolls of balata into dugout by the village of Katoka

While the balata trade has waned in Rewa, a couple NGOs have helped the village construct a beautiful new ecotourist lodge. Most that make it come to see the giant, prehistoric-looking fish called arapaima that lurk in the waters nearby along with other wildlife like river otters and caimen. The more adventurous and well-funded might be up for the several week journey up to the headwaters of the Rewa river – some of the wildest country on the planet. A guiding friend of mine told me they spotted 12 jaguars on one trip alone, many just basking on the rocks, completely indifferent to the humans drifting by downstream in their boats (check out his site www.wilderness-explorers.com/ashley_holland.htm).

couple bottles of 'duck curry' at the Rewa Ecolodge

Fishing with handline at a pond near Rewa

Potentially more profitable and more sinister is oil. Yes folks its there, sitting beneath the feet of the Rewa villagers and a Canadian company has its sights set (see www.groundstarresources.com/country.html). The consequences of impending oil development in the region are anyone’s guess. Too often in these cases, local villages reap short-term benefits through surveying and construction jobs only to see the long-term profits pass them by into the pockets of the developers.

We do have the same oil company to thank, however, for the jeep trail connecting Annai and Rewa. Until a couple years back, the only way to reach Rewa was via the Rupununi River – about a 1/2 day trip by engine boat or a day and half in dugout canoe from Annai. Now, at least in the dry season, villagers in Rewa can reach Annai and the main road to Brazil in a 1/2 day bicycle ride instead.

Vacquero (cowboy) shack on the Rewa Road

For us, the Rewa road meant easy riding deep into the savannas and access to a couple good fishing holes at the base of Makarapan Mountain. Mid-morning we pedaled out of Annai towards Rewa – Dan and Bryan on their Brazilian Monarks and me on a cheap, borrowed Chinese mountain bike. In the afternoon we came upon a campsite at the edge of a gallery forest bordering a stream and set up our hammocks. Bryan was convinced the pond was just up the road, so we continued on with just fishing gear.

jungle gym - the real thing

We pedaled and pedaled. Five miles? Six? Who knows? We passed through open savannas, shrublands, forest, back into savannas. The landscape changed continuously. Were they islands of forest inside the savanna or islands of savanna inside the forest? Impossible to tell but wherever it was, we were way out in the bush. Finally, late in the afternoon, we arrived at the fishing hole and threw in our lines.

classic Rupununi savannas

pit stop in a bush island

Dry season fishing in the Rupununi will make anyone feel good - its shooting fish in a barrel. As the waters recede throughout the dry season, fish get trapped in ponds and as their food runs out, they become ravenous. Throw in just about anything and you get a hit. In this particular pond the hasa, or armored catfish, were plenty. We caught our fill and before long the sun was setting.

Bryan's fishing hole

a bad time to start the ride back

Well shit - dark was nearly upon us and our hammocks were swaying on trees who knows how many miles away. At least Dan and I had headlamps – Bryan was left to his other senses for the ride back. And just to make the adventure thicker, right after we mounted our bikes, the rain came.

It was hours of blind pedaling through savannas and bush islands – no brakes (remember?), sliding out in the mud, crashing into tree stumps, and falling into stream beds with our headlamps all but useless in the rainy gloom of the night. We were soaked, our toes and shins bruised and bloody from slipping off the pedals in our Havaianas (rubber flipflops), and Dan’s rear wheel was coming loose every 20 minutes. But we were laughing all the way – flipping over his bike on the lonely wet jeep track, trying to crank the bolts down with a leatherman, and pushing off again.

more feral humans

We made it back to camp still smiling through the time warp of the night and commenced with the next mission. Fire. We kept ourselves warm chipping wood with our cutlasses, keeping the flame alive. Meditation through sweat and constant movement. What rain? What cold? We were soaked to the bone, but our fire grew and grew. When we were finally convinced it would survive the weather, the rain stopped. Things began to dry out, we set up the hasa to roast over the coals, broke out the duck curry (rum) and feasted on a huge pot of jumbalaya Bryan had stashed in his bag.

mmm...roast hasa

sweet lovely hammock time

Funny how great adventures so often teeter on the brink between misery and a good time. The night turned out beautifully. A starry sky, stars, jungle sounds, and the dead calm sleep of exhaustion. We awoke to a breakfast of smoked catfish and a fresh rinse from the rainwater collected in my tarp. Compared to the night before, the ride back to Annai was a dream.

Dan and Bryan dig into breakfast

a morning rinse with the night's rainwater

very cool shot of a jumping spider who'd snatched up a bee

the ride back to Annai - the fishing hole far behind near the base of Mt. Makarapan

I had no job, no income, no jeep, no home. But I was free and in company of some wonderful people. I spent the next 2 months visiting the friends I had made across the savannas and exploring little corners of village and wilderness alike. There is no place quite like the Rupununi to make one feel so bloody alive.

Guyana fishin' trip - Part 2

sunset over annai

I was staying at the volunteer teachers’ quarters at the secondary school by Annai, an Amerindian village on the main dirt road linking Lethem with the capital city of Georgetown. Dan, a volunteer health worker, just rode in from Surama village. His plan was to go out with Bryan, one of the teachers at Annai, and throw handline for hasa (armored catfish) at one of the ponds out in the savanna. As I said, I had just left my PhD position – no more job – which meant no more money, but it also meant no more job. So I did what any sensible Guyanese would do in the same situation – I went fishing.

Dan cruising his Monark through the savanna

It was late March, 2007. Early yet for the rainy season so the savanna around Annai was dry and the roads good. Perfect condition for a bike trip. With the prohibitive price of vehicles and fuel in the Rupununi, motorized transport is very limited for most locals, any volunteers and certainly for an unemployed grad student. And while motorbikes, jeeps, and Bedford cargo lorries do travel the roads, the most prevalent mode of wheeled transportation in the Rupununi is the Monark: the burly, steel-framed Brazilian-made bicycle complete with single gear, fat spring-loaded seats, welded fenders and cargo rack, and no functional brakes to speak of.

Feral humans.  Dan and Bryan enjoy a Rupununi energy drink

Dan and Bryan Williams (no relation) had been in these parts for a couple years, victims both of the Peace Corps. By the time we met, they were well-seasoned Rupununi cyclists. A year earlier they decided to bike to Lethem for the annual rodeo. Rather than pedal the 60 miles along the main road from Annai, they planned to cut north into the Pakaraima hills and then turn west, heading for the Amerindian town of Karasabai before cutting back south to Lethem. For three days and nights they pedaled and dragged their bikes laden with camping gear over mountain passes, snuck through tiny villages by twilight, traded cigarettes for cassava bread, and pushed their way through the Pakaraimas. Finally, rather than take the jeep trail out of Karasabai, they paid an old Amerindian lady to paddle them and their bikes across the Ireng River to better roads in Brazil.

google earth projection showing Lethem, Annai and Karasabai (click it for a larger image)

On the morning of the fourth day Dan woke up in their derelict campsite on a lonely track in the state of Roraima. He looked over at Bryan still sleeping and lit a smoke. As he took his first drag he looked up and nearly shat himself. Coming down the road was a line of shiny white trucks, too many – definitely too shiny – for locals. The Brazilian Federales. Here they were, two white kids, a couple of beat up bicycles, no passports, no portuguese, barely any cash, a bag of ganja stashed somewhere, and the region’s entire federal police force bearing down on their campsite. Holy shit.

typical terrain in the south Pakaraimas 

Jaw gaping and cigarette burning to the filter, Dan guessed about 60 vehicles were on the approach and awaited certain disaster. But the first truck passed them by. And the next. One after another – white Chevy Suburbans alternating with white pickups carrying ATVS – the entire entourage kept on going with not a glance in their direction.  Apparently the police ha bigger business up north.  Bryan slept through the whole thing.  Holy shit.  So what to do? Breath again. Wake up Bry. Light another cigarette? Hell no – roll a joint and beat the hell on back to Guyana.

the tiny village of Paipong.  Dan and Bryan passed through here at 4 am on the way to Karasabai

Dan told me that story over rum and poker in his wooden house in Surama village. He never figured out why there were so many federal police in such a remote part of Brazil and why they wanted nothing to do with a couple feral gringos huddled on the roadside. Funny thing was I knew exactly what they were doing. You see the very research project that had so recently transported me to Guyana was originally planned for Brazil in the same lands where Dan and Bryan spent the night. However, exactly one year before, the President of Brazil officially returned those lands to the Amerindians of Roraima State, giving the squatting ranchers and farmers 365 days to vacate.

singletrack through Karasabai

The ranching and farming families, some having been there a couple generations already, were not happy. A school was burnt down in an Amerindian village. People on both sides organized and protested. While the President remained firm, the Brazilian military exercised its jurisdiction along the international border and sided with the squatters. A research project examining Amerindian hunting practices? No need for meddling foreigners - the military claimed the situation was too dangerous. My ex-PhD advisor spent the better part of the year and many round trip tickets between Hawai‘i and Brazil trying to wrangle research permits.

looking across the Ireng River to Brazil

The last day arrived for the ranchers and farmers to move out.  Two gringos crossed the Guyanese border in a dug-out canoe. President Lula foresaw violence.  For a long, sickening moment, Dan foresaw Brazilian prison. Thankfully, no one that day was harmed. Dan and Bryan and their bicylces made it for the party at the Lethem Rodeo. The ranchers are still squatting on Amerindian lands. We were never granted permission to work in Brazil.  And I met these jokers in Guyana.

heli ride home

just trying this out...

a quick clip of our flight home from limahuli last month.

Guyana Fishin' Trip - Part 1

map of Guyana (meatnpotatoes.com)

The Rupununi region is named after the river which bends through the landscape of southwestern Guyana to meet the country’s largest waterway, the Essequibo. It is truly a mysterious, uncharted corner of a continent – literally the land of El Dorado, marked on a map by Sir Walter Raleigh sometime in the 1600s. Despite early explorations, most of Guyana’s interior was left largely undeveloped by the Dutch and later British colonists apart from a few ranching operations still carrying on. Sadly, since independence in the late 1960s, much of the land has been concessioned to timber and mining companies by the Guyanese government.

over the river and through the woods - the Essequibo crossing on the Georgetown-Lethem road (photo by Joel Strong)

Fortunately the road connecting the coast to the interior – a dirt track winding from the swamplands surrounding the capital of Georgetown, through thousands of hectares of rambling rain forest, out into the wide open savannas surrounding Lethem on the Brazilian border – is so poorly developed that the mining and timber companies can’t afford to access these resources – yet. For the moment, the land still largely serves the needs of the local Amerindian people who have hunted, fished and farmed here for centuries.

in need of improvements

It is a difficult place to portray in words, the Rupununi. I can tell you about the open grassland savannas sweeping as far the eye can see, the sunsets that make the sky burn bigger than any sky on earth. I can write about the deep deep forest looming at the savanna’s edges, along the rivers and covering the hills. There are the creatures of this landscape – cayman, jaguar, giant armadillos, tapir, brocket deer, tamandua, ocelots, giant river otters, bushmasters, howler monkeys, capybara, macaws, anacondas, etc. – still so chock full it would make David Attenborough drool.

poison arrow frog

jabiru storks out in the savanna

Then there’s the water, confined within the banks of great rivers, oxbow lakes and ponds for the dry season, and confining the fish that filled our bellies. With the rainy season, the water swells in flood, breaching the banks of rivers and lakes to transform the same savannas into an inland sea. While the fish now disperse thin across what was once land, terrestrial animals themselves become concentrated, trapped on islands making easy meals for hunters. The rains come so full and heavy that somewhere out in that wilderness the waters of South America’s two greatest river systems, the Amazon far to the south (via the Rio Negro and the Ireng) and the Orinoco up north in Venezuela, actually intermingle.

the Rupununi by "engine-boat"  - a motorized dugout (photo by Joel Strong)

queen victoria water lilies are found in still-water ponds

folks fish here with bow and arrow

hosts and friends Paulette Allicock and her son Frank parch farine - a local staple made from bitter cassava

I can describe the Amerindians that have shaped the very landscape of the Rupununi, setting fires to clear farms and flush game, inadvertently, or sometimes very advertently, thinning the trees that would encroach upon the grasslands. Villages lay scattered loosely across the savanna, with homes never too far from the edge of high forest and “bush islands” where they plant cassava, chilis, beans, gourds and melons and other fruits. The Macushi and Waipishana people of this region smile from bicycles on the road or dugout canoes on the rivers, walking always with cutlass, usually bow and arrows, and often slinging warishis (woven backpacks) loaded with food and firewood.

night-time savanna fires running up the hillside and into the forest (photo by Bryan Williams)

There is a spirit realm there too – implicit and real in the lives of most local people, yet scarcely visible to me, someone who just skimmed the surface of the Rupununi over 8 months. Was it sinister? Nineteenth century explorers wrote about the “demon landscape” of Guyana’s interior, told stories of travelers who disappeared or lost their minds in the wilderness. Despite the influence of missionaries, tales still abound of both Piaimen and Kanaimas - shamans “doing their work” for both good and evil.

a quiver of arrowheads 

In the 1990s, an anthropologist documented the “poetics of violent death,” the ritualized murder of Amerindians and outsiders alike by Kanaimas in the Pakaraima mountains on the northern fringe of the Rupununi – he was actually poisoned and survived (check out the book Dark Shamans). Rituals much less macabre – communion with plant and animal spirits for farming and hunting, charms for luck and skill, the appeasement of mischevious forest spirits – were related in bits and pieces, barely revealed in passing conversation and only after months and months talking with local families.

jeep trek into the Pakaraima mountains

why aren't other beer companies catching on to this? (photo by Sean Giery)

Still, this all fails to convey the mad mad potential energy that permeates the place. Potential is the key word here because one passes a lot of down time in the Rupununi. Waiting for friends, hitching rides, whatever is happening happens only “just now” – an interpretive phrase that ranges in meaning from a couple minutes to a couple days. During that down time you gaff (talk story) and generally consume obscene amounts of good Guyanese rum or cheap Venezuelan beer (in fact the Guyanese beer Banks is highly superior, but we were continually suckered in by the Venezuelan’s brilliant advertising). All this downtime is almost a necessity, however, because when it comes to movement through the surreal landscape of the Rupununi, adventures tend to happen in epic proportions.

hen napping in a warishi

hunting fish

the Rupununi side of the Georgetown-Lethem Road

dugouts near the village of Yupukari