Creatures...

Sunday evening, and I am way too full and sleepy to write about history, or politics, or Solomon life, or even the spectacular waterfall four friends and I marched to on Saturday, and from where we splashed and floated our way downriver, through narrow and high gorges with towering green walls on either side. There is good reason for my current state of horizontalness… several kilograms of Vanuatu beef. Last week Fiona went to Vanuatu, the nearest country to the Solomons, and returned with 25kg of gorgeous Vanuatu beef, the stuff of legend in these parts, and which a friend who is living there favourably compares with Argentinean meat. So this weekend I’ve been making the most of the huge chunks of prime steak that have fortuitously found their way into my fridge. I kicked off proceedings with the old pub classic of egg, chips and steak yesterday eve, such a belly-filling success it was promptly repeated this morning for brekkie and followed by an Oriental style beef stir-fry for lunch and delicious beef curry for dinner. I sound like a greedy pigpig, but believe me, this kind of eating is a rare luxury for me over here so I make hay while the sun shines.

I have not seen a single cow here on the Solomons, as apparently all were eaten during the tensions, but these isles are teeming with other creatures great and small. Crocs twice the size of me or you, beetles that whirr towards your head like toy helicopters, and moths the size of cats. Below are a few photos, including a couple of my beloved geckos.