We heard from the increasingly beleaguered expedition, or, as Nick Redfern has dubbed them ‘the Guyana five’ just before 10 this evening GMT. Richard gave such a graphic description of the problems with which they have had to deal, that when he culminated his account with the quote that we have taken for the headline of this bulletin, we couldn’t bring ourselves to reprimand him for having split an infinitive. After all – although I can feel my late father rolling in his grave as Corinna types this, there are worse things than massacring the Queen’s English.
They reached the swamps late yesterday, and they have spent most of today exploring them.
In Richard’s words they have been ‘going through hell’. “No shade, no trees – it’s a nightmare … the Gobi desert was a breeze compared to this”, said Richard, and he described how the intense heat was causing a series of spontaneous bush fires. One of the biggest for the expedition is that, whereas on other expeditions they have started work at 7.00 in the morning and carried on to dusk, because of extreme conditions they just cannot do this. Richard described how he spent a large part of the hottest part of the day standing knee deep in a muddy swamp, in the inadequate shade of a crumbling tree, in a vain attempt to keep cool.
Perhaps ‘armchair cryptozoologists’, who like nothing more than to sit back and criticise expeditions such as this, would like to try really roughing it for once in their pampered lives. We have received a lot of mail over the past few days, most of it favourable and supportive, but there have been people whingeing about how the team are merely on an expensive foreign ‘jolly’. Well, it was certainly expensive, they are certainly in foreign parts, but the descriptions of injuries, heat stroke, and other privations paint a far from jolly picture.
There have also been postings on one of the British Fortean message boards, suggesting that this expedition is fundamentally floored because it was paid for by a computer games manufacturer. This is, as Oll Lewis pointed out in a robust rebuttal, complete nonsense. These days nearly all scientific endeavours are sponsored by somebody; usually biochemical manufacturing companies, medical research facilities, but often more dubious portions of the military industrial complex. From where I am sitting, being sponsored by someone who is – as Berry Gordy once said – “part of the industry of human happiness”, is morally, at least, infinitely preferable. People whom I regard as being morally dubious have offered us sponsorship in the past; people who wanted to use our research to bolster up their own peculiar political/religious agenda. We refused to have anything to do with them, and will continue to refuse to do so. We are proud to be carrying out this difficult, and without blowing our own trumpets too much, intrepid investigation in conjunction with Capcom, and hope that our relationship with this company, who do nothing worse than provide entertainment for millions of customers, will continue in the future.
Both Richard and Paul (Mr. Biffo) have suffered from heat stroke today, and on top of having broken her thumb two days ago, Lisa has now compounded her injuries by losing a toe nail, which has – in Richard’s delightful West Midlands patois – “made her foot go all manky”.
They spent the day battling with extreme heat in a vain search for anacondas. Although they didn’t see any living snakes, they did find the tracks of a specimen that they estimated to be about 15 foot in length. This is one hell of a snake. For the record, the largest anaconda to be generally accepted by mainstream scientists was about 28 feet long, and the ones that the expedition is searching for evidence of, maybe between 40 and 50 feet in length, so the 15 footer that left tracks at Crane Pond, for our intrepid expedition to find is now’t but a wee bairn. After fruitless investigation of Crane Pond, earlier today they trekked across the savannah to another pond called Cashew Pond. On their way they saw and filmed a giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tirdactyla) – a gloriously bizarre edentate which can grow to a size of 8 feet (2.4 metres).
This expedition is particularly exciting for me because my great hero Gerald Durrell visited Guyana when it was still known as British Guiana in 1950, and recounted his adventures in a wonderful book called Three Singles to Adventure. I suppose, here, I should reassure any of the readers of this blog who are agog with anticipation of some degree of sexual impropriety, that the term ‘singles’ refers to one-way rail tickets rather than any indication of their marital status. Coincidentally, on another trip three years later, Durrell too encountered a giant anteater, and brought her – hand tame – back to Britain where she captivated the hearts of both the book buying public and visitors to Paignton Zoo for many years. As I am feeling generous, to celebrate the end of the first half of the expedition, I will give a prize of a year’s free membership of the CFZ to the first person who emails me on jon@cfz.org.uk telling me the anteater’s name.
But I digress.
The team are staying at Cashew Pond tonight. As you read this, Richard will be going through agonies of guilt, because – as the expedition is living off the land – their hunter earlier shot a young cayman and they are planning to have it for their tea. As Richard is a great lover of the crocodile family, this will be extremely difficult for him. As I have eaten both alligator and crocodile in my time, I can reassure you – and by proxy them – that it tastes like a slightly fish version of McDonald’s chicken nuggets, and will certainly not launch any of the team on to a full-time career as reptile gourmands.
Tomorrow they head back towards Letham Station, where, hopefully, they will be successful in chartering a helicopter to take them to Corona Falls, which is some 70 miles away, and is reputably the mother load as far as giant anacondas are concerned.
As Graham so rightly pointed out, this expedition really is experiencing “science in the raw”, and I am sure, like us, your thoughts and prayers are with them.
Showing posts with label Guyana giant snake expedition CFZ anaconda didi monster cryptozoology fortean Richard Freeman Paul Rose Mr Biffo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guyana giant snake expedition CFZ anaconda didi monster cryptozoology fortean Richard Freeman Paul Rose Mr Biffo. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
Saturday, 17 November 2007
DAY THREE - heatstroke and mermaids
Back at the CFZ headquarters in rural North Devon we are in a peculiar state of limbo. Our whole day’s activities revolve about waiting for one garbled two or three minute ‘phone call. After a long and fairly dull day, Richard ‘phoned just before 10.00 this evening GMT.
It has been another long and eventful day for the five-person expedition. First of all we want to reassure you that everybody is alive and well, although they are finding the heat very difficult. After all, they are not that far from the Equator. It is a mark of quite how hot it is out there that Richard – who is usually pretty good in tropical climes – collapsed with heat stroke this afternoon. When he ‘phoned, he sounded dreadful, and we would like to stress that the satellite ‘phone link-up is of spectacularly poor quality, so although we guarantee that the gist of what is in this and future reports is correct, we are not certain that names of people or places are necessarily accurate.
Yesterday, we told how the team visited the home village of their guide and mentor Damon Corrie. We told how the ‘phone cut out for a few seconds so we could not tell you the name of this village, but we asked Richard today and as far as we are able to ascertain, Damon’s home village is called Pakuri (or something like that anyway).
Because communications are so difficult, we tried to have two or three people on the line listening every time a call comes through. This has been particularly irksome at times this evening when three of us answered the telephone at once, agog with anticipation, only to find that it was my beloved younger step-daughter wanting help with renewing her mobile ‘phone contract. This is just one of the mildly amusing aspects of running the world’s largest mystery animal research group from a family home.
Jon and Graham listened intently as the weak and garbled voice struggled through the ether. Hisses and pops punctuated the gems of information, which were, however, well worth the wait.
The team has spent today trekking deep into the grassland savannah. There is very little cover, and Jon Hare told us that the only thing that made the intense heat bearable were the occasional breezes. Jon told us that earlier on today they had found a small creek, and the whole team had waded in to cool down. He was particularly struck by the shoals of small fishes, which appeared – as if from nowhere – and immediately set to nibbling at the skin of our intrepid explorers. By the creek they met an old hunter. “Old” is a relative term. He was 53; no great age here in Britain – after all Corinna, Graham and I are rapidly approaching that venerable status, and Chris Clark on the expedition is quite a few years older than that. However, in a poorly developed third world country, 53 is quite a venerable age. Jon got talking to the hunter, who had tribal tattoos on his back, and told him how when he was young, at this very creek, and armed with only a machete, he had killed a jaguar.
They reached a village, which we think was called either Tolshiba (Graham’s interpretation) or Calshida (Jon Downes’). Unfortunately, at this point, the line broke up. Richard told us how an eye-witness reported seeing the didi a couple of years ago. He described it as looking like an enormous white man covered in hair. At this point we cannot confirm whether this witness was at the village of ?Tolshiba/?Calshida, or whether this was an incident which took place earlier.
What we can confirm is that yesterday, at Letham Station, they met a number of eyewitnesses to giant anacondas. However, the largest of these was reportedly only 25 foot long. This is one hell of a snake, but it is just about within the accepted size range for this species. However, other eyewitnesses told them of tracks found in the jungle near water, which appear to be from much larger snakes. They intend to return to Letham Station at some point during the next fortnight and to visit the places where these snakes have been seen, with the eyewitnesses.
Jon Hare told us something very peculiar. Apparently, in the middle of the savannah, miles from any water there is a large flat rock known as ‘Mermaid Rock’. Allegedly, within recent living memory, human figures with fishy tails have been seen sitting atop this rock performing the ultimate mermaid cliché of combing their hair. What mermaids would be doing so far from any water, beggars belief, but it is interesting that such a piece of archetypal European folklore has been transplanted to a rock deep in the heart of nowhere.
Tomorrow they will continue travelling across the savannah. They intend to avoid the worst of the mid-day sun by travelling very early in the morning and in the later afternoon. Either tomorrow or the next day, they will reach a rocky area containing some ancient caves. These caves were allegedly inhabited by people eons ago. Jon Hare told us how they have been told stories of ancient human remains having been discovered deep in these caves. These bodies had been ritualistically interred in a similar way to some of the archaeological sites Jon has studied in Indonesia.
This is particularly interesting to cryptozoologists because, as Damon Corrie told us on the telephone last week, these caves have been reportedly the haunt of didi in recent years.
We await, with anticipation, the next report from the team.
It has been another long and eventful day for the five-person expedition. First of all we want to reassure you that everybody is alive and well, although they are finding the heat very difficult. After all, they are not that far from the Equator. It is a mark of quite how hot it is out there that Richard – who is usually pretty good in tropical climes – collapsed with heat stroke this afternoon. When he ‘phoned, he sounded dreadful, and we would like to stress that the satellite ‘phone link-up is of spectacularly poor quality, so although we guarantee that the gist of what is in this and future reports is correct, we are not certain that names of people or places are necessarily accurate.
Yesterday, we told how the team visited the home village of their guide and mentor Damon Corrie. We told how the ‘phone cut out for a few seconds so we could not tell you the name of this village, but we asked Richard today and as far as we are able to ascertain, Damon’s home village is called Pakuri (or something like that anyway).
Because communications are so difficult, we tried to have two or three people on the line listening every time a call comes through. This has been particularly irksome at times this evening when three of us answered the telephone at once, agog with anticipation, only to find that it was my beloved younger step-daughter wanting help with renewing her mobile ‘phone contract. This is just one of the mildly amusing aspects of running the world’s largest mystery animal research group from a family home.
Jon and Graham listened intently as the weak and garbled voice struggled through the ether. Hisses and pops punctuated the gems of information, which were, however, well worth the wait.
The team has spent today trekking deep into the grassland savannah. There is very little cover, and Jon Hare told us that the only thing that made the intense heat bearable were the occasional breezes. Jon told us that earlier on today they had found a small creek, and the whole team had waded in to cool down. He was particularly struck by the shoals of small fishes, which appeared – as if from nowhere – and immediately set to nibbling at the skin of our intrepid explorers. By the creek they met an old hunter. “Old” is a relative term. He was 53; no great age here in Britain – after all Corinna, Graham and I are rapidly approaching that venerable status, and Chris Clark on the expedition is quite a few years older than that. However, in a poorly developed third world country, 53 is quite a venerable age. Jon got talking to the hunter, who had tribal tattoos on his back, and told him how when he was young, at this very creek, and armed with only a machete, he had killed a jaguar.
They reached a village, which we think was called either Tolshiba (Graham’s interpretation) or Calshida (Jon Downes’). Unfortunately, at this point, the line broke up. Richard told us how an eye-witness reported seeing the didi a couple of years ago. He described it as looking like an enormous white man covered in hair. At this point we cannot confirm whether this witness was at the village of ?Tolshiba/?Calshida, or whether this was an incident which took place earlier.
What we can confirm is that yesterday, at Letham Station, they met a number of eyewitnesses to giant anacondas. However, the largest of these was reportedly only 25 foot long. This is one hell of a snake, but it is just about within the accepted size range for this species. However, other eyewitnesses told them of tracks found in the jungle near water, which appear to be from much larger snakes. They intend to return to Letham Station at some point during the next fortnight and to visit the places where these snakes have been seen, with the eyewitnesses.
Jon Hare told us something very peculiar. Apparently, in the middle of the savannah, miles from any water there is a large flat rock known as ‘Mermaid Rock’. Allegedly, within recent living memory, human figures with fishy tails have been seen sitting atop this rock performing the ultimate mermaid cliché of combing their hair. What mermaids would be doing so far from any water, beggars belief, but it is interesting that such a piece of archetypal European folklore has been transplanted to a rock deep in the heart of nowhere.
Tomorrow they will continue travelling across the savannah. They intend to avoid the worst of the mid-day sun by travelling very early in the morning and in the later afternoon. Either tomorrow or the next day, they will reach a rocky area containing some ancient caves. These caves were allegedly inhabited by people eons ago. Jon Hare told us how they have been told stories of ancient human remains having been discovered deep in these caves. These bodies had been ritualistically interred in a similar way to some of the archaeological sites Jon has studied in Indonesia.
This is particularly interesting to cryptozoologists because, as Damon Corrie told us on the telephone last week, these caves have been reportedly the haunt of didi in recent years.
We await, with anticipation, the next report from the team.
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