I’m writing today’s entry sitting on the balcony of our apartment about fifty metres from the beach. The sun seems to be almost reluctant in its gradual sinking descent below the horizon, there is a cool Caribbean breeze gently coming in off the sea and it’s by far the most relaxing evening of the trip to date. Adam is getting to grips with the night camera whilst teaching us some handy Italian phrases that you would never repeat to your Mother, Nathan is composing a Spanish love letter to his current favourite senorita, Marc is shaving his beard and Clive is stressing about a misbehaving locum who is supposed to be manning his practice back home....Continue reading
Hot day, I kicked off with a quick cat castrate at the clinic and the crew did some GVs (general views) in town. We then got the stuff together and met up with Charlene who is one of the islands agricultural workers. Essentially she is one of the islands unofficial vets (there are two agricultural workers – Charlene and Princess who work under the direction of Mr Moses). They travel around the island treating sick animals as best they can. Under resourced but government funded, they treat what they can and make the best of the situations they’re presented with. Sadly, their lack of drugs leads to some welfare issues. A dog that was euthanased for attacking a sheep was killed with some Epsom salts I/V – a bad death, I’ve promised to leave Charlene with some lethobarb so at least they can make a clean job of things. it’s tricky because they aren’t a charity or non-profit organisation, they are a government funded programme that is poorly equipped and under staffed. I can’t change that and although not technically the right thing to do, I am going to give them some drugs because I simply can’t bear them euthanizing the animals like that. I’m working on trying to get them to stop operating and leave that to volunteer teams because none of them are vets and they are doing the job on virtually conscious animals with no pain relief. There are no laws to prohibit them doing this so it needs to be positive cooperative action and I think they‘ll actually be fairly relieved when the volunteer teams come to give them a hand with the huge workload they have on. I liked Charlene, although not having the drugs or the training, she clearly did care about the animals which is why she brought the issue up withy me. She was light hearted and also very keen to show us around and visit cases that her team and the GSPCA are struggling with....Continue reading
Spent all day yesterday sorting out all the logistics for our shoot tomorrow morning and I can safely say that even on a tiny island nation such as this there is a muddle of bureaucracy to get through before the necessary permits can be cleared. I was sent on a jolly merry-go-round from the Airport Authority to the Board of Tourism, from there to the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation, from there back to the airport and then onto the the Ministry of Carriacou, before going back to the Tourism Board and finally onto the Prime Minister’s Ministry. What a trek, but in the end we finally got our clearance to fly, hurrah! Now all we need is good weather tomorrow or I might be facing that all over again....Continue reading
We’ve been on Carriacou now for three days and there is a very relaxed atmosphere around the island. This has meant that although there have been some good stories it’s been hard to enthuse the locals into what we are doing. However we’ve managed to get some bits that I think will make an amazing programme and we still have a day to catch up on items in Grenada and hopefully find some more interesting cases....Continue reading
Dipping into the seas of the Carribean to swim with turtles was an incredible experience and we were very lucky to spend some quality time with JP and Clare from Lumbadive. ...Continue reading
… beats me. I have been living in the UK for ten years now, but I still am in the dark about this English tradition....Continue reading
6am start, we met with our pilot, Ron and went over the flight plan. The weather was just perfect, good start; crisp blue skies and no wind. David and Ron did some last-minute rigging on the chopper at the runway and then we were off. We filmed various beauty shots of the island before picking up the GSPCA’s van on their way to an outreach programme. We followed them for a while and when we were happy we’d got that we headed back to the airport to refuel and then straight off for a half hour flight over sea to the neighbouring island, Carriacou; We stopped again to refuel at the tiniest airport I’ve ever been to (one shack and a runway). Here we went through the slightly farcical procedure of going in and then out of customs (the hut) before being allowed to take off again. Quite sweet really....Continue reading
It was an early start – 3am we had a call from Dario who was on night patrol to protect the turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs from poachers. To that end he has employed a team of locals to help guard the nesting beaches from 8pm to 5am every night between March and August each year. The man is simply a dynamo of energy and together with Marina, his wife, they have reached hero status in my eyes....Continue reading
